Have you ever thought about what the goal of your business is?

The answer might sound obvious that the ultimate goal of any business is to grab more customers and retain them for the longest time. 

Entrepreneurs invest in multiple marketing channels like SMS, email, and social media, which all are great but social media leads the pack because the global social user base by 2023 can grow to 3.43 billion as Statista reported.

Buffer found out that 73% of marketers believe that social media marketing strategies have proven to be “somewhat” to “very” useful for their businesses as such an extensive user base allows you to reap many perks such as :

  1. Build your brand image and establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche.
  2. Grab maximum inbound web traffic and boost the visibility of your offerings.
  3. Reach out to a massive target audience and build a loyal community of followers.
  4. Dig deeper into critical competitors’ social strategies and gain a better understanding of your prospects’ preferences as well as pain points.
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How To Capitalize On Such A Huge Follower Base

If you have a loyal community for your business on social platforms and your audience likes, shares, and comments on your content, it’s fantastic. However, that’s the baby step towards earning revenue as the real challenge lies in converting these followers into paying customers. Two key insights are to start doing that at the MVP stage and do it with a clear structure for the project from early on.

Here are 20 unique ways to turn your social media followers into customers:

First, Understand Your Target Audience

It will be tedious to grab customers if you don’t have an idea of whom you are trying to attract, right? Understanding your buyers’ profile should be your first step because 79% of customers are more committed to brands that follow them in a better manner.

So, how to go about creating your buyer persona? Well, it’s not rocket science as it includes getting an idea of your targeted audiences’:

  1. Demographic details
  2. Age
  3. Gender
  4. Interests
  5. Problems

Creating buyer personas helps you in many aspects, and the important ones are:

  1. In getting rid of negative personas, you aren’t targeting and creating relevant content for grabbing quality leads.
  2. Customizing content for each buyer persona and sharing the same through their preferred channels.
  3. Getting an idea of your audience’s pain points and fixing them in the best possible manner.

Creating content and distributing the same in sync with your buyer persona helps you nurture your Instagram followers efficiently, and over time they can be converted into customers.

Be Open To Start A Dialogue With Your Social Audience

It would be impossible for your audience to find out about your business if they don’t even know that you exist; hence, beginning a dialogue with them is extremely important.

Starting an interactive dialogue with your audience allows you to:

  1. Build healthy relationships with your prospects, which increases the chance of nurturing them through the sales funnel and turning them into paying customers.
  2. Let you build a loyal network of people who can share and recommend your services as GlobalWebIndex states that 37% of beauty consumers purchase something after seeing positive comments on social channels.

There are many creative ways to open a channel of communication with your prospects; for example, you can:

  1. If you are into the electronic business, ask your audience what they would want to see in a new product.

Or

  1. Post an engaging video about your new offering and take reviews from your social followers directly.
  2. Is Maintaining A Dialogue Enough To Grab Customers?

It’s great if you are interacting with your social prospects regularly. Still, if they get bored with your conversations gradually, the engagement will decrease; hence, keeping them hooked is equally daunting.

Streamlining your social media engagement can be done with the following steps:

  1. Keep updating your social media pages every week and track how the audience is responding to your content because consistency could be your key to unlock maximum audience engagement on social platforms.
  2. Don’t ever leave the comments from your audience unanswered as responsiveness helps build trust between your brand and the followers. Providing seamless customer support with the help of your internal team communication on social platforms is the best for establishing trust and brand reputation.

    Blue Corona reported that 71% of B2B customers want B2C-like experiences such as faster response times and 24*7 availability from brands, and hence maintaining connectivity with your audience on social channels and keeping them updated could be extremely useful for lead generation.
  3. Be productive in your social media marketing efforts and dedicate an estimated amount of time daily in planning your social activities and avoiding stagnation.

Refrain From Being Mundane & Be Creative For Grabbing The Attention Of Prospects

Nobody would want to be with someone annoying, right? Yes, this is true even in the case of your social media followers, as MeetEdgar correctly said.

