Interaction, not promotion, sells your product on social media.
Five years into digital marketing, there is one thing I have understood clearly — Nobody cares about the online advertisements until they have heard about the product on any other channel.
People will click on the ad, look at the product, but they won’t pay if you don’t have a reputation online. And creating that reputation is the most challenging part.
And to build a stature, you have to interact with your potential users. This should be the core objective of an effective social media strategy. But then there’s always confusion on how to do it. And how to do it efficiently, keeping brand language in mind. One way is to deconstruct every social media channel and see how each one can play a different role. And build a stronger connection with your users before pitching your product to them. You can do this in many ways, by posting insights, telling your brand story or helping them in learning new skills in your domain.
And effective promotion is always the one which costs no money.
Let’s delve into how we can do this.
1. Build a community.
To start with creating a Facebook or LinkedIn group, or both, around your brand purpose, before making the product page. The group should be around the problem you are solving so that it can help you in getting the insights on user needs. Invite few people whom you know are seeking help in your domain, and if you effectively help them, ask them to invite more members via their network.
Offline, you can create a meet-up in your city or organise workshops. This will help you connect with your potential users in person and understand more about their requirements. If you have a customer persona ready, you can have interview sessions with those who match it and have detailed sessions with them.
Building a community is helpful in two significant ways — One, it will get you the insights you never knew you were missing and two, it will enable you to introduce your product to early users.
2. Connect with them by telling the story of your product.
One key thing, you should never do is bombard your users with your product details or try selling them the product by telling them it’s benefits. If you want to build a connection with your users, tell them why are you developing the product. Tell them the story of why you think this is the right thing for you to do. More than the product, they will connect with you and your story. And if you are able to build the connect and trust, they will share the importance of the product you have and buy it for this particular reason.
Another way to connect with your audience is to tell a story about how buying your product will make them more efficient or more relieved. You can hit their pain points and tell them how you are solving it. Deep down everybody has their own set of problems, and they will like you to reduce one.
3. Keep your audience in the loop.
It’s a war, a war to convince the users. And your competition is also trying to win this war. The best strategy to win this war is to get your audience on your side. One way of doing this keeping them updated about the developments and asking regular feedbacks. Make them feel part of the process. Once a relationship is built, this will strengthen it. Involve them in your story, because it’s not about them v/s us anymore.
4. Fans are those who talk on behalf of you.
Fans are not your followers or the ones who like your content; they are the one who shares your content or product. The end goal of story-telling is making them a prosumer, not a consumer. Prosumer is the one who talks for you, who tells about your product to his/her friends and family. On any social media channel, recommendations and shares increase the sales opportunity ten fold.
Keep on interacting with your audience to sell on social media. After you have built a small network of your own, you will get many-fold returns on ad-spend as well. So let’s keep this interaction going. If you have anything to share or any query to ask, shoot me a mail on yog@11d.co,
