Social media is without a doubt an essential component of a successful digital marketing strategy. It’s one of the best mediums to boost your brand’s awareness and reputation online — where first impressions are made.

More likes, shares, and followers are all great for your online reputation, but social media can also provide more value to your business. That’s why successful small businesses are leveraging social media to convert their follows into new customers.

Here’s what you need to know to effectively increase your click-through rates and turn followers into more  customers.

1.Know Your Audience

The first step to getting more customers from your social media marketing is the need to clearly identify your target market. You must research and develop customer personas to guide an effective communication strategy with your prospective buyers.

While it’s important to be active on as many platforms as possible, your target audience will dictate how much emphasis you need to put on each one. Here’s a look at the monthly active users across the most popular social networks:

Let’s say you’ve identified that your target market is somewhere in the 18 to 29-year-old group. Since 86% of that audience is already on Facebook, then you should definitely place a heavy emphasis on this channel.

If your business is strictly marketing to people over the age of 60, it wouldn’t be ineffective to focus your marketing efforts on Snapchat, but rather Twitter or even LinkedIn.

Some businesses may have a wider range of products and services, which translates into a more diverse target market. In this case, you’ll need to use each platform differently, according to the users you’re trying to reach.

Be sure your messages make sense for the social media channel you’re using.

Therefore, you must customize your outreach to meet the needs of your ideal buyer personas on each social media platform. This will increase the chances of gaining more followers and turning them into customers over time.

1. Expand your marketing channels

For starters, you need to have an active presence on as many social media platforms as possible.
Here’s a look at the monthly active users across the most popular social networks:

How many of these platforms do you have a presence on? If your answer is just one or two, you’re making a mistake and missing out on a huge opportunity.

I’ve consulted many businesses that have this theory. They’re active on Facebook, so they don’t need to have other social profiles.

Since Facebook has the most active users, why bother with anything else?

This kind of mentality is part of the reason why you’re not converting followers into customers.

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is great. It will continue to be the king of social media marketing for years to come. But it’s not enough.

People use different social media platforms for a variety of reasons. Depending on your target audience, you may have more luck on one platform over another. We’ll discuss that concept in greater detail shortly.

Here’s an example to show you why people may use different social platforms, depending on their goals.

Someone may be following your page on Facebook, but they may primarily use Facebook to share photos with their family members. They might follow you on Twitter, but they might be using Twitter only to get news updates. See what I mean?

Diversifying your outreach on social platforms across as many networks as possible will increase the chances of your followers turning into customers.

3.Stay Active and Engage with Consistency

Gaining new followers is great, but you want to do everything in your power to keep them as engaged as possible. The best way to do this is by staying active on all your platforms with consistency.

Updating your social media pages once a week isn’t going to cut it if you want to turn your followers into customers. Daily activity will create a more authentic experience with your followers.

It’s not always about posting more, make sure you reply to all comments and messages as fast as possible. If you do, your followers will be more likely to convert.

Invest in Paid Ads on Social Media

Investing in ads on social media is a great way to build a large hyper-targeted following. Almost all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. offer paid ads. You can use these to increase your reach, content views, clicks, and engagements.

You can make the most of your investments with offers and repurposing previous posts to reach more targeted potential consumers. This way you can get new followers, subscribers and potential leads for the future.


The best part is the ability to get really specific with your demographic targeting at scale. You can tailor different ads to different personas with incredible precision, increasing the likelihood of acquiring more of your business’ target customers.

Provide Customer Service on Social Media

Outstanding customer service is often the deciding factor that sways consumers towards buying from one business over another. After all, your efforts are on public display.

90% of consumers use social media to talk to businesses directly and it also happens to be their preferred method for customer care. Quick replies and resolving your customers’ queries can help increase trust and boost your reputation significantly.

Providing great customer support on social media is a great way to increase business through word-of-mouth marketing. You can create either good or bad press for yourself, both of which can seriously impact your customer acquisition on social media.

Conclusion

Having lots of likes and followers is great, but you need to find ways to convert these followers into customers to grow your business:

• Start with research on your target audience so you can appropriately market on each channel effectively.

• Stay active and engage with consistency. Make sure you’re always responding to your followers’ comments    and questions to keep them engaged.

• Leverage user-generated content to boost trust with your followers.

• Provide amazing customer service and showcase that on social media.

• Invest in paid ads to reach more potential hyper-targeted consumers at scale.