Is your business struggling to see an ROI on social media platforms? An effective social media strategy does not happen overnight – it takes time and energy but ultimately has the power to expand your business significantly. The best way to use social media to generate sales is to create content that provides value to your target audience with an authentic message. Read more for three actionable tips to help your business attract more revenue through social media.
1. Understand your Target Audience with Ideal Customer Personas
The best way to attract new customers/clients and generate more revenue is to make sure your business is creating content that is representative of its core values and in alignment with the interests and goals of your target audience. One way to ensure that your social media strategy is cohesive is to think through and develop customer personas. These personas serve as a reference of what the business’ dream customer looks like for your team as your company continues to post on social media and seek their engagement. The best place to start determining what your ideal customer looks like is to go through previous orders and synthesize the characteristics that your prior clients have in common. A review such as this could include gender, age range, location, or even favorite color. After going through the concrete sales data, you can also look through the people who already follow your business on social media. There will most likely be additional similarities that will help develop a complete picture of your ideal customer. Influenced by this factual data analysis, your business should envision and strategize the qualities of the “perfect person” or “perfect business” who would fall in love with what you are offering. Imagine where this person lives, what their job is, what their interests are, what their family looks like, what their spending power is, what their social media habits look like, who they trust, and where they spend their free time. The list continues, but the main goal is to imagine every micro detail about this perfect customer’s life and write out an ideal customer profile. You can then use this ideal customer persona to craft social media decisions, ensuring you provide the value they want in a business partner.
2. Create Content that Provides Value to your Target Audience
After successfully envisioning your ideal client and clearly understanding your target audience’s interests, you’ll want to create content that provides this personal value. Generally, this value comes in the form of educating, inspiring, or entertaining, and your business should strive to offer a range of this content. For example, a bank may identify its target audience as a young twenty-something fresh out of college, ready to enter the corporate world, needing financial advice. They trust the opinions of their peers and celebrity idols, frequently scroll through social media, and desperately want to learn how not to be broke. For example, a bank may create educational content about opening a high-yield savings account or the rewards options for one of its new credit cards. All this content would be written with language that appeals to this ideal customer to attract their attention and solve their current problem. While this content will not appeal to everyone on the internet, it is intentional and is distinctly seeking to educate this bank’s target audience. While it may seem counterintuitive to provide resources for free, this act of good faith shows your followers the intentions of your business and increases credibility and trust.
3. Engage with your Target Audience on Social Media
Another great way to generate more revenue through social media is to engage with your target audience on various platforms. It is not enough to post content and wait for people to find your business; you have to go out and engage with people who fit within your target audience. One way to find all these potential customers is to look at businesses or accounts similar to yours. These could be competitors or businesses in a related niche. Once you’ve identified these accounts, you’ll want to look at the people who are liking and commenting on posts. Your business should consider liking the accounts of these engaged followers, as they have already expressed interest in similar content and could also find value in yours. The world of social media is large enough for all businesses, so this should only be seen as offering additional value and not trying to “steal” clients. You can also find potential new followers and customers by looking at accounts that post in your location or under the hashtags you are targeting. The goal is to have meaningful conversations and show people that your business is genuine and cares about its followers.
All three of these social media strategies will help your business generate more sales and increase its following, though not instantaneously. For example, much of social media for businesses is cultivating relationships and consistently influencing potential customers’ buying habits. Your business will need to dedicate time and energy to understanding your target audience, crafting authentic content that offers value, and engaging with people who you think would benefit from what your business sells. If your company wants to transform its social media strategy but isn’t quite sure where to start, contact Southport Strategies to set up a consultation and start strategizing your social media today.
