Advertising

Social media isn’t just about Brand Awareness. When done right, it drives sales for your business. However, not every social media platform has the same audience. With so many platforms out there it’s important to invest in the right channels so you’re not spinning your wheels. Follow these guidelines to get revenue from social media. 1.  Use the Channel that your followers use The first step to driving sales using social media in 2021 is to figure out where your target customers are spending their time online, and use the same social channels that they use. A best practice for making the most of your time is to concentrate on a few key platforms, rather than using up precious resources building multiple accounts. This is how you go about it: For one, conduct a thorough analysis of your target demographic. You can dig into the profile of your current customers, or try to find common characteristics of a target audience that you haven’t gotten in front of yet. For example, you may be going through a rebrand and trying to sell to moms for the first time, or you could be currently marketing to students and trying to boost your online presence where they spend time. Once you know who buys your products/services (or who you want to become a buyer), you should also know which platforms they use. Though you can decide to be present on each social channel, remember that spreading your resources far too broadly and far too thin is time-consuming. In fact, such an action might do more harm than good. A couple tips to keep in mind: Facebook is used by the most people, especially in Cyprus. Your target audience’s age does not necessarily tell you about their buying trends. Make sure that whatever audience you’ve picked, they are exhibiting buying behavior in the channels that they favor. Segment your target audience, especially if your target audience is broad.  Try to create several segments that do not overlap. Bottom line: Being present in social platforms where your target audience is gives you a great opportunity to attain your goals. If you can reach this audience in their native habitat while they are in the mindset to buy, then you increase your chances to drive sales. 2.  Create great content but don’t make it sound salesy or pushy While prioritizing on quality over quantity sounds obvious, most digital marketers still get it wrong. Social media users are very savvy. If you create mediocre content, you will not get the engagement you’re looking for. Rather than dispatch a series of run-of-the-mill posts, spend the time creating a smaller amount of high-quality content. That way you’ll also be sharing your content at a pace that both you and your prospects can handle. As you create content, do not make it sound too pushy or salesy. You must consider that social channels are not solely meant for buying and selling. The majority of people are still there to socialize virtually. Social media users are looking for useful content for them, and that is what they expect from you.  That should be your number one priority when generating content. Your best bet for getting people to buy is to give them engaging and valuable content for them, that makes them want to become your follower, customer and share your content (thus giving your content virality). Here are a few suggestions for posts that achieve a good balance between salesy and helpful: Create images inspired by real-life situations Post pictures and videos that include recipes/tips/guides relevant to your products Create honest content with advice relating to your industry, even if it means that it may damage your sales. Recommend products and services which will truly beneficial to your user. 3.  Make it easy for people to Buy By now you are probably thinking, “We are here to sell not entertain”, and you are right. We are not saying that you shouldn’t post products and offers, you should.  Social media users are more likely to buy a product if They trust the page A friend recommended it (or liked it) It’s a unique product of it offers a unique proposition To make it easy to your social fan to purchase your products, each post should be accompanied with a like to your e-shop (to the specific product page).  Ideally you should provide a special time based offer to your fans or some other reward to get them to buy. 4.  Using Instagram & influencers to promote your products Having an engaged Instagram audience is great, but converting them into leads is important! Influencers are a vital part of your branding and sales activities on Instagram. Focus on micro or even nana influencers with large numbers of followers (make sure they are active). Usually sending them some free product will get them to engage and post your gifts with a mention or a tag. This process is a lengthy one and may be expensive depending on the value of products you sell. Creating attractive content in your feed posts is a great way to generate leads, too. To achieve lots of reach for a CTA feed post, encourage your active followers to share to their Instagram stories. 5.  Use LinkedIn For Brand Awareness With LinkedIn, your business can establish strategic partnerships, generate leads and build awareness. Linkedin is all about networking.  To expand your network, it is not enough to just send invitations to connect.  You need to be active and produce content which will promote you and your brand as the guru in the industry. 6.  Paid Ads Posting frequently to social media and replying to comments alone is not enough to drive sales. The most suitable strategy for making the most of your social accounts combine it with paid ads. While organic reach on social channels is usually more beneficial, paid media helps you reach and boost your audiences quickly. Every social media channel has advertising abilities. Facebook, for instance, features extensive targeting tools. This makes

