Social media isn’t just for connecting with family and friends but is also the perfect digital marketing channel for businesses to generate and convert online leads. Most brands already have an online presence, but even the most substantial followings on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram still need to be nurtured if you want all of those likes and comments to help you grow your bottom line.
While promotions are easy, selling via social media can often be a bit tricky. Followers and fans are not always indicative of potential leads, so how can companies turn all of those valuable likes into leads? Different strategies boil down to a few simple steps or concepts. The below suggestions should help take social platforms from awareness tools to lead generation machines, and in doing so, increase your sales funnel. Here are a few tips to convert social media followers into qualified leads.
Build a bond with your potential buyers
It’s important to understand the difference between a social media lead and a traditional lead because traditional sales-related email campaigns will kill the sale with the social media buyer.
Because social media leads may enter the sales funnel at an earlier stage in the buying process, you will need to adjust your email campaigns to provide value and content that will help drive the decision-making process. This will require a strategy that includes decision-making content. Decision-making content is designed to answer questions that commonly arise when purchasing your product, overcome objections that are frequently heard in the sales process, and provide opportunities to convert into a hard lead.
A hard lead is someone who has taken an action that directly indicates he or she is now interested in your product. This means the lead is now in the research and consideration phase of the buying cycle and you have an opportunity to convert the lead into a buyer. Through your other social media efforts, you have been able to develop trust with prospects; therefore, if you continue to show thought leadership in helping them to make a decision, they will be more likely to purchase from you rather than the competitor they don’t have a relationship with.
Think beyond Instagram
Instagram isn’t the end game. To be profitable, and not just popular you need to know that Instagram isn’t and shouldn’t be the end game for cultivating people towards your business goals. It’s important to have a marketing plan for your followers after they engage with you on social media.
When you look at the number of followers and likes as the “end game”, you might be forgetting that unless that number is doing anything beyond boosting your ego, it’s not helping your business.
There are tons of Instagram accounts that have thousands of followers, but they aren’t profitable. Why? Their following isn’t getting them results. Do not be fooled into thinking that just because someone has tons of followers that they are making tons of money and opportunities for themselves.
Although Instagram is a free platform to grow followers and business brands, you need to think about what kind of journey you want your followers to take and how you can engage them on a deeper level.
Utilize lead magnets
If you’re not already using lead magnets with social media, it’s time to start. A lead magnet is something you give away for free in exchange for someone’s contact information.
Think about what your audience wants or needs, and offer it to them for free. You may also consider offering discounts for your business. Keep trying different things until you find something that converts well.
Here’s a list of some lead magnets you can try:
- Checklist
- Product sample
- Cost calculator
- Planner
- Tutorial
- eBook
- Guide
- Printable
- Exclusive content
- Webinar
- Local event ticket giveaways
- Contest
It’s important to get an email address or a phone number from your prospects. That gives you the ability to reach out to them personally, which is vital for closing the sale and turning them into customers.
Make use of remarketing
Social media is a constant flurry of clicks, scrolls, likes, views, comments, and follows. This means that your posts and ads are just one flash in a sea of nonstop activity where most people are just passively engaging with you.
Remarketing reminds people that you caught their eye and gives them another chance to buy. It’s a great way to connect directly with small groups of targeted, warm leads. Remarketing on Facebook is particularly effective: it often delivers much higher engagement rates and revenue than other Facebook ads. To do this, you’ll need to install the Facebook pixel — a line of code that tracks specific visitors to your site so you can reach them again on Facebook. You can also link your website\’s live chat feature with Messenger, so your history with each customer is preserved across platforms.
Analyze your data
If I asked you which of your social networks converts at the highest rate, would you know? And how about what social network sends the highest quality leads? I hate to be the one to tell you, but data wasn’t created because numbers are pretty. It’s there to guide and direct your actions.
If you want to increase the number of people converting through social media, you need to dig into your analytics.
Look at Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and your Twitter data. Now make that information actionable by adjusting your content strategy, how you’re positioning your product, the length of your posts, timing, and more.
Take advantage of paid adverts
Investing in ads on social media is a great way to build a large hyper-targeted following. Almost all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. offer paid ads. You can use these to increase your reach, content views, clicks, and engagements.
You can make the most of your investments with offers and repurposing previous posts to reach more targeted potential consumers. This way you can get new followers, subscribers, and potential leads for the future.
The best part is the ability to get really specific with your demographic targeting at scale. You can tailor different ads to different personas with incredible precision, increasing the likelihood of acquiring more of your business’ target customers.
Plan your campaigns on the goals you’ve set
Brands can explore new functionalities and come up with goal-driven brand campaigns. There can be two approaches. Your ultimate aim is sales, but you could experiment with focusing more on brand awareness and give sales a second lead. Or else you could take the conventional approach of concentrating on growing your sales. Both approaches are fine.
You should then measure the outcome of both strategies, like how much traffic does the marketing campaign drive back to your website. Set your goals, design your social media marketing strategy, choose your key social networks, and start working on them.
Acknowledge your fans
Who did you create the brand for? It’s for your audience, right? So you will have to treat them as a priority and return some of the favors they have done. Your business growth and increased sales are all due to your audience and you must pay them back.
A brand owner can pay back in several ways, through discounts, special offers, special activities, new launches at a low price, and so on. The motive is to touch the lives of every individual audience connected to you. Personalize the reach and you will have special attention from your audience. Introduce follow Mondays, a fan of the week, and other things to keep your audience engaged.
Another way to acknowledge and value your fans is by fulfilling their request. It can only happen when they are active and regular on social media platforms and are communicating with them daily. Dedicate a timeframe to communicate with the audience, and it will start reflecting in your sales because everyone loves a prompt reply.
Have a mobile-friendly website
Most people log into social media from their phones, so optimizing your brand’s website for mobile devices is a must. The last thing you want is for your followers to click onto your website to buy something or read an article they saw advertised on a social platform only to give up because they found it too difficult to navigate.
Studies show that businesses without a mobile-optimized website lose revenue as a result. This is largely due to the fact that most mobile purchases are made on impulse, so even the smallest hurdles in user experience can turn would-be customers away. With nearly 60% of mobile sales revenue coming from websites (as opposed to apps), it’s clear that small businesses can’t afford to make this simple mistake.
Always be thinking about how your website’s appearance and overall function will impact your customers. Don’t assume that you’re good to go just because it looks great on the desktop. Every time you make a change to your website, be sure to check how it looks on mobile before you push changes live.
Depending on your industry and brand, social selling may be easy, or very difficult. Either way, it is certainly something that every brand should be pursuing. Social media is far too popular these days for companies to ignore the immense selling power it can offer, in addition to the massive marketing potential it provides.
Following the points mentioned above puts you on the path to attracting new clients and growing your business. To learn more about how to successfully convert your Social media followers into leads, visit us at https://www.koffeetech.com/digital/.