Strategies You Can Use to Convert Your Social Media Followers Into Customers

Right now we live in a "social first” world where many entrepreneurs are focusing on getting their brand to have a high social media presence on platforms like Instagram and TiKtok. There is an underline notion that more followers means more revenue for your business. This can be true for some businesses however, many brands have come to realize that it is not easy to make money from social media followers, even if you have a very large following.

The struggle of being an entrepreneur in this social age is figuring out a system to sell products and not just gather likes and shares. Unfortunately, boosting a post usually does nothing and “posting more” rarely results in the desired action of conversion from your audience.

Although there are plenty of tips online about how to nurture conversions out of your followers, plenty of people have tried things like “posting more often” or “being more engaged” and seen little results.

So in this article I’ll talk about some very specific things I’ve have done to for clients to convert their social media followers to customers. Break out your pens:

1. Host A Giveaway

A lot of brands are successfully using giveaways to grow their social media following and increase their brand awareness, this is actually a great strategy that does well for almost any industry. However a lot of brands are under utilizing their giveaways by limiting them to only be on social media.

Neither Instagram or TikTok will allow you to capture the customer data that would be necessary to truly capitalize on giveaway entries. If you are running a giveaway that requires people to enter by commenting, tagging a friend, or sharing a post, you are not creating a funnel that leads to anything. (And you are probably doing too much work manually managing entries)

My suggestion would be to move your giveaways to your website. This will allow you to capture data in a number of ways that can be useful to converting people into customers.

Set up a landing page on your website that is branded around your giveaway. This should be a simple page with a form or widget that collects user information. If you want to build out this page I would add information about the prizes or the reason why you are hosting the giveaway but remember, you want people to fill out your entry form, so do not distract too much.

Now your goal on your social media accounts will be to drive traffic to this link.

Use you captions and bio links to encourage your followers to enter your giveaway.

Once you get followers to click your link there are a number of ways you can convert them to customers.

Email

The first step of your giveaway will usually require people to enter by putting in their name and email. If you are going to announce the winner by social media username, then do not forget to collect this information as well.

Heres the important part: add a checkbox to this form that allows people to opt in for “future giveaways and promotional material from this brand”, a high percentage of your followers will check this box and you will be able to add them onto your email list.

Now that they are on your email list you can use direct, sales, communication to nurture them into conversion. I recommend building a custom flow specifically for your giveaway entries that includes 3-4 emails that warm them up to your brand and directly ask them for sales.

Try your best to not send any emails asking for purchases before the giveaway is over. This will usually upset your followers and many of them may unsubscribe before the giveaway is even over. The best time to start the email sequence is immediately after you announce the winners. A great kick off email is one that offers a high level discount to the featured prize to those that didn't win.

For instance if you were hosting a giveaway for a free pair of shoes, I would recommend emailing everyone who didn't win a 30% off coupon for the shoes as a “thank you” for entering that expires in 48 hours. This usually has a high rate of conversion and allows you to host a “mini-sale “ without announcing it to a full audience. This email usually also does a good job of getting a lot of people to unsubscribe. Do not be upset by this, these people were never gonna buy anything from your brand, so it's best that we have them leave the flow so you can focus on those who will later shop.

Getting followers onto your email list, and sending regular email updates, is a great way to get them to buy things from you. Email has a much higher conversion rate than social media. And people who subscribe to your email list have more of an opportunity to build a close relationship with your brand, depending on the kind of information you sent out.

Retargeting Ads

Now that you have successfully gotten your followers to visit your website you can use cookies and pixels to retarget your users on other websites and platforms.

On Facebook, you can build an audience of people who have previously visited your website, or a specific URL of your website like your landing page. You can then run ads specifically to these people.

Depending on your industry, and what you are selling, you may be able to start retargeting people with your direct Conversion objective ads immediately. If you are running a giveaway to an audience of people who are already familiar with your brand, you can try showing them simple product images with a quick call to action. When clicked these ads should lead directly to the product or off her page, not to your homepage.

If this is a giveaway that you are running to people who may not be familiar with your brand, or you are still building an audience, then you want to use Traffic ads to show people more about your brand. I recommend a video as it will be better at capturing attention. With this scenario, you would want people to be dropped off at your homepage, or collection page, so that they could learn more about your brand and be further nurtured. I would then further retarget these people (those who watched the video ) and show them Conversion ads that are simple and ask for purchase activity, however I would start this campaign only after the giveaway period has ended.

Through Google ads, you can use display retargeting to show your products to your followers on other websites that they're visiting online. This does a great job of boosting your brands value within your followers, as many of them do not understand display advertising and it will make your brand seem at a very high level.

You will also have an opportunity to display your products alongside whatever they're looking at and viewing positively which has a great psychological effect with buyers. You get to pair your brand with their favorite brands and websites.

If you use display advertising for brand awareness, you will find that your customers have a much easier time recalling your products, especially if you have something that stands out visually.

While the display advertising itself does not have the highest conversion rate, in combination with your other marketing tactics. You can do a great job of helping customers become more familiar with your products and making you your brand seem to have a larger presence online to your consumer. This starts to create that “off-social” experience for you followers where they no longer see you as just a profile or personality.

