How to Increase Conversion Rates With Social Media
Social media can be a fantastic tool to increase your conversions. You just need to know how to use it strategically for that purpose. Using these tips, you’ll be able to optimize your social media presence and watch your conversion rate skyrocket.
Social media isn’t just a tool for connecting and engaging with your customers. In fact, 92% of marketers say that social media is important for their business. It can be used to drive leads and increase conversions--the key is using it correctly.
It takes time, patience, and quite a bit of A/B testing to discover how to best use social media to reach your audience and make sales, but it is possible. According to Shareaholic, social media is the number one driver of referral traffic to websites.
So, how do you make sure you’re part of the businesses that are satisfied with their social media conversion rates? In this article, we’ll cover the top five pieces of advice for improving your conversion rates with social media.
1. Use Social Proof and User Generated Content to Instill Trust
Lack of trust is a conversion killer. The truth is, many different elements go into a customer’s decision of purchasing a product; however, one of the major deciding factors of a purchase is trust in the product and company, which doesn’t come easily. Customers are 12 times more likely to trust a product review than your product description. That’s just one example of social proof.
Social proof in marketing is the idea that your customers are more likely to follow the actions of others based on the assumption that what they see is “correct behavior.” For example, if one of your products is on a waitlist, your customer is more likely to assume that the product is popular and highly desired, thus worth spending money on, than another product. In fact, every time you read a review for a product or service, you’re looking at social proof.
What does this have to do with social media? Your social media content can be used to build social proof, and thus trust, by demonstrating that you have an established reputation that people are talking about. Using a custom testimonial platform, you can embed your company reviews on your Facebook page so that your social media users see your testimonials and automatically begin to build trust in your brand.
At the same time, you can collect user-generated content from your social media pages and feature it on your website for a give-and-take relationship. By doing this, not only are you introducing your customers’ opinion about your company to a larger audience, you’re also demonstrating that you listen to them, which provides even more social proof and trust. And since reviews are an essential resource when making purchase decisions, you’ll no doubt increase your conversions.
2. Promoting Content and The 10-4-1 rule
Promoting gated content is a great way to send people to your website through social media. Gated content takes your social media users directly to a landing page where they’re prompted to complete a conversion. Take a look at this Facebook post from Terrain Racing:
Not only does the link direct you straight to the sign-up page, but the post itself uses the tactic of claiming “Limited Quantity” to encourage readers to sign up because it will sell out soon.
But, before you go around promoting gated content everyday on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, remember the 10-4-1 rule. The 10-4-1 rule is a ratio that balances your content uploaded to Social Media. According to the B2B Social Media Book, this means that for every 15 social media updates:
- 10 should be pieces of other people's content
- 4 should be your own blog articles
- 1 should be a landing page
This balance of content offers quite a few benefits. Firstly, it will help you grow your reach, because promoting content is a reciprocal relationship. When you promote other people’s content, they, in turn, will help promote yours. It also ensures that you send people to your website to directly generate leads, without annoying them on a daily basis, or making your social feed feel too “sales-y”.
Finally, you should use your content to transform your social media audience into advocates. To do this, keep social media share buttons handy within your blogs and website in order to make it easy for your customers to share their experience with others.
3. Use Facebook to Find Your Most Converting Demographics
Facebook now has 2 billion monthly users; this means that it is the perfect testing platform for determining your best converting customer demographic.
For the sake of this example, let’s assume you are a gym owner. Right now, you might know that your customers are generally young men between 18 and 30 who like to work out. Unfortunately, this is fairly generic and not very helpful. Facebook can let you dig down deeper.
Using Facebook, you can quickly and easily determine who your target audience is as well as what demographic is most likely to convert. You can do this by using Facebook advertising.
First, you can target gyms, or people who are interested in “fitness and wellness.”
Then, you can get more specific and target people who specifically like CrossFit, one of your gym’s main offerings.
By running ads targeting both of these audiences, as well as any additional audiences that fit your company, you can see who is more likely to convert: people who like gyms or people who specifically like CrossFit. You can even further narrow down your audience to people looking for weight loss or people who use at-home fitness DVDs.
This is a powerful way to use social media to increase your website conversions as well as to better tailor your content to the audience that matters most.
4. Social Media Selling Strategy
Social media selling is the idea of using your social platforms to find, connect with, understand, and ultimately nurture sales prospects. Basically, you’re using your platforms to build relationships, which is the foundation of all effective sales endeavors.
To enact a social media selling strategy, you shouldn’t just contact as many people as possible—that’s cold calling and isn’t very effective at all. Instead, social selling is about joining the conversation that’s already happening online and providing a solution or addressing pressing needs as you encounter them. In this way, you make your customer’s lives easier and build a relationship.
For example, take a look at this post in the Social Media Marketing group on LinkedIn.
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Zev is a Content Marketing Consultant and used the group to share a checklist about how to get started in social media marketing. Within that article, he shares his expertise and demonstrates why he is an exceptional consultant that should be hired.
Another example is this tweet from Denise Wakerman, which asks her followers what they want to learn about social media marketing.
This survey will help Denise better understand her audience so she can improve her sales offerings in the future.
Social selling is a simple way to engage with your customers on social media and to use that engagement to directly increase conversions. Other tactics for social selling include:
- Asking for endorsements on LinkedIn to build your credibility
- Getting involved in relevant groups on Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with more individuals in your area of expertise
- Engaging with your existing customers on Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram so that you stay on their radar
- Keeping tabs on your competitors and finding opportunities to join conversations or solve problems that you see are trending
- Engage with other businesses by reaching out with likes, comments, and shares
5. Run Contests or Special Promotions for Your Social Media Audience
Last but certainly not least; running contests or giveaways on social media can be a really great way to generate leads. But to do that, you have to make sure your prize is worth entering the contest for, and that your prize attracts just the type of leads you're looking for. The trick is knowing how to use social media contests strategically.
Contests that offer a free TV might get an incredible amount of entries, but the leads you generate from such a generic contest won’t be very helpful for your business, unless you sell TVs. Instead, you want to offer a contest and prize that directly relates back to your business. For example, your prize could be a free month trial of your software or a free download of one of your paid-for documents.
Another key to a successful social media contest is using it to generate additional leads. For example, make retweeting, liking, sharing, or following your social media presence as a way to get an extra contest entry. Or, require your social media followers to click through to a landing page for your contest to enter, which indicates personal interest.
Social media can be a fantastic tool to increase your conversions. You just need to know how to use it strategically for that purpose. Using these tips, you’ll be able to optimize your social media presence and watch your conversion rate skyrocket.