How many social media platforms are in use out there? Too many to count, and the majority of businesses have invested time and resources to create profiles on the major ones. A social media campaign can be an extremely formidable tool in generating increased revenue if wielded properly. The challenge for most businesses is how to achieve success using social media platforms. The wealth of options combined with conservatism has led to many businesses failing to achieve any modicum of success in their marketing and promotional efforts.
The trick is to find ways to generate directs sales using social media platforms. This is not pegged in any way on the ability to post images, videos, and other forms of content online. You have to use social media in a manner that not only attracts attention of the consumers, but also leads to participation and market uptake. This can be challenging unless you have the right info on how to do it. You need to have a social media presence that not only encourages awareness but also drives sales. Here are some useful tips for the same:
1. Create Purposeful and Appealing Content
Grabbing audience attention is directly tied to the content that you publish on social media. There are a number of rules that you must follow for this to be successful:-
- Be Creative – if you are not, then hire someone to deliver creative content but make sure you maintain control over the editorial aspects of the process. For the content to be magnetic to the audience, it needs to be appealing, and the best way of achieving this is creating content that is unique and engaging to the viewer.
- Provide Value – content must provide real and unique value to the viewer. There must be a value proposition embedded in the message that you are communicating. This is what converts interest into actual engagement.
- Embrace your Brand Principles – brand principles form the best foundation for content creation. Beneath whatever content you create must be your business principles that help establish you as credible and reliable. The brand is what people identify within different content delivery methods.
- Embrace Diversity – create content using a variety of methods in order to optimize the potential of the different platforms at your disposal. Images, videos, posts, tweets, blogs, and other content formats, all offer a unique channel for dissemination of information.
- Content must be Easy to Understand – content for business purposes is not an art project. The meaning does not need to be layered under artistic styling but should be easily divined from the overall presentation.
2. Generate Viewer Attention Directed Towards the Business
Social media provide a unique channel for generating attention if you have unique content. Once the creative process is dispensed with, the next task is to direct all the resulting attention at your business. For this to be accomplished, you need relevant insight into the consumers you are targeting. You must, therefore, invest in comprehensive research into the habits and mentality of the market. The information garnered from this activity should be channeled into a marketing approach that informs the dissemination of information through social media campaigns.
3. Create Sales
Now that the attention of the consumers has been gained, and they are focused on your business, you then create sales from the increased traffic. This needs you to simplify your sales approach into a workable strategy for the online platform. The idea behind this is encouraging your followers to turn into participating consumers through online channels. Translate all of the offline sales tactics into an online campaign. Use discount vouchers, sales redirects, downloadable coupons, discounts based on mentions of online marketing campaigns, and other similarly oriented tactics to generate sales conversions. The idea is to make the online viewer of your social media presence into an actual consumer. Simplify the sales process into an easy task to perform from your website. The best way of achieving this is creating a sales funnel like below
Content > Awareness > Interest > Participation > Sales
It will take some time before you perfect your approach, so be patient and willing to adapt as you get feedback.
4. Tailor Your Campaigns to the Social Platforms
Research on the functionality of the available social media platforms to understand the value they can bring to your business. Social platforms attract different types of users and success is directly tied to your ability to speak to the consumer niche available on the platform you have chosen. Here are some pointers:-
- YouTube – mainly focused on video uploads and needs a business product or service that can be easily marketed through video. Services have an advantage of this platform as it is easy to create a video depicting the experience offered to the consumer. Products that need assistance to use or explanation can also benefit from video.
- Tumblr/Pinterest – these platforms are entirely image based. This means that the product/service your business provides must be easy to market visually. Create profiles where you display pictures of the product/services you offer and use these to market your business.
- Twitter/Google+ – great value in information dissemination through posts. You can interact with consumers on a more engaging level to market your products. These are also exceptionally capable platforms for getting consumer feedback and building a repertoire of positive testimonials from your previous consumers. Google+ has location targeted features which enable you to focus on the geographical area your business serves.
- LinkedIn – this is an excellent platform for networking with other business owners, industry leaders, experts, and experienced business people. Use this to develop connections within your field. You can also market professional and enterprise class services using recommendations from this network.
- Facebook – all-round social media platform. Use this to generate a following for the business through business pages. You can use Facebook ads to market your business to a wide community of consumers. Additionally, it can be used as a very effective consumer feedback generating platform.
5. Mix educative content with sales pitches
While social platforms are excellent for content marketing, this is no reason to abandon traditional marketing methods. Use social media platforms to disseminate unique sales positions such as discounted prices, clearance sales, vouchers, and other unique selling points. The use of sales pitches on social media platforms should be limited to when the business is offering a unique position. This makes the sales pitch rendered to the consumer far more effective.
6. Create Offline Interaction
Your consumer base needs to be locked in to your business, and this means that you need to engage them offline. The sales funnel you have created should provide a medium for conversion of online interaction into offline engagement. The best way to accomplish this is to provide the viewer with a reason to engage the business offline. Ask them if they would like to get a call from the business both for after sales services and to inform them of new services. If the consumers provide offline contacts, use these to communicate a message of appreciation to them. This will strengthen your relationship and help build brand loyalty for the business.
About the author:
An avid blogger, Sandy Pardal leads the team of creative people at WebStartToday.com, which is a free website builder where a small business can create free website. Web design and Online marketing come to him as a deep passion. He likes to experiment with websites, track their performances and share his insights with readers.