Post-Submit Page

After users have entered your giveaway you have options for what happens when they click “submit”. Most forms simply say “thank you, we will contact you when we pick a winner “. However, forms and widgets offer for you to send users to another page after they submit their entry. This can be used to add an immediate conversion activity option to your giveaway flow.

You could build a flash sale page that users are sent to immediately after entering your giveaway. This page can look like a pop-up or special offer page and should have a timer on it that encourages people to by one of the sale items displayed before the timer goes down. I suggest something like 10 minutes.

If you do not have the ability to run a flash sale, you may still be able to gather some purchases by setting up the post-submit to redirect to your collection page, or page where you have your sales offer.

2. Retarget Followers (Don’t Boost)

Using Facebook ad manager to retarget your followers can be a great tactic to get them to buy your products and can help you have a secondary posting channel that doesn't live on your main feed.

A lot of brand owners and managers are familiar with the "boost "option that is available on Facebook and Instagram and almost the same number of people have been frustrated by the lack of desired action once they spend their money boosting a post.

The best way to run ads through Facebook and Instagram is through Facebook business manager and not by boosting a post on the platform. This gives you a lot more options for targeting and can set you up for web conversion, not on-social engagement.

Through Facebook business manager you can build custom audiences that are made up from your follower base. This can include people who like and follow your business pages, people who engaged with your content, and even people who watch your videos.

By building custom audiences from these people, you can create a flow through advertisements for specific segments of your followers depending on how familiar they are with your brand. For instance, if a user has watched 75% of a video explaining a product or showcasing reviews, you know that you can now show them straight to the point conversion based ads and be confident that they are familiar enough with the product to make a purchase.

Using facebook ads to retarget and gain customers

On the other side, you can build custom audiences of people who follow you but have not interacted with your brand in the last six months. You can then show these people your new products and things they may have missed by being outside of your daily algorithm. This is a great way to reengage fans of your brand who may have missed out on your organic purchase-driving announcements.

Retargeting your followers may also allow you to advertise local events or service to only the people who are in the area you are servicing. This allows you to save some of your budget and you may be able to build a more frequency within your campaign by limiting the region. This is useful as it is not always easy to build a localized presence on social media and even local business attract non-local followers.

For local businesses that do not offer a high ticket event or services, where people are going to travel far to you, there really isn't a reason to showcase your direct sales ads to a region outside of a two hour driving area. If you have a broad audience across multiple regions, this may be a great way to niche down and focus on your customer service area.

A tactic you can use if you have an active following and you have created a system where you can get your followers to comment on a post, is to then run retargeting ads for people who have interacted with specific post. This works great in conjunction with a story post where you can tell your followers the “secret emoji of the day” and direct them to comment on a specific post with that emoji. You can then retarget those people with your sales offers.

Considering that you know that they watched your story, went to your page, and took an action these people have qualified themselves as “super fans” and are likely to take FUTHER actions if directed.

There are a number of different ways that you can segment and build list from your follower base. Even a small follower base under 1000 can be broken down and segmented to figure out which of those people are most likely to purchase.

Don't lump all of your followers into the same stage and the customer journey. They are all at different points of their buyer stage and you will have a better chance of converting if you can show them ads to move them through their individual funnel and not just keep them sitting on the following list.

3. Live Selling

Life selling is something that has expanded in the last couple of years with more and more platforms including a broadcast feature on their platform.

Although many brand owners and managers are familiar with how to go live, and may even have some experience selling on live, incorporating multiple channels in the process will help you convert more followers.

Instead of hopping on live and selling product to people who comment, or asking them to checkout on the in-app store, try providing time-limited discount codes that can be used on your website. This forces your followers off the social app and puts them into your website conversion funnels.

Even if users do not fully checkout, even visiting your site can be useful and will allow you to tag them for future retargeting or email efforts. Things that might not be possible when selling within the in-app stores.

If you do not have the ability to go live, you can still take advantage of this strategy utilizing your stories. You can post pictures of your products with a note stating “Comment GET IT for a special discount”. The replies will come in as direct messages and you can provide a short message with a discount and URL to anyone who replies.

If you have a large following, it may be useful to install an auto responder to your messenger thats will recognize the key phrase and atomically respond. Facebook allows for some limited auto responses on business accounts but a more advanced system may be needed if you want a more full response.

This is a great method as it requires your followers to take several actions and they can be segmented along the process. You can pull out “people who asked for the discount be never used it”, “people who visited the site but didn't checkout”, “people who completed all actions”, and a bunch of other useful buildups as well.

These segments allow you to focus on the followers who are most likely to convert and may show you what parts of your conversion funnel need more attention.

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Conclusion

There is no set way to ensure that your followers on social media will buy things from your store. In fact, many of them are simply going to follow you and take no future actions. However, if you focus on developing list building strategies you can build a funnel from follow to conversion.

In order to convert on your social following, you must being to think about ways to get these people OFF social media. This could mean driving traffic to your other digital assets and having another opt-in system there. The great thing about creating a multi-channel experience is that you are building stronger quality leads with every touchpoint.

Strategies You Can Use to Convert Your Social Media Followers Into Customers