So, what’s the solution? There are a couple of tricks with which you can keep your social media marketing strategy always fresh:

  1. Rather than creating the same type of content, invest in innovative content formats such as video series, engaging infographics, quotes, GIFs, storytelling, smart memes, etc.
  2. Interact as much as you can and be empathetic with your audience to understand their preferences and pain points.
  3. Be as personalized as possible and reach out to your followers with custom messages tailored to suit their specific needs and problems like promotional codes or free goodies. Also, ask them to share your content in their network for boosting visibility.
  4. Start following who your followers love to stay updated about your community’s taste.

Finding ways to be unique in your niche can be your biggest win when it comes to staying interesting on social channels. It’s not like you need to write an essay every time you post on social media. Like with everything, there is a sweet spot that you need to figure out. Creating the right type of content for your audience group could turn you a lead magnet on social platforms.

Build A Rapport With Key Influencers In Your Niche To Boost The Exposure Of Your Business

Sometimes to reach your destination, you need to take the support of someone who can help you in achieving the target quickly. Leveraging the power of influencers is the primary purpose of influencer marketing on social channels.

Collaborating with key influencers on social channels for driving conversions as 49% of buyers trust these people for getting product recommendations. Also, it helps you in:

  1. Get your message in front of your audience and build exposure among quality prospects.
  2. Gain social proof for your business and grab the attention of more prospects.

You can collaborate with key influencers in many ways, such as:

  1. Sponsored content and discount or affiliate link collaborations
  2. Brand ambassadorship
  3. Publishing influencers content on your social pages

Having the support of key influencers in your social channels helps you build an image among your audience and motivate them to explore your offerings. Also, if you are confused to pick a relevant channel for this strategy than hands down Insta should be your priority:

Don’t Craft Words But Tell Stories For Creating A Human Connect With Your Social Audience

People love stories, and telling them on social platforms can be an effective way to drive more leads. Also, sharing stories on Instagram and Snapchat allows you to:

  1. Connect with your audience at an emotional level.
  2. Build a human face and earn recognition for your brand.
  3. With the competitive social media landscape sharing unique stories of your business like behind the scene, content can help you gain an edge over your competitors.

While entertaining and educating the audience through appealing stories, remember:

  1. Whatever you are trying to share, make sure it adds value to your audience’s life.
  2. Your stories should always reflect your brand’s personality so that the audience can feel connected.

Appealing stories will encourage your social audience to share them with their peers, and your chance of grabbing more leads would be higher.

Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC) For Making Loyal Users Feel Special

Using the content created and shared by your unpaid users comes under user-generated content, and nowadays, it has become a prevalent form of marketing on social channels.

Data words mentioned that user-generated content has 4X higher click-through rates on average and half the cost-per-click rates than ordinary ads. Hashtag campaigns and gamification are two prevalent forms of UGC. It has many perks for your business like:

  1. It’s reliable and helps your audience to put their trust in your offerings.
  2. Sharing real experiences helps you in boosting the authenticity of your business.
  3. UGC boosts user engagement, which builds two-way communication and helps in driving more conversions.

Apple came up with an innovative UGC marketing campaign #ShotOnIphone to build trust and boost engagement and sales. The brand faced a challenge with its low-light photography quality and hence to restore the lost confidence of its users, they have come up with the fantastic UGC Instagram campaign:

Run Contest & Giveaways To Allure Your Social Audience For Becoming Your SUbscribers First & Than Customers

Anyone loves to get free goodies, and this is why hosting social media contests and giveaways can never go out of fashion. Easypromosapp found out that 92% of brands use Facebook for hosting contests and giveaways:

These contests and giveaways can bring many benefits to your brand, such as:

  • Spread awareness about your specific product, service, or website page among your target social audience with exciting rewards and offers.
  • Incentivize prospects to follow your business for boosting your reach as SproutSocial did:
  • Increase your email subscribers and convert those leads into paying customers.