Social media marketing is a great tool for small businesses and one that you just cannot ignore. The number of people engaging in social media networks every single minute is so big and if your business is not participating in this mega digital party, you are missing out opportunities. Obviously the next question is how can business owners take advantage of social media and whether it is something that can generate business results (i.e. more traffic, sales, leads, signups) or if it is just another myth? #1 – Let’s get started The first step is to actually move from theory to practice and get started with social media. This means 4 things: To allocate some time on a daily basis to work on your social media presence To choose which social media networks to use at the beginning since there are too many and it will be very difficult to do all at the same time. To create your business pages on those networks To analyse your digital assest (like your website) To SEO optimize your social media profiles for more exposure Some things to consider: Facebook – Everybody is on Facebook so you don’t actually have a choice here. Read this to get inspired: How to get your first 10,000 fans on Facebook. LinkedIn – Mainly for business professionals, more difficult to use, advertising is expensive. However, if you are offering professional services or if your target audience belong to a well defined business group, then you must use it. You can create your presence on LinkedIn but if you are short of time, I suggest you start using LinkedIn for your personal profile and then when you grow your business network, you can utilize LinkedIn for your business as well. Instagram – Mostly of lighter content focusing on lifestyle and celebrity visuals. Although it has been popular with younger audiences, its commercial value is relatively low and mostly indirect. If your business is related to the fashion or lifestyle you may use this utilising Influencers or micro influencers. A smarter idea is to avoid a business presence on this channel and attempt using it indurectly through mentions from existing clients. Twitter – not as many local users. Relatively easy to maintain and engage with your customers. Together with the previous 3, this is your priority list. #2 – Start Small When you are ready to get started do not rush into following hundreds of people, posting many times per day, boosting posts and checking your statistics every minute. Start small and have in mind that: Social Networks do not like too much activity on newly created accounts (it’s not normal and kind of spammy) All networks have a maximum number of actions (following and unfollowing) you can do per day so the best way is to stay below their radar. At the beginning and when you don’t have a good number of followers, nobody will see your posts so don’t spend your time for no reason. Organic reach will mostly rely on how complete and how good your presence is. Spend time compleating you business page rather than generating posts #3 – It’s a numbers game While there are millions of people in social media channels, in order to start getting traffic, making sales or have any influence at all, you need to have a LOT of followers in your channels. And by a LOT, I mean a LOT and let me explain why. When you publish a new post on your business page on Facebook that post will be seen by a small percentage of your followers (FB tells you how many people saw your posts so have a closer look to understand what I mean). Let’s say that you have 4,000 fans on your page, when you post something only 100 or so people will see it and this is because Facebook does not show the posts to all your fans. Yet, although Facebook will show your post to these followers, if a person is following a lot of other people/pages, there are limited chances that they will see and interact with your posts. So, the more followers you have, the greater are your chances of start getting anything out of social media. From my experience and without this being a definite guide, you need at least 10,000 on FB, 500 on Linkedin, 1,000 on Twitter and 2,000 on Instagram before seeing any visitors to your website or shop. Of course as I said this is not a rule but an empirical figure. #4 – Engage with people that matter Unless you are a well known brand, in order to grow your followers you need to engage with other people (follw them, target them) and some of them will follow you back. When choosing who to target be selective by applying these simple techniques: Target people that have a relation with your business either geographically (i.e. they live in the same area) or by interest (they are interested directly or indirectly in the products or services you are selling). Targtet people who have an active profile; there is no reason to follow someone on instagram or twitter if they haven’t posted anything for two months. Target people that have a balance between the people they follow and people following them – you don’t want to follow people that will not follow you back and also you don’t want to follow accounts that only have following and no followers Targtet people that have something interesting to say – before following someone have a look at what they share and decide if this is something your customers would like to see in your profile. Find and target the influencers in your niche – every business area and niche has influencers and although they will not follow you back, it’s always a good practice to connect with them and follow what they have to say about the industry. #5 – It’s time consuming – make sure you have the time Social media marketing

For every growth strategy you develop, you also need a plan to acquire fresh and relevant leads. This can sometimes be the most challenging part of marketing your business. The good news is social media can be your most valuable lead generation channel if you know how to use it right. It’s only a matter of using the right tactics at the right time. SOCIAL MEDIA LEAD GENERATION: WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED IT A lead refers to any information that you can use to identify someone interested in your products or service. This could be anything from name and email address to occupation and employer details. So social media lead generation is the process of collecting new leads using social media. Generating leads on social media can benefit marketers as it helps you identify the social media audiences that are interested in your business. This gives you the necessary leverage to target them with relevant content and offers and then convert them into paying customers. HOW TO GENERATE LEADS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA 1. LAUNCH COMPELLING LEAD MAGNET OFFERS The right incentive can often compel people to freely share their information with you. For this, you’ll need to create enticing lead magnet offers that people want. This could be anything from a research report to a free tool. You could also offer discount codes, case studies, webinars, whitepapers and more. 2. SHARE TESTIMONIALS AS SOCIAL PROOF Customer stories and testimonials can give you the social proof you need to acquire new leads. Showcasing how clients have benefited from your products and services to demonstrate your brand value. 