Different social channels, different customers: who are the people to convert into customers
It is not unusual for a brand to sponsor its activity on different online channels. It’s not only a recommended method of attracting new customers, but it also serves to increase engagement for existing buyers.
Social networks, however, should not be treated as a mere extension of a brand’s main, where usually sales activities are conducted.
They’re rather a place where an entrepreneur can interact with their audience while using this experience to collect both feedback about their brand — which product the customers like best, what kind of offers customers would be most interested in — and how much interaction social channels are collecting. These data are useful for digital marketers who can analyze them to plan a digital campaign able to reinforce the business’s online presence via social channels. The feedback left by followers is an honest insight into how the digital campaign is doing, if it needs any change or reinforcement, if it’s effective. For a competent marketer, obtaining such feedback so fast is the best way to operate successfully.
However, when we generally talk about social channels, we must avoid falling into the trap of thinking that the same language is good for all of them. Just as they aren’t an additional area of our website, they are all different from each other.
Each of the social channels offers distinct content that necessarily addresses various types of audience.
To be sure to engage in the right way with your users in the hope of converting them into customers, you must pick the language best suited to the audience in question. To do so, let’s see what the most famous social channels at our disposal are:
It’s probably the best known and boasts the most versatile audience. It’s a huge advantage because each brand has the mathematical certainty of finding within it users interested in the products that a company produces. With the help of a Digital Advertising Agency — like Targeto — it is possible to target the perfect audience of potential buyers. Numerous types of advertising are also available, creating dozens of possible marketing strategies. There is maximum freedom of budget and management. If you visit the Facebook page of any serious company that comes to your mind, you will realize that the page you’re looking at is slightly different to a normal one. For example, it’s very different for your Facebook page! Facebook knew companies would be interested in having their own page, so it gives them the opportunity to create a professional Facebook page, where companies and entrepreneurs can add all the useful information about their business. A brand can let people post reviews on its page, can list their opening hours, contacts and so on. It’s a very useful and easy way to give customers whatever they’re searching for. Although there has been a decline in popularity — due to the recent and controversial leaks of data apparently sold by Facebook to third parties, and the audience of very young people who constituted its usual audience moved to other social media — Facebook remains a very popular catchment area for those looking for new customers or a way to strengthen customer retention. The average age of Facebook users is between 28 and 38 years old.
What a brand can do on this social channel:
Of course, the rule is always to produce content that carries value for customers and potential ones, that can fascinate them and stimulate discussion. The secret is to involve our followers, perhaps with surveys, special offers for subscribers, news about our brand. The important thing is to analyze the content that adapts the best to the consumption of this type of followers: yes to the news in pills, captivating headlines that may refer to an article, curiosity.
There also is the subtle art of newsjacking to use:
- You can use a trend of the moment to get involved in the general speech about it.
- At the same time, while giving your point of view about a matter, you can bring your product to general attention, skillfully linking it to the hot topic in question. Since the risk of being perceived as invasive and out of place using this technique is very high, it’s better to rely on a professional digital marketer.
Universally known as the home of hit-and-run reviews and usual hunting ground for Influencers of all kinds, Instagram has gained further popularity with the arrival of the “Stories” tool, a useful way to extend the story started in a single photo or post. The audience which populates Instagram is younger than the one who visits Facebook, with the average age calculated between 16 and 30 years. This social channel lends itself considerably to a type of B2C business, being a picture a much more immediate way to communicate than any eye-catching headline. And this is exactly what Instagram does: it distributes reviews, advertisements, life experiences through single images, whether they are photographs or short comics.
What a brand can do on this social channel:
Since its audience is young and interested in more emotional content than the one on Facebook, this social channel is the perfect place for those who aim to move from Product to Experience — which we talk about more extensively in this article. The Influencers themselves become a vehicle for marketing dissemination, as their followers trust the given advice — for better or for worse — and the Influencers mostly have an innate ability to communicate. So we can say that communicating and increasing engagement is what Instagram offers to brands.
This social channel is the ideal channel for brands which want to interact with their buyers, and at the same time inform them about official statements, business changes or new partnerships. Recent research has shown that about 52% of the tweets created daily are posted by brands and entrepreneurs that give news or announcements to their followers with the purpose or keeping them up-to-date. Twitter requires the gift of synthesis to be used and used well: in the few characters granted you have to outline the importance of the announce you’re giving and at the same time use studied and popular hashtags to attract visitors. Like Facebook, Twitter’s audience is varied and diversified, so it is up to the digital marketer who works with a brand to target the people most suited and receptive to the messages of that specific business.
What a brand can do on this social channel:
The use of tweets, a