Pointers before coming up with an idea for a social media contest or giveaway:

  1. Keep it simple and use a relevant Call-to-action (CTA) for allowing users to take the desired action.
  2. Incorporate high-quality visuals to boost the appeal.
  3. Make the headlines extremely engaging for grabbing the attention of the audience.
  4. Invest In Creating Paid Social Media Ads For Boosting Engagement & Conversions

Every social channel like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter offer paid ads services that you can use to increase:

  1. Content views
  2. Reach
  3. Engagement
  4. Clicks

According to Hootsuite, 27% of internet users discover new products and brands through paid social ads. Also, Facebook can be your go-to when creating such announcements as the customization it offers in terms of audience profiling is impressive.

Along with advanced audience targeting paid social ads helps you in:

  1. Get an idea of market insights about your audience preferences and pain points with detailed audience profiling.
  2. You are boosting your reach within a minimum investment.
  3. Convert followers into customers by feeding their curiosity and answering their queries.

Determine The Right Type Of Content For Grabbing Quality Prospects

We have already seen the importance of understanding your buyers’ persona, but along with that creating the right type of content that would be the best to grab your audiences’ attention is equally important.

Each of your audience is at a different level of exposure and hence you can’t offer them the same content and thus understanding different awareness levels of your audience and relevant content types tailored to suit that specific stage is significant.

You can focus on the types of content that looks the most appropriate for lead generation and create a social media content upgrade plan accordingly. Some of the lead magnet content types are:

  1. eBooks
  2. Tutorials
  3. FAQ Sheets
  4. Video Courses
  5. Webinars
  6. Dig Deep Into Social Media Analytics & Chalk Out A Well-Thought Content Strategy

Dig Deep Into Social Media Analytics & Chalk Out A Well-Thought Content Strategy

Keeping a tab on your social media content marketing performance is extremely important with proper analytics. However, ClickZ discovered that only 33% of marketers have access to adequate analytics tools to measure and monitor their data.

There is a variety of tools to help you in social media analytics, such as:

  1. Twitter Data
  2. Google Analytics
  3. Buffer
  4. HootSuite
  5. Facebook Insights

By using these tools, you can track:

  1. Your social media posts length.
  2. Your timing of sharing content.
  3. Understanding how the audience is perceiving your brand and their likes/dislikes etc.
  4. Track the progress of your social media marketing efforts and improvise the loopholes for gaining better outcomes in the future.
  5. Reaching out to new customer segments and identifying their needs before your competitors.
  6. Communicate the return of investment of your marketing efforts to the key stakeholders of your business.

Use Gated Content To Elevate Your Audiences’ Interest In Your Offerings

Gated content could be anything ranging from a case study to a webinar for which users have to fill a form to access the same in detail. It’s an effective way of lead generating as it helps in:

  1. Generate more traffic to your website and boost the first inflow.
  2. Grab high-quality visitors and nurture them to turn into customers.
  3. Build long-lasting relationships with specific customer segments.

Look at an excellent example of a gated content created by Appboy that requires visitors to complete a five-field form to get access to their eBook.

Try Social Sweepstakes To Attract More Social Audience & Grow Your Clients’ Database

Don’t confuse this one with social contests or giveaways as sweepstakes are even more straightforward. Users just have to enter some of their personal information, such as their names, email addresses, contact numbers, etc.

Social sweepstakes could be extremely helpful in:

  1. Boost the number of your free trials.
  2. Grab detailed information about leads.
  3. Garner customer referrals.
  4. Maximize social media engagement.
  5. Boost newsletter subscribers.
  6. Increase brand loyalty.

Here’s an example of social sweepstake done by Family.com.

Keep The 80/20 Rule In Mind When Sharing Content On Social Channels For Avoiding Being Too Self-Promotional

If you will only share content from your website, that would be too promotional, and your social audience can get disinterested. So, the rule of 80/20 emphasizes keeping it balanced with the help of:

  • 80% of your social media content focuses on informing, educating, and entertaining the audience so that they can share the information with their peers and gain maximum visibility.

For example, if you are in a real estate niche, you can share a tip for your audience to answer your audience’s most common answers.

  • 20% of it should be directly related to your business. These include discounts, special offers, etc. that include a persuasive call-to-action button for encouraging the audience to learn more about your offerings that could lead to conversion.