3. CREATE TARGETED ADS WITH SPECIAL OFFERS A paid social media advertising strategy is highly effective for generating leads on social media. With this strategy, you can use the highly specific targeting options of paid social ads to show your audience offers that are tailored to capture their interest. Try promoting content on specific subject matter, special discounts and limited-time offers on your products and services through these ads. 4. MAKE THE MOST OF LEAD GENERATION ADS Take your social media advertising one step further with lead gen ads. These are ads that come with pre-populated forms so people can easily finish signing up without spending too much time entering their personal information. This saves time, speeds up the lead generation process and can significantly boost your conversion rate. 5. SET UP SEQUENTIAL RETARGETING ADS Retargeting can further amplify your social advertising and lead generation strategy by helping you reengage lost prospects. Say someone clicked on your first ad and scrolled through the landing page but never submitted a form. You can retarget them with ads that encourage them to finish the signup process. 6. LEVERAGE SOCIAL MEDIA SPONSORSHIPS Instead of using paid ads, you could also attract leads from the social media content that your target audience is already consuming. Consider sponsoring shows, content and YouTube channels that are popular with your target audience. 7. HOST A VIRTUAL EVENT OR SOCIAL MEDIA CONFERENCE Virtual conferences and events are a great way to attract a highly relevant audience while establishing your expertise and authority in the field. That means they are also great for generating leads on social media, especially since people will need to provide their info to sign up or join the conference. 8. LAUNCH A REFERRAL CAMPAIGN Referral campaigns can be highly effective in doubling your sales leads. These campaigns provide an incentive to your leads for referring their friends and/or colleagues. That means the referred people will get to learn about your products or services and potentially become additional leads.  The simplest form of this is a competition in your social channels. 9. MAKE THE MOST OF SOCIAL LISTENING Look for lead generation opportunities with effective social listening. Monitor social media conversations and see what people are saying about a certain topic or a competitor brand. This will help you identify any opportunities to generate high-quality leads for your business. 10. THE POWER OF CONTENT Always generate valuable and honest content for your end user. Your target audience will not follow you because you advertise your products or services. They will follow you because they see value in what you share. The com2go team The com2go team are experts in converting followers to clients. Let us analyse your needs and propose a tailor made strategy to help you convert social users into customer. Call us at 22899899 for a meeting today.

We used to divide the business worlds in 2 categories: Business to Business or B2B and Business to Consumers or B2C. Social Media has disrupted this dichotomy, and we are now walking into the Human to Human era or H2H. World leaders themselves have taken on Social media to address entire nations, talking to people directly, “human to human”. This is what French President Emmanuel Macron did when he addressed the American people directly, breaking the protocol, during its first state visit of the Trump administration in April 2018, criticizing openly the isolationism that Trump was implementing. What are you waiting to do the same for your business? If you think that your business is targeting banks for example and therefore do not need Facebook, think again. Banks are made of managers, top executives, clerks, officers, all of them are people. These people are social beings, who want to create report, who crave relationships, who want to learn, who want to be included. Social Media is the bridge that can help you to connect to them. If LinkedIn might be the first social media platform you are thinking of, then you are absolutely right. LinkedIn is the number 1 platform for professionals. The can network, they can chat directly to a prospect or to a future employer. Do not discount Facebook though, as professionals are also found on Facebook, as they rely on that specific social media to educate themselves and entertain themselves. To put thing in perspective, let’s look at a few key findings from a study “Welcome to the Human-to-Human Era” from Sendoso which surveyed 750 full-time marketing, sales and success decision makers in February 2021, in the US. 91% of respondents said that they believe building a human connection with their buyers has become more important to closing sales since March 2020. More, in 2020, companies engaged buyers and customers, using these H2H tactics received a positive response: Engaged in more personal conversations with buyers/customers — 69% Checked in on buyers/customers for non-business reasons — 57% Personalized outreach based on buyer/customer interests — 51% Share more info about our lives and experiences with buyers/customers — 48% Publicly addressed certain social issues — 44% Still, marketers face challenges to implement an H2H strategy, due to the following factors: Lack of budget/resources — 39% Company never considered human approach — 29% Fear of losing buyers/customers — 28% Resistance from company leadership — 27% Resistance from fellow company colleagues — 11% As a business owner, as a marketer, you have to understand the power of Social Media and leverage it to make a true connection to your audience, a personal one. Make it relevant, authentic, be a person talking to another person. The H2H era is on its way. Will you join the wave? If you need assistance in reaching out to your target audience, we are just a call away Tel: +357 22 899899.  Our team of experts can help you identify your target audience and touch base with them.