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So, your corporate social media pages are up and running, you’re posting the right content to engage your audience, and little by little the “army” of businesses following you is expanding. Awesome! But do these followers have a chance to become real business leads that would convert and result in marketing ROI?
Let’s start by saying that engaging on social media as a business is way more beneficial than harmful, but if you have spare digital marketing resources at hand, why not use them to gain more opportunities for your business?
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting 3 ways to make your social media activity more targeted at converting customers!
1. Have a clear sales funnel
Let’s say your business sells lead-management software and you’ve just received a new killer feature from the tech team. Of course it’s time to show it off to your audience, but make sure to provide clear instructions on aquiring the feature.
Make it easy to reach out to you, otherwise your lead may just scroll down to the next post offering customizable greeting cards they can send to their aunt in Saskatchewan (Don’t google, it’s in Canada)!
Let’s look at two possible scenarios:
- You share the new feature with the caption “Some Monday inspiration from our tech team! This new feature allows your business to track more user analytics!”
- You share the new feature with this caption “Some Monday inspiration from our tech team! This new feature allows your business to track more user analytics! Let’s talk to see how it can help your business!”, followed by a link to your live chat or contact form.
In the first scenario, even if the business rep liked the new feature very much, chances are they won’t go search for a way to buy it. It’s a hectic world; never make your leads work for information that you can give them in under a minute. Make it easy as pie to buy from you!
Based on the type of your business, the sales channels can be very different, but it’s possible to make any of them just a social media tap or click away!
2. Use gated content
What is gated content? It’s content that followers can only access after filling in a form that usually contains their name and email address (Remember? We talked about landing pages!). I know what you’re thinking: that can be irritating to my readers. But the reality is it may depend on the way you present it on social media.
Gated content can cause a potential customer to leave if you ask them to fill in a form to get the precious content. In social media, however, things are a bit different. You have a chance to invite them to your landing page and make The Promise.
If you don’t overuse this technique and you put plenty of thought into the way you present your posts, your sales team will have some material to bite into — contact details they can use for their sales calls!
3. Use promos to get hold of email addresses
This might surprise a few of you, but according to a study conducted by McKinsey&Company, email communication is still 40 times more likely than social media to convert a business lead. So, try targeting your social media activity on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn at expanding your email database. How do you do that? A campaign is definitely a good place to start!
Let’s say you’re a business that offers HR outsourcing. You can have a post like this: “Good news here! We are having a set of free face-to-face talks to help you analyze the HR problems at your companies from November 17-25. Do you want us to consult your business? Send us a message to schedule a call with us!”
Remember not to be too invasive, and share only the best of your offers with this new audience!
When you use these techniques, remember that every business is different. It may be that one of these techniques works magic for you, while the others fail you miserably. Experimenting is the key here: find the ones that work and spice them up with cool and useful content. Happy social media converting!
Wait, don’t leave just yet! We have a great ebook on social media best practices! Get your copy to read later.
