From Likes to Leads: Converting Social Media Followers into Paying Customers
As a marketer, you know how important social media can be. It's a great way to get your brand out there and attract followers. But the real challenge is turning those followers into customers. It's a hurdle that all marketers face, but with the right approach, you can succeed.
Likes, follows, and comments are great, but you need customers to grow your business and revenue. This is why we prepared this comprehensive guide for you on how to turn your passive followers into paying customers. Let’s dive into it!
Best Practices to Convert Followers into Paying Customers
Get to know your audience
Understanding your target audience is the first and most important step. By knowing your audience, you’ll be able to craft a social media strategy that can grab their attention and eventually lead them to be a paying customer.
To do this, start first by creating a buyer persona. This includes knowing the following information:
Demographics
Age
Gender
Location
Employment
Income Level
Educational Level
Psychographics
Interest
Hobbies
Goals
Lifestyle choices
Problems they encounter
Creating a buyer persona has tons of great impact. First, by knowing your target audience, you won’t waste time and resources creating content for the wrong one. This also means that you are always targeting qualified leads. Second, this will help in knowing the type of content that resonates with them and the best platform to reach them. Third, you’ll be able to create relevant and personalized content that addresses your audience’s concerns and problems.
All of this will help in nurturing your audience, which will eventually lead to them being converted into your customers.
Have a solid brand.
Before you start creating a marketing strategy or launching your new ad campaign, it’s important that you have a solid brand identity first. This is because 60% of marketers believe that having a consistent brand image is important in generating leads and engaging clients.
The brand identity encompasses both your visual identity and non-visual one.
For your visual identity, this includes your logo design, color palette, typography, photography, or graphic illustrations. If you don’t have a logo yet, check out logo maker tools online or hire a designer to get you started.
The key to creating a great visual brand identity is to build one that is suitable for your brand and is appealing to your target audience. Then create a brand style guide. This will make it easy for you to design social media posts that align with your branding while remaining consistent with your other marketing materials.
Non-visual includes your brand voice, which is the writing style or tone that you use in your written communications, and your brand story, which is the overarching theme that your brand has. These are also important in building your brand identity, which can help you stand out in a saturated market and catch your audience’s attention.
Keep your content fresh.
Instead of posting the same content repeatedly, try to step outside the box. Explore options such as GIFs, memes, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, or TikTok ads. Follow popular creators in your niche, and consistently check trending hashtags. This should give you ideas on popular trends that you can hop on.
However, this doesn’t mean that every post you make should be experimental or trendy. The key is to find that sweet spot. Check your social media analytics to prioritize what kind of content works best with your audience. Then every once in a while, try a content format that you haven’t used before. This will keep your pages interesting without sacrificing your page quality or alienating your audience.
Engage your audience.
Creating great content is important. However, most marketers forget to do one crucial thing after they hit “Post”. And that is actually to engage with their audience.
Social media is not a one-way street. You can’t just simply post and then ignore your followers. Reply to comments, start discussions, or even simply like or pin a comment.
People will feel more valued if you take the time to engage with them. If you give importance to them, they’ll feel more connected and engaged with your brand.
Partner with influencers.
Collaborating with an influencer is one way to expand your reach and influence your audience to buy your products.
Influencer marketing has steadily risen as a top marketing strategy in recent years. In 2022, it has already been valued at a whopping $16.4 billion. And it’s not a surprise why. According to studies, 61% of people trust influencer recommendations, compared to only 38% of people that trust branded content. In the past three months, 33% of Gen-Zs have brought a product based on an influencer’s recommendation.
As you can see, influencer marketing is very powerful. Try adopting this marketing strategy if you want to encourage your followers in their buying journey.
Promote wisely.
While no audience wants to see a promotional post every 2 seconds, it doesn’t mean that you should just be posting “normal” content all the time. Follow the 80/20 rule of social media. It says that 80% of your post should be educational or informative, and 20% should be promotional.
Use 80% of your content to hook your audience. Your audience will be more engaged with your social media pages by seeing your relevant and informative content. This makes them more likely to be interested in your 20% promotional posts.
Your 20% is important in converting your customers, so make it count. You can try different methods, such as:
Run giveaways or contests - No one can resist free stuff, so giveaways are always effective. And to make it even more effective, run giveaways or contests encouraging your audience to share your posts. This will also expand your reach to people who are not following your page yet.
Run time-sensitive offers or deals - Deals and discounts always give people a nudge to buy products. And adding time pressure and a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) factor to it encourages people to buy your products now.
Run social media ads - The effectiveness of social media ads is unparalleled, especially with the increasing digital-first mindset of people nowadays. In fact, 49% of users say they are likely to purchase from brands they see advertised on social media.
Make use of e-commerce options on social media - Almost all of social media platforms now have an e-commerce feature. Think of Instagram Shopping, TikTok Shop, Facebook Shop, and even Facebook Live. Use these options to streamline your audience’s shopping experience and make accessing your products easy.
Have great CTAs.
Call-to-Action or CTA’s are important in directing your audience to take action. Instead of them just passively scrolling through their feeds, having strong and eye-catching CTAs can get their attention.
So how do you write CTAs? First, use actionable language and clearly state what you want them to do. Make the benefit or value they’ll get out of you clear. You can also include social proof to convince them further. And lastly, make sure you write in your brand voice.
Wrapping Up
With the power social media wields over people, it’s critical that you leverage this channel to gain sales. While it takes both art and science to craft a winning social media strategy that can successfully convert your followers to customers, it’s not impossible. Follow the tips above; they should help you start your social media journey.
