You’ve got a big following on social media.
So what?
Unless those followers are paying you for products or services, they don’t mean much. I’m not saying that social media followers aren’t important in some ways. Having a lot of followers sends a signal to potential customers that you have a popular brand. It can help you get more traffic and attention.
That said, sales and profits are the name of the game. If those followers aren’t buying from you, they’re not doing anything for you in real terms.
The solution? Take those fans and followers and convert them into paying customers. Here’s what to do.
Get to Know Your Audience
As the owner of a small or medium-sized business, you may not have given a lot of thought to what makes your customers tick. And yet, customer analysis is the key to turning casual fans and followers into customers.
Creating a detailed customer persona can help you understand your audience. Your persona should include:
- Demographic information, including the age, gender, educational background and income of your ideal customer
- Psychographic information, including what your ideal customer likes and dislikes, and most importantly, the pain points that led them to look for your product or service.
I should point out that you may need more than one customer persona depending on what your business is. For example, if you sell products for both children and adults, you might need a Parent Persona and a separate Adult Persona for people without children.
Provide Value to Your Target Customers
Once you know who your target customers are, your next mission is to give them what they want. Here, I’m talking about entertaining and ACTIONABLE content that provides tangible value to the people you want to convert.
In other words, be generous with your knowledge. It doesn’t matter what your business is, you know it better than anybody else. Give some thought to what brings your customers to you – and what would convince them that your product or service is the best option to solve their problems.
You can provide value in a variety of ways. Here are some examples.
- Write blog posts that address common questions and offer real solutions.
- Do a live Q & A on social media.
- Create a lead magnet that demonstrates your authority and provides a solution to a common problem.
Regardless of the type of content you create, your goal should be to make it immediately and undeniably useful to the people you most want to reach.
Interact with Your Followers and Fans
Having a large following is one thing, but ultimately, we all want to feel valued. Your job as a business owner is to make your fans and followers understand that you value them and care about them.
The answer is communication. That can mean a lot of different things, but here are some effective tactics that have been proven to work.
- Ask your followers’ opinions and use the responses to focus your content on their needs.
- Integrate your social media with your customer service, empowering your employees to respond to questions and complaints quickly.
- Create a chatbot to provide immediate help when someone messages you or visits your website.
- Create a lead-nurturing email sequence to inform subscribers about your product and give them an incentive to buy it.
Ultimately, consumers want to feel that the companies they buy from care about them and want their business. Without communication, you can’t demonstrate the importance of your customers.
Curate Content
Do you know that feeling when you walk into a store and a salesperson pounces on you before you have time to draw a breath? Very few of us enjoy that feeling, and the chances are good that your customers don’t, either.
While your social media content can and should focus on what you and your products can do for potential customers, it’s important to keep the direct sales pitches to a minimum. The solution? Curating content from other sources.
Content curation means pulling content from:
- Industry-relevant publications
- Influencers
- News sites
- Social media pages from other companies (just don’t share things from your competitors!)
Make sure that the content you choose to share is highly relevant to the people in your target audience. While there’s nothing wrong with (occasionally) sharing content without adding anything to it, I think the best way to curate content is to add your take on it before posting.
Here’s a quick example. Say you own a gym and you find an article about the health benefits of exercise. If the article left anything out, you could mention it in your post. Or, you could elaborate on something that’s in the post to add your own take on it.
It’s a good rule of thumb that no more than 20% of your social media content should be direct sales pitches. The remaining 80% should offer value, information, and entertainment.
Use Retargeting
Retargeting is one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising because it focuses on people who are already engaged with your business and interested in your products.
By using a Facebook pixel, for example, you can target people on Facebook who have:
- Visited your website or read your blog
- Put items into their cart without checking out
- Followed you on Facebook or Instagram
- Clicked an ad
You probably know the statistic that says it can take between five and seven “touches” from a brand or company before conversion. The more often you can get your name and products in front of people, the more likely it is that they’ll eventually become customers. It’s a numbers game and retargeting can help you win it. I’ve focused here on Facebook retargeting, but you can also retarget on Google – something to keep in mind.
Remember, your social media followers are following you for a reason. They are interested in you and your company. It’s up to you to give them a reason to take the next step and become customers – and the tips I’ve listed here will help you to accomplish that goal.
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