How to turn your social media followers into customers

There’s no doubt that you’ve probably got at least one social media page for your business.

No matter the platform, your number one goal is probably to amass as many followers, likes and shares as possible. This is exactly what you should be aiming to achieve, however, all the noise in the world about your business doesn’t mean much if it isn’t converting into new leads and sales.

This begs the question then, how can you turn some of those many loyal followers who’ve bought into your brand into customers? It can be tough to know where to start and we’d forgive you for assuming that most of your followers are customers.

However, this is not always the case. If you’re growing your followers you want to be converting them into customers as much as possible. So with this in mind, here are our top 5 ways to turn your social media followers into customers:

 

Analyse your content

The first step is to establish your target market – these are the people that are most likely to buy your product. Create a profile of what this person looks like and be as specific as you can. Determine things like their age, gender, problems, interests – the more detailed the better. Ultimately, this person has a need or problem that your business can solve.

From here, you need to analyse your content. Track the performance of your regular posts so you can see what your audience is responding to. Your aim is to increase engagement; such as likes, comments and shares. This will increase the strength of your profiles and the number of likes/followers you have.

However, you also want to monitor what kind of content is generating new leads and buyers. Test various content strategies until you find what works best for your business, then continue with that formula.

You should be able to determine your best-performing pieces of content and why they were successful.

 

Connect with your audience

Any business these days can mindlessly push products in your face. Whilst this is sure to produce some sporadic sales, it won’t produce the growth you’re looking for from your business. Take a moment to think of some successful brands. What comes to mind and why? Take Red Bull as an example.

They sell a small range of products, but when you mention their name, you likely think of obscure action sports, car racing or videos of people doing impressive stunts. This is because they’ve created a story that their audience wants to be a part of, which leads to a connection between business and consumer.

Now we’re not saying you should start sending people cliff diving in t-shirts with your brand’s name on it but consider the story you can build around your business. Once you can figure this out, you’ll find the direction of your content and social media activity will begin to dictate itself. If your followers buy into your story, they’re more likely to buy your products or services.

 

Do more, get more

We’re going to preface this point by defining what we mean by ‘increase’. Posting for the sake of posting is a waste of time. If you’re posting, you want to ensure its quality and engaging content. That being said, less is not always more when it comes to social media. You need to be posting consistently to maintain a presence in your followers feeds and at the end of the day, more activity will produce more leads. To help with this, consider using a social media management tool so you can pre-plan your content and allow more time for other tasks.

Following step one and two, you should have an understanding of what works best for your audience, so you can create more posts with this model in mind that are more successful.

 

Incentivise to buy

Another sure-fire way to turn your followers into customers is with promotions and offers on your products! How you do this is up to you, but there are so many ways to do so. Free trails, limited discounts, offers for new followers or customers – it’s up to you. Be creative and you’re sure to see the sales come in.

An effective promotion tactic is social media competitions. No doubt you’ve seen them before, but there’s a reason this strategy persists; it works. Run in the right way, you can drive engagement on your platforms (amassing more followers, likes, comments and shares) whilst getting more eyes on your business and products. Be sure to publicly announce the winner and use it as an opportunity to connect with your audience. This leads us nicely into our final tip…

 

Don’t be a stranger

Your social media shouldn’t be a two-way street. Respond to comments from your audience, no matter if they’re positive or negative. Even simply liking a comment goes a long way to building your businesses credibility. With this approach, you’ll be able to build trust with both existing and future customers which are pivotal to increasing sales.

At the end of the day, people don’t buy from companies they don’t trust!

Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to turning more of your followers into customers. Whilst this is a great place to start, sometimes you can’t beat the help of an expert. With our help, we’ll not only save you time but help you grow your business through the power of social media.

 

Reach out to the team at 99social to see how we could assist with affordable social media marketing.