So you’ve spent a lot of time engaging with your small business’s followers on social media. You share relevant content like useful advice, tips and info about shared interests and increase your brand awareness. But how do you turn these followers into paying customers?
How can you grow your small business with the help of your likes? To answer that, here are my 7 top tactics to generate leads on social media and convert them into customers. Let’s have a look!
1. Promotions
The best way to turn your social media followers into paying customers are short-term promotions, like:
- special offers,
- discounts,
- promo codes,
- competitions
- and prize draws.
Special offers, discounts and competitions, specifically aimed at your existing audience, are great ways to engage with your customers. This competition from Maria Manuscript (see above) emphasises the joy of the festive season to give potential customers an incentive to enter. Promo codes and short term discounts can also create a buzz, and help a potential customer step over that line for the first time.
Additionally, you can offer a free download that can make your potential clients’ lives easier. You can share a template they can work with or simply give them early access to your latest product.
Make sure to ask them if you can use their contact details for marketing purposes (while being GDPR compliant, of course). This way they can benefit from even more offers and you can add them to your customer database.
2. Call-to-actions
Regardless if you’re writing a new post, creating a prize draw or designing your next cover image: always remember to tell people what you would like them to do. ‘Click here’ or ‘check it out’ are good examples if you want them to follow a link.
‘Sign up today’, ‘get in touch’ or ‘enter the competition to win’ are a great way to engage people with your latest promotion or contest. And if you have a bookable service? Do not miss the chance to encourage them to ‘book now’!
Just make sure to always add a call-to-action or a question to get more engagement and convert more followers into paying customers.
Find out about my 12 top tips on how to write better copy and convert more leads into paying clients.
3. Links
Make it easy for your followers to find out more about your small business. Show them how they can follow your blog or order directly from you by adding links to your social media bios.
On Facebook, you can even add tabs to your profile, for example for your newsletter signup or online shop. Take the Tribe Porty Facebook page, for example. As you can see in the above image, they’ve utilised several of the available Facebook tabs, including events, email signup and online booking. As a co-working space, this is an excellent use of their social media – they are giving potential customers as many opportunities as possible to take that final step! You can find out more about the work Tribe Porty does in my recent post on Edinburgh’s co-working offices.
Post or tweet links to your website, blog, product pages, manuals, testimonials or price list regularly (while keeping the 80-20 rule in mind).
Post relevant information to drive traffic to your website where they can get in touch with you, sign up for your newsletter or simply put in an order.
4. Benefits
Don’t just assume that people know what you’re doing: Tell them. Show them. Talk about what makes you different, especially in comparison to your competition. Show behind-the-scenes images and showcase your work.
Ask yourself: What are they gaining from using your products and services? Are they going to be fitter, healthier, more successful or simply better organised?
Make your content reflect the benefits of your products and services, show them what they can do with it or what the possible achievements are and how to get there. Make them excited about the prospect of working with or buying from you!
Also, add your services or products to your profile, for example on Facebook or in your summary on LinkedIn.
5. Paid advertising
One way of turning your followers into paying customers on social media is paid advertising. Choose from different goals for your advertising campaign: you can simply increase your likes and followers, you can promote your website or spread the word about a special offer you’re running.
Take this Wolf & Moon Facebook carousel advert, for example. A carousel ad allows you to drive traffic to multiple pages on your website – so it promotes several products or services within one ad. These ads are also shown to be more cost-effective and receive higher engagement than other ad formats. This sponsored post includes a USP (one tree planted for every order), a benefit (free shipping over £60), a call-to-action (the “shop now” buttons) and the added incentive of the products being “limited edition”.
Advertising allows you to get really specific about your target audience and get your content in front of those people. While it doesn’t necessarily do anything you can’t do by simply posting to your followers, it amplifies your content and campaigns.
6. Events
How about getting face-to-face with your social media followers at an event? No matter if it’s happening online or in person, an event is a great way to turn your followers into customers or clients.
You can organise your own event, for example, a tutorial for your product or a workshop about a topic that’s relevant to your audience.
You can also invite them to a trade show you are exhibiting at or to a conference where you are a speaker and ask them to seek you out and have a chat.
7. Customer service
No matter if you’re on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram, all social media platforms have two-way communication and that makes them ideal for customer service purposes.
Signal to your followers that they can get in touch if they have questions about your products or services. Reply as quickly as you can if they do and help them in any way possible. It’s a great way to start a conversation and show them that you’re worth their while – and money.
If your work schedule means that you won’t be able to check social media messages frequently, consider setting up an automated message with your preferred method of contact. This way, the customer won’t be left waiting!
FURTHER READING
If you are interested in reading more about this topic, have a look at these:
How to Add Personality to Your Social Media Marketing
Why You Should Focus on Your Social Media Engagement
4 Types of Social Media Content You Should Focus On
How to Avoid Social Media Overwhelm as a Small Business Owner
