10 Steps To Improve Your Social Media Conversions
It’s June, the height of wedding season. From Central Park to Battery Park, newlyweds are strutting their stuff at high profile NYC parks and landmarks; their photographers in tow.
Similarly, it’s time to think about getting your business’s social media relationships consummated.
Why?
One look at these 3 social media data points and you’ll immediately understand the challenge.
- 97% of marketers consider social media platforms to be a fact of business based on Social Media Examiner Research.
- 88% of marketers want to know how to measure their return on investment for social media activities according to 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
- 49% of CMOs have NO proof social media improves performance.
Social media is about the top of the purchase funnel and branding, since YOU need to reach prospects before YOU know they’re in market. But even after you use social media to get the attention of prospects, you must still close sales and track social media’s influence on these activities.
So what can you do as a marketer?
10 Steps to get your social media relationships consummated
Are you asking your social media followers the sales version of “Will you marry me?” This tactic doesn’t work any better for businesses than it does for single men in a bar. Here are 10 steps to help improve your social media conversions.
1. Be where the social media action is.
Know your target audience and where they spend their time on social media. To this end, create a marketing persona and a social media persona.
60% of social media participants connect with different types of people, brands and media based on the platform according to research by 140 Proof and IPG Media Lab.
Get out and mingle. Attend social media events, both online and in real life. Don’t think romantic attachment. The objective at this point is to understand the social media platform and how your key audience uses it.
Try new social media venues to build your following. New platforms continue to appear and evolve. Be on the lookout for those sites that resonate with your key audience.
2. Connect with people you want to see again.
In a bygone era, you might have sought the services of a matchmaker.
Collect contact information. Otherwise, you’re leaving future communications to chance. This generally means email addresses because consumers consider their cellphone numbers private information.
Build your community on different social media platforms. Determine which social media offerings matter most to your target audience and their influencers. While there may be overlap, some participants are loyal to specific sites.
3. Date those special prospects.
As with real life dating, you must be adventurous and interesting. Take your prospects along on your journey.
Put yourself in their shoes: Who wants to have dinner with a bore?
Qualify your leads. Select those prospects that are most likely to buy from you. You wouldn’t keep calling someone who never responded to your messages would you?
Build trust with your potential buyers. Unless you’re desperate for a date to your sister’s wedding so your family doesn’t think you’ll be an old maid like Aunt Saddie, you must interact with your target audience over time. At a minimum, this has to be long enough to purchase from your firm.
4. Woo your best prospects.
While most western cultures believe in monogamy, your prospects and customers don’t.
To encourage them to purchase from your business, you need to build a relationship with them over time. For marketers, this means providing a series of on-going content that entices them and provides them with useful information. Skip the promotion.
Where appropriate, give them an enticement to persuade them to buy from you.
5. Beware of casual hook ups.
While this may work as a one-night stand, for marketers this translates into special offers where prospects buy because you’ve made them an amazing lost leader offer. It’s a deal that’s too good to pass up.
But know they’ll probably leave you standing at the altar (or more likely the cash register) because your landing pages aren’t tailored to your social media presence or your purchase process is way too much work with which to deal.
Understand: these prospects just aren’t that into you! All they want is the free samples and useful content. Then they’re onto the next shiny thing.
As a marketer, focus on building long term relationships since they continue to generate revenues and attract new prospects.
6. Open up your heart so that your prospects can see the true you.
On social media you can’t hide your flaws. You must let your guard down and be real to prospects. After you close the sale, you don’t want unpleasant surprises – either for you or your customers.
To this end, show your human side. Be human, transparent and real.
7. Make a long-term commitment.
Like dating, social media is NOT an end in itself!!!
Engage on social media to build your core audience among your raving fans.
Find out what hurdles are keeping your prospects from purchasing. Without knowing what the challenges are that are preventing her from buying, you can’t close the deal.
8. Obtain your marriage license.
If you’re serious about using social media for marketing, register for premium services where appropriate and support your social media activity with resources.
Stake out your brand name across social media entities.
9. Consummate your relationship.
Most sales need to be consummated either on your website or in your store. Therefore, you must encourage your social media prospects to complete the sale off of social media.
Incorporate a contextually relevant call-to-action in your social media. Not just buy, buy, buy, but the next step in the purchase process.
Continue the scent of your social media presence on your landing page. You don’t want to surprise your prospects so that your website looks totally different from everything you’ve provided on social media.
Streamline your purchase process. Time is truly money online. Make sure that your purchase pages are as short as possible and actually convert, before you drive your social media traffic to them.
Test every element between social media and purchase using A/B testing and multivariate testing.
10. Share the joy.
Send out thank you cards, just like a bride and groom do. Let your customers know that you really care about them. Provide them with additional useful information to improve their product experience.
Encourage customers to share their feelings and insights regarding your products and services (or ratings and reviews) just like you’d post a wedding announcement in the local media.
Positive ratings and shares increase purchase intent by 9.5% while negative reviews and shares decrease purchase intent according to ShareThis research.
Social media is a process that helps you to get targeted, qualified prospects to your online destination or physical establishment to purchase.
Expect that, like real life dating, not everyone will be a perfect match for your offering. Like romance, social media is a journey. You’ll loose prospects along the way, between social media and the final sale.
Social media isn’t free. You must invest resources, both employee time and financial budget. Your goal should be to build casual social media relationships into profitable, long-term customer relationships.
What are your suggestions to improve your ability to consummate social media relationships?
Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen
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