Social media is a great tool to help you connect with customers. Keep reading to learn how social media can increase your lead conversion.
The nuances of social media can confuse even some of the best marketers. Especially with how quickly social platforms are changing and developing. The tactics involved in lead conversion can be so sly now, you’re not even aware that it is a sales funnel. (more on those later)
The role of social media has grown more and more in recent years, to the point where it has become a necessity for anyone wishing to expand their audience. In particular, businesses are realizing that social media is a fantastic tool for converting leads beyond regular methods.
Getting your head around social media can take a while – so we’ve decided to compile some tips to help you can understand it more easily. Take a look below for our top methods of driving lead conversion with social media.
Link To Your External Content The Best Way You Know How
If you’re serious about lead conversion using social media, you have to look at it as part of your entire marketing plan, not the entire thing. Social Media lead conversion has to meet your goals and expectations and each channel is equipped to meet certain goals.
Social media should be used to distribute the content you’ve created via the social media platforms your marketing agency has selected. These platforms should meet your target audience and resonate with your audience. The facts are, young 21 year old males are not using Pinterest as much as 45 year old women. You’ve got to build out your buyer personas to match your target audience. Then match your target audience with the proper social channel.
At the forefront of your social strategy and lead conversions is the understanding that each channel requires a different technique. Their differences are very important and cannot be overlooked.
Customize Your Content For Each Platform
One of the buzzwords thrown around in regards to social media (and other platforms) is native content. Native content is used to describe content that adheres to the format of the platform on which it’s posted. This can mean matching the language or culture of wherever you post it. Certain post combinations might excel on a certain platform, but that is no guarantee that it will work on all of them.
For example, you may post a brilliant image on Google +, but it may not work especially well on say, LinkedIn.
This is mainly because the users of these platforms go to them for different reasons. Below we will explore some popular techniques for lead conversion on each platform.
Facebook Lead Conversion
An attractive image on Facebook needs to be immediately relatable to your audience. If you’re selling men’s wear, funny photos of cats might not relate with your audience like you hope. It needs to be an image that resonates with your target audience. It should be an eye-catching image that makes your potential customer pause, even for just a second. That is really all you need to initially grab their attention.
However, you may not have incredibly interesting images to use in your posts. So what do you do?
If that forte isn’t covered by your team, you’ll have to use a bit of ingenuity and find a way to make images that really pop and resonate with your audience. Maybe hiring a photographer?
Secondly, couple that image with attractive types of copy. Copy that is relatable and trustworthy. Copy that solves a pain point for your customer. This can really entice people to want to click through and can improve lead conversion.
And what type of copy would that be per se?
One example of good copy is a catchy headline that leaves the consumer wondering. An unanswered question or suggestion that seems unusual and tempting. You want to leave your potential customer feeling like they will regret not clicking through to find out more detail.
Lastly, including a call to action (CTA) is imperative. Once you’ve got your audience’s attention, reeling them in should be the next easy step. Test the types of CTA’s that work with your niche and don’t over complicate it. Give them an easy button to click for more info.
And in platforms like Facebook, where the strength of shared content boosts the strength of your own content, this is an opportunity not to be missed.
Twitter Lead Conversion
Now for Twitter, you’ll have to do things slightly different. Twitter’s ability to use inline images enables us to make posts that stand out with your audience. As many marketers have realized, images work wonders for click rates and general engagement. Animated Gif’s or video clips can be huge audience draws.
Twitter has posting options called image+link. You can post your content with an in-Tweet image, prompting a potential customer to learn more by clicking the link in the Tweet copy. The other option Twitter has is the Website Card. You can choose one of their pre-built layouts to show an image plus a CTA. Twitter won’t tell you which strategy works best, but many would agree the image+link performs best for them. You should test both options to see which type converts your leads the best.
But don’t just link through to your content. One of the main things you should be doing in order to create healthy lead conversion is mixing it up and building landing pages for your Twitter followers to land on.
In addition, engaging with pop culture is an easy way to build traction on Twitter thanks to its reputation as a platform where people keep up to date with current events.
Send potential customers through to a landing page, registration form, a new site, a video or anything else that you’ve found works particularly well with your niche. This lead conversion step takes them further down your sales funnel and close to closing them as a customer.
Take Notice Of Your Consumer’s Interests
Whilst posting your own content is the most logical thing to do, it isn’t the only thing you should do to boost lead conversion.
Through your own native posts, you can keep your audience entertained by posting things that relate to your business or your audience’s interests. This shows that you’re not just one-track minded in your approach to the conversations you have via these platforms. Finding quotes that relate to your own market or even memes can really boost the personality of your brand.
You can also try linking to articles from other influential figures in your industry. You can ask questions pertaining to your specific market. Using hashtags on Twitter is also a great way to amplify this, for example, using #salesmanagers and proceeding to ask a question to that audience specifically.
Doing this not only helps to build your brand but also entertains your audience. Nobody likes to do business with boring salespeople.
Make Your Analytics Work For You
Aside from executing solid social media strategies as part of your marketing plan, you’ll want to track your progress. Tracking will confirm what you’re doing right and what you’re getting wrong.
Using Google Analytics to do the job is not only handy, but imperative. And it’s free. (If you don’t have analytics installed on your website, stop reading now and go do that)
Secondly, create URL destinations associated with your content downloads and pages. This should be where people go after filling out a form and can be set up to be tracked as a conversion in Google Analytics. This is an easy and free way to track how your social offerings are doing.
Including UTM parameters within the links of your social media posts can help you track what has come from where.
Thirdly, Build your URL’s with customized parameters so you can more easily work things out too. It’s good to be specific here, tagging particular campaigns with relevant names and posts with more detailed tags to avoid confusion. After you’ve set up everything the way you want it, you can go to the acquisitions tab inside analytics and then to campaigns to view a detailed report the success of each campaign.
This is a highly detailed report – you can expect to find traffic statistics, visitor behavior, and goal conversions. You can also click the campaign to get more comprehensive information.
A/B testing, as with most attempts at lead conversion, is your friend too!
Social Media Lead Conversion Works
With a little bit of know-how and some effort, you can see that social media isn’t so difficult. It just takes times, creativity and the understanding of your audience.
These key ideas and conversion paths, when covered correctly, can bring great benefits to your business.
Feel free to get in touch and let us know if you have any questions!