You don’t need me to tell you that social media marketing is important for promoting your business. If you’re reading this blog, you already know.
It’s vital to communicate your message using the appropriate channels of the time – and this is unquestionably the age of social media. 2.8 billion people were using social media by the end of 2016, an increase of 21% since 2015.
71% of consumers who have a good experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend it to a friend, and 95% of adults aged 18-34 are likely to follow brands on social media.
If you’ve been posting high-quality content and engaging in discussions in order to grow a social media following – that’s good, but it would obviously be better if you could start converting those followers into paying customers.
After all, you can have the most educational and engaging social media content in the world – but it won’t matter if your business isn’t making a profit.
Follow these tips in order to help maximize your financial return with social media.
Use Designated Landing Pages
I’m always shocked when I click through from a Google Adwords or Facebook ad and arrive at the brand’s homepage instead of a designated landing page for the campaign. This is sloppy marketing.
Your homepage is important for making a good first impression and explaining your services – but it’s not always the page you want to send visitors too.
It’s much easier to market to someone once you have their email address – so acquiring it should be a priority.
Instead of linking to your homepage in your Twitter and Instagram bios, link to a landing page that offers a valuable lead magnet in exchange for contact information.
If a significant portion of your website’s traffic is coming from social media, you can definitely improve your monetization efforts by utilizing dedicated landing pages, rather than your homepage, in your account bios.
Special Deals
Special deals and limited discounts have been around since the creation of marketing itself – and they still work just as well in the digital era.
All action is caused by a desire to move towards pleasure or away from pain.
With discounts, consumers are motivated by the pleasure of acquiring something for less than the market price.
If the offer is available for a limited period of time, then the power of scarcity is also leveraged. This encourages people to act immediately instead of procrastinating (and ultimately, forgetting completely).
Providing special deals specifically for your social media followers can also help to build a sense of community around the brand. In turn, it can encourage your followers to engage with you and share your posts.
Host a Contest
Reposting user-generated content on your social media accounts can be a powerful way to build a sense of rapport with your followers – people love the validation of having one of their favorite brands share their images.
One of the best ways to solicit a tonne of cool user-generated content is by hosting a contest around such content – encourage your followers to take a photo with your product and publish it using a special hashtag for the contest.
Hopefully, your prize is spectacular enough to encourage a lot of submissions.
Although you’ll only have one winner, everyone who has their content reposted will form a stronger bond with your brand – which will make them more likely to convert into paying customers (if they aren’t already).
Add More Value
We all know that horrible feeling when you scroll through the Twitter feed of a company that’s blatantly trying to extract value from its followers while giving nothing back.
Posting spammy promotional posts, while simultaneously not bothering to engage followers as human beings, will get you nowhere – while it’s great that technology allows us to communicate with audiences across the globe at the click of a button, social media is called ‘social’ for a reason.
People expect a brand’s social media account to be a contact point for customer service inquiries. Always respond to messages in a timely manner, and where possible, go beyond expectations in order to solve problems.
Being helpful and informative on social media will help humanize your brand and make you stand out from the competition – which will ultimately result in more conversions.