Can you recall the days before social media took over?
One can surely categorize the time period as being pre and post social media. Such has been the impact of social media platforms in the lives of the masses.
According to Smart Insights, there are over 3.96 billion social media users around the world. In other words, over half of the world’s population has social media accounts. As per Oberlo, this includes over 90 percent of Millennials, 77 percent of Gen X, and 48 percent of Baby Boomers.
The fact that almost all age groups are present on social media makes it a lucrative platform for businesses as well. This is why a study conducted by Mashable revealed that over 81 percent of small and medium businesses have at least one social media account.
If your business is struggling to generate revenue, here are ways you can leverage social media to boost your clientele base.
1. Engage your social media followers
One of the biggest drawbacks of conventional marketing tactics is that it featured one-way communication. Whether it be ads or billboards, there was no way for consumers to engage with businesses.
However, digital marketing has considerably mixed things up. With social media, brands now have the chance to truly engage their target audience, identify their needs and queries, and incorporate them in their campaigns.
Make sure you truly leverage this benefit. Don’t use your social media account as just another way to promote your brand by simply spamming people with posts that they won’t engage with. Instead, try to foster an engaging environment where your followers are tempted to comment, share, and like your posts.
You can do so by posting quizzes and contests. Similarly, research about what your target audience would be interested to know and create posts accordingly. Reply to your followers when need be. Here is an example of Burt’s Bees, which uses Twitter to interact with people.
The more you engage with people, the more they will trust you and hence consider you when they decide to purchase items within your niche.
2. Have a consistent tone
A lot of businesses make the mistake of treating their social media strategy in isolation from the rest of their brand efforts. Your social media should serve as a medium to promote your pre-existing branding efforts. After all, as per Forbes, consistency in branding helps boost revenue by 33 percent!
Each post you make should embody the same tone and voice as all your other marketing collaterals. For instance, if you have decided for your business to have a friendly brand image, exude the same friendliness when communicating with your followers via social media.
Let’s take a look at Adidas. Its brand image is known to be inspirational and helpful. The same is reflected through its social media accounts as well. Here is an example of how Adidas jumps onto the “Challenge” bandwagon while keeping its tone of voice consistent.
Why does consistency matter when generating clients? Well, it allows your brand to come off as professional, memorable, and authentic – exactly the characteristics you would want in a business you purchase from.
Therefore, make sure to create a brand guide of your business and incorporate it into your social media efforts. When in doubt, it is best to hire professionals to take care of the content for you. For instance, Growth Proton can help you in creating content that is aligned with your branding efforts.
3. Have a clear posting schedule
You might have heard of the famous saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.” The same holds true for businesses as well. In ads, we refer to it as the “sleeper effect.” Luckily, social media allows businesses to remain top of the mind by merely remaining active on the platform.
Yet, many brands struggle to post consistently, leading to the same old problem. If your business too disappears from online platforms from time to time, you will notice that slowly your engagement rates will decrease.
To attract clients, you must interact with them consistently. However, at the same time, try not to go overboard with it. Maintain a suitable frequency of post that doesn’t make you seem annoying. Be consistent with your days of posting.
Here are the best days to post on various social media platforms.
Since social media marketing is just one of the many elements a business must cater to, it is understandable for it to become too hectic.
This is why it is advised that you seek the help of social media management tools. For example, you can use Buffer or Hootsuite to manage your social media platforms and schedule posts in advance. This way, you don’t have to worry about remembering when to post.
4. Know when to expand your reach
A great way to generate more clients is by entering new markets. And social media allows you to effectively reach a vast audience.
You can learn a lot from the case study of Never Fully Dressed. Once it succeeded in its home market, i.e., the UK, the brand used its social media campaign insights to find a lookalike audience in regions like North America, Europe, South Africa, and Asia.
By testing ads on Instagram and Facebook, the business discovered the best type of ads to attract international clients. Your business can also make use of the tools available to you to draw insights about your target audience.
Use your initial campaigns as test models for your future expansion. Make a point of documenting key discoveries about your audience. This includes questions like which posts were most successful, what were the top-performing ads and what is the demographic of your followers etc.
Kickstart a winning campaign!
Now that you know just how to use social media for your business create and launch a winning social media campaign. Watch as organic traffic to your website increases, and your clientele base grows. Who knows, next time, your business will be among the example new brands ought to learn from.
Till then, keep fighting!
