Since its early days, marketing has gone through various transformations and one of its latest transformations came due to technological advancement. People use computers and smartphones on a daily basis for multiple reasons, one of which is to be on social media.
With over 3.6 billion users worldwide, it’s easy to see why social media is a goldmine for marketers. If you make profiles on the most popular social media platforms, you will be able to reach people from practically all demographics from all over the world.
But of course, it’s not enough to just have those profiles. You also need to know which strategies you need to apply to gain as many customers as possible.
Social media monitoring
When it comes to social media marketing, most people know how important it is to converse with your followers and customers via the platforms you’re using. However, it’s just as important to listen to what they have to say.
Many people use search engines to find out where they can buy a particular item, but more often than not, they don’t get an answer to their question. This happens when a brand doesn’t monitor their social media audience, they miss out on a lot of potential business because they failed to listen.
To monitor your audience, you need to create a comprehensive list of hashtags, keywords, and phrases that are relevant to your business and brand. And don’t forget to include mentions of your brand name, the names of your product, and the industry you’re in to this list.
To make sure you’re always on top of social media mentions and everything related to your brand, product, or industry, you need to keep an eye on all of these posts.
While it’s possible to do this manually, it’s also incredibly overwhelming considering the millions of posts that are created every day. That’s why smart marketers use social media analytics tools that allow them to monitor and keep track of all posts and mentions effortlessly. They can further use this information to focus their energy on creating content that’s customer-favorite and brings the best results.
Don’t forget about LinkedIn
When we mention social media, most people think about platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, which have large followings but aren’t strictly business-oriented.
The only social media platform that’s used only by business professionals is LinkedIn, which currently has 722 million members. To use LinkedIn as a tool and attract customers, you first need to create a professional profile that’s client-focused and search-optimized.
Once you do that, you can identify your prospects by looking for specific job titles in LinkedIn Advanced Search and LinkedIn Groups. Send connection requests, and after they accept the requests, you can convert them from prospects to customers in 4 steps:
- Send a thank you message. Once you make a new connection, send them a personalized thank you message without any promotional material to make a good first impression.
- Send relationship-building messages. Reach out to your new connections a week after the initial contact and send them a “relationship-building” message that is going to provide some value to them and is relevant to their business goals.
- Engage with them in groups. LinkedIn allows its users to join up to 50 groups, so make sure to join the most relevant groups your prospects are in. Be an active participant in them and demonstrate your credibility and expertise.
- Move the relationship offline. Once you’re established your credibility and built enough rapport, ask your prospects if they are willing to talk to you offline. When they accept, you can present your pitch.
If you want to make the most out of LinkedIn’s lead generation potential, you need to use a LinkedIn automation tool that will help you grow your network, build smart message chains, and much more. And if you know the best ways to build life-long customer relationships, every connection will pay off.
Encourage recommendations and social proof
There are many things marketers can do to attract customers, but one of the best ways to attract new people to your business is to have them hear about it from someone else. This is why word-of-mouth marketing is one of the oldest and best ways to attract and gain new customers.
Of course, word-of-mouth marketing is much different in a social media setting and it usually comes in the form of customer-generated content, likes, shares, tweets, and pins. If you want to encourage recommendations, you can ask your customers to write personal recommendations and referrals.
However, since you’re relying on social media to market your products, you need to show your prospects that your business and products are trustworthy. That’s why, when it comes to online promotion, nothing is more valuable than social proof in the form of customer reviews and testimonials.
As reviews and testimonials come from already satisfied customers, those who are on the fence about purchasing something from you can be swayed by someone’s positive experience with your business.
The best way to collect social proof from your customers is to simply ask them. If you know someone is a satisfied customer or has purchased from you more than once, don’t be shy about asking for a review. Ideally, they should include pictures or videos of the product being used.
Take these recommendations and place them in a visible place on your social media platforms. You can even use testimonials as social media content and set up review widgets on your site to give the customer the chance to share their experience whenever they want.
Be visible and available at all times
In this modern age, your livelihood depends on your online visibility. The higher your visibility is, the chances of someone being on the lookout for your business and services are also greater. With a great online visibility campaign, you can ensure you’re instantly recognizable to your audience.
If you’re looking to increase your visibility, you can do it by following these tips:
- Focus on quality over quantity when you’re collecting followers.
- Get them to engage with the content you post.
- Optimize all of your content for search engines and make sure everything you post is unique.
- Include things such as hashtags and visuals to get your posts noticed.
- Pin your best posts at the top of your pages so they’re the first thing new followers see.
- Share your own but also other people’s content to keep things interesting. A good rule of thumb when it comes to this is to post 80% owned content and 20% third-party content.
However, it’s also important to remember that your visibility doesn’t mean a thing if you’re not available to your customers when they approach you. Your audience expects your business to always be available to them for any query, and if you’re not, it will hurt your bottom line.
Final thoughts
When it was first created, social media was nothing more than a means of contacting your friends and family, but that changed not long after it was created. Marketers soon realized the power of social media and nowadays, it’s almost impossible to find a successful brand that has no social media presence.
These online platforms can be an invaluable tool for any business owner and marketer, but only if you apply the right strategies, such as the ones you saw in this article.