Share Customer Testimonials On Social Channels To Make Your Audience Trust Your Business Even More

There is no other place than social media to share your customer testimonials because positive testimonials and reviews increase the trust in business for 72% of customers as per BigCommerce.

Showcasing positive customer testimonials lets you:

  1. Drive more clicks and conversions.
  2. Gain credibility among your target audience.
  3. Diversifying your portfolio and grabbing new leads for your business.

Time Sensitive Offers & Special Discounts To Trigger Curiosity In Your Audiences’ Mind

Offering discounts and deals with your audience on social channels is quite useful but twist it and go for limited-period discounts and exclusive deals for encouraging prospects to acquire a product at a lesser price.

Such offers help you in:

  1. You are creating a sense of urgency in your audience so that they take immediate action.
  2. Build a loyal community of dedicated social followers.
  3. Motivate more prospects to get involved with your brand and share your content in their social network.

Organize Polls & Discussions Like Focus Groups For Building Harmonious Relationships With Your Social Audience

Polls can be one of the most effective ways of interacting with your audience on Instagram.

Besides, polls can be created on every social channel and allow you to monitor your social audience’s preferences and interests. You can create a survey about:

  1. Anything related to your business.
  2. Trending topics in your industry.

Along with polls, you can also run focus groups where some of your followers can join you for a chat which helps in:

  1. Get an idea of your social audiences’ reviews about your offerings.
  2. Know the interests and pain points of your social prospects.
  3. Tailor messages according to a specific set of social audiences.
  4. Gain first-hand audience insights from followers across different regions.

Design Engaging Social Media Landing Pages For Serving Social Audience

Your landing page can either make or break your social audiences’ experience and hence it’s essential to design highly interactive and engaging social media landing pages. These pages serve your social audience with the purpose of:

  1. Generate more leads and convert them into customers quickly.
  2. Build a bond with a potential social audience who can be your future paying customers.
  3. Optimize your monetization efforts by linking your social media landing page with an insightful lead magnet in your Twitter and Insta bios.

For example, Weathertron designed a social media landing page with the core purpose to increase its app downloads.

Blend Your Social World With Physical Happenings For Maintaining The Balance

You don’t have to share what’s going on with your business online, but talking about the offline sphere and what’s happening in your physical stores would be an excellent idea for gaining more social audience.

A couple of ways to maintain harmony between your offline activities and social channels are:

  1. Promote your in-store events on your social channels with exclusive incentives like discounts.
  2. Share these offers on different store locator platforms relevant to your niche for maximizing your visibility.
  3. Plan Ahead Of Time & Leverage Social Media Automation Tools For Keeping Everything Organized.

Plan Ahead Of Time & Leverage Social Media Automation Tools For Keeping Everything Organized

Marketing automation can be a life-saving addition in building your brand. Automating social media is even better – social media (almost) never sleeps. Going random can be the worst idea for social media marketing, so you should always plan what to post and why. But before posting anything, determine your goal, which could be:

  1. Inform your social audience about something valuable.
  2. Grab more visitors for your website.
  3. Boost social media engagement.
  4. Boost reach and impressions.

You can use various social media automation tools such as Buffer, HootSuite, and Coschedule to help you with tasks like:

  1. Automatic scheduling of your posts.
  2. Respond to customers’ queries promptly.
  3. Analyze social data.
  4. Remain active on social channels 24*7.

Make Sure To Keep Your Website Mobile-Friendly To Provide Social Audience With A Seamless Experience

As per Hootsuite, 90% of users accessed social channels on mobile in 2019, and hence you need to make your website mobile-friendly if you want to convert followers into paying customers.

A seamless mobile experience could be the game changes when it comes to attracting social users as it allows them to:

  1. Navigate your web portal quickly.
  2. Share your content on their social channels without any hassle.

Optimizing your website for mobile devices is a must. It helps you grab the interest of social audiences and encourage them to explore more about your products and services.

Time To Wrap Up!

Turning your social followers into paying customers is mandatory to offer them value and keep them engaged. Maintaining harmonious relationships with the help of executing the practices mentioned above could be key to unlock quality leads and nurture them for maximizing conversions.