Top 4 tips to turn social media followers into customers

You’ve got fans and followers, you’re pushing out content, but are they buying from you? Are your social media followers actually your customers? And if they’re not then how do you go about converting them?

It’s important to remember that social media is not a hard sales tool, it’s about slow growth, building a community around your brand, and inspiring that community (remember ratios). If you do this right, then sales will materialise, and the hardest thing may be actually tracking them back to the social media channels. Here are our top 4 tips for turning followers into customers:

• Call-to-action buttons
  It’s not only important to have very clear and easy-to-find call to actions on your website but as a marketing tool, social media channels have cottoned on to this too. Facebook now has a customisable button (see below- "contact us") and Pinterest and Instagram have announced the introduction of “buy it” buttons. These enable people to convert quicker and easier.
• Exclusive offers for social media fans
  58% of facebook users expect exclusive content, so give it to them. Whilst this can mean ‘backstage’ previews and insider scoops, this also extends to special offers. Facebook make creating special offers for fans to claim incredibly easy through their ‘offers’ tool, and you can also just send out a special code via social media channels so that you can include channels such as Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter i.e. “social20” for 20% off for social media fans.
• Get people talking to you
  90% of consumers trust peer reviews and 92% say that they trust earned media and word of mouth above other advertising. So make sure people can talk about you easily on social media. Make people aware of your social media presence, encourage conversation and push people to talk about you after they’ve bought from you. Ticketing companies such as Eventbrite do this well and after your purchase you can click one button to share the fact that you’ve bought tickets to a certain event on your social media, and it automatically tags Eventbrite and the link to sales for other people to easily be able to do the same.
• Competitions
  As well as often increasing your social media following, competitions to win tickets or a prize can also increase the desire for that purchase as well. So even if people don’t win then there’s a chance that they will consider making that purchase anyway. And you can always follow a competition up with an email to all unsuccessful entrants with a discount code for the item they were trying to win.
  Social media is a powerful tool if you get it right. If you need help setting up your social media campaigns, ads or sales opportunities then drop us a message: hello@webfwd.co.uk