Any experienced online marketer or successful entrepreneur knows that social media is not just another place to blast product and service messages. It can be a very effective source of engaged leads and sales if used correctly.
Unfortunately, some don’t know how to use these platforms to their greatest potential and end up making mistakes that cost them dearly. Considering that social media websites are free to use and you don’t need a big budget to advertise, you should make the best out of social media.
Here is a guide about how to generate leads and sales with social media marketing.
Transformation of Social Media Marketing
These days businesses have transitioned into the digital media space and focus their marketing more towards social media. As they create larger budgets for social media marketing, they forget to change their older messaging methods and don’t give consumers what they want.
With new media platforms, there come new rules of engagement. The old marketing approach no longer works as it used to. People don’t often engage with a typical product or service-based advertisements.
Instead, customers now expect companies to provide them with a community of like-minded consumers who can engage with each other and tell their own stories.
Rather than using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter for one-way company broadcasts, companies are now providing a community for customers to connect with their products and services, share their stories and ideas, and connect.
Through this approach, fans can tell others about their unique experiences with your company and or products. The satisfied customer is the best FREE advertising for your business. Very simple but very effective.
Share and Curate Content
If you’re going to keep your customers’ attention, you will need to provide them with informative content that isn’t always coming from your company’s agenda. This is known as content curation.
Content curation is important because it provides your audience with value. Value is the most important thing a business can give to a potential customer. After a business provides value to someone, they build trust in the business. Trust is key in any purchase decision. If a person trusts your company over another, they will purchase from you.
If you only ever post about your company, not only will your company’s social media become boring to a potential customer, but it will feel like your business is only interested in selling its products.
People do not like to be sold to. They want to have their autonomy, so they can make a purchase decision themselves. By incorporating outside content, it doesn’t feel like your business is selling to them; rather, they feel you are helping to educate them where they can make the choice to buy for themselves.
This is not to say, you will only ever provide curated content. That’s not the case at all. Supplementing your social media with outside content you will build trust among your audience faster. So you will generate leads and sales easier.
Also, When sharing content outside of your business, make sure to link to the sources of the content as well. Share the love and build your company’s authority by associating it to other reputable sources.
Look to link to other businesses or leading industry experts who are doing well in your niche to link to. By connecting to these bigger players, your fans will get a feeling that your company is a respectable and reputable player as well.
Understand and Know Your Audience
You will need to understand your target audience. Since the various social media platforms, all attract different audiences, knowing something even as simple as your leading customers’ age group can help you choose the best ones for your business. Once you know who your target customer is, you will understand which platform to use.
It’s better to create a detailed customer profile for your most engaged audience. This means you will be creating a sample customer based on your most engaged audience. This persona will help you get in touch with which types of messaging to work best to serve that particular audience’s needs.
After you build out your audience’s demographics, you can move on and ask secondary questions that build out their psychographic profile. Demographics answer ‘who’ buys, but psychographics answer ‘why’ they buy.
When you understand your core customers better, you can create better content and engage them at a higher level. This is because you know who they are and what they like.
Effective Engagement: Exclusive Promotions
When something is limited in availability, it naturally becomes scarce. When something becomes scarce, it instantly has allure. That is why exclusivity is a marketing tactic that works wonders, especially if what is being exclusively offered is of value.
To capitalize on this tactic, offer promotions specific to the platform of your choosing. Make the offers available for a limited time and only on the one platform. If anyone can get access to the offer, the allure is gone.
Discounts and free offers often work best. Exclusive giveaways and action-based offers can help boost your social media presence and customer base.
Long-Term Engagement: Anticipatory and User Generated Content
Your business should create long-term engagement. You can this making anticipatory posts and creating user-generated content campaigns.
Anticipatory Content
One way to secure the interests of your followers for a future product or service is to tease it on your social media to garner awareness and excitement.
These anticipatory posts can be anything from showing pictures of prototypes, event pictures, employees hard at work, before and after photos, and more.
User-Generated Campaigns
User-generated campaigns are effective marketing tactics because your brand awareness is spread among your audience without you having to lift a finger.
If you create a contest to reward the audience member who can make the most clever use of your product, your brand will gain traction because they will post the content on their profiles. This will result in their following seeing your brand. This naturally leads your brand to gain more followers.
Now, you know how to create an effective social media strategy and how to generate leads and sales. Remember, customers, want to feel empowered to make their own decisions when purchasing, so encourage their empowerment most of all.
Keep your customers happy and satisfied and they will promote your business for Free!
Also, they will buy from you again and again! (viral marketing effect)
P.S.
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