Social media, when properly optimized, is still the best way for brands to build social evidence, get more customers, and drive more sales.
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June 25, 2021 5 minutes to read
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In recent years, social media has grown exponentially from something that only the geeky boys and girls spent time in college to something that is now a ubiquitous aspect of life around the world.
It is clear to companies that social media, if handled correctly, can be a gold mine for leads and conversions. Because of this, many companies have focused their marketing budgets on social media to build a fan base and nurture customer loyalty and new buyers. Here are a few tips you can implement to make your social media marketing much more effective at generating sales.
1. Focus on your audience
One of the easiest ways to burn a lot of money on social media marketing without getting anywhere is to try to target everyone. What you need to do is narrow down your target audience, create a customer profile, and then tailor your marketing to that persona’s needs and motivations. It will make your marketing a lot more effective than if you took a more general approach.
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You may also need to segment your target audience according to various parameters in order to be able to address them more effectively. In essence, segmentation allows you to work with multiple customer profiles and tailor your marketing based on their specific characteristics.
2. Choose your platforms and optimize for them
Trying to maintain an active presence on all available social media platforms will overwhelm most companies. Whoever is using your social media is likely to be overwhelmed and your efforts on all platforms will not be effective. Instead, analyze your buyer persona and decide which platforms are best for interacting with your target market. Two or three are good and you shouldn’t be doing more unless you have multiple people to take care of it.
Once you’ve chosen your content, you can optimize your content for this platform and get a lot more engagement as a result. For example, if you focus on Instagram, you can focus your resources on creating high quality images as this will have the greatest impact on the platform. On Twitter, on the other hand, creating highly informative threads is likely to generate more engagement and spread the word about your brand.
3. Create and share content
Content marketing is not just a buzzword. It actually works and the effects can be seen on social media too. Post content that is short and fun, or informative, and rest assured that you will get some social media engagement. Over time, you will have some content (be it text posts, photos, infographics, etc.) that will go viral and bring tons of traffic to your website. Make sure to work with content creation experts to make sure your website is up to date.
Getting your content out is the first step in building a great brand, and a simple trick is to continually tweak your content strategy so it is in line with current topics. By creating quality content and using interesting captions for Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms, you can latch into trends and bring your content to a lot more people, e.g. at a time when there is a lot of confusion and public discussion about it.
4. Promote user generated content
People trust their friends more than a company, no matter how loyal they are to the brand. You can take advantage of this by encouraging people to post content on social media that will validate and promote your product or service. A popular example of this was the Coca-Cola “Share a Coke With …” campaign in which users posted pictures of themselves with their soda bottles. You don’t have to start at this level either; With creative marketing or a small giveaway, you can encourage people to post positive information about your product or service. For example, at a travel service, getting customers to write authentically and entertainingly about their travels will be solid social proof and promote FOMO with your target audience, dramatically increasing the likelihood of conversion.
5. Offer great customer service
Positive reviews are great, but a lot of your customers will likely also come back on social media if they have had an unsatisfactory experience with your product or service. The solution is to be ready to get in touch with them and find solutions to their problems in a timely manner. Provide opportunities for feedback, resolve any concerns they have, and encourage them to share their thoughts with their network.
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Over time, this will strengthen your customer loyalty, encourage referrals and the influx of new customers, and also help build a positive reputation on social media. As your followership grows and your product or service validates, your social proof increases and more people are drawn to your brand, increasing sales and bottom line.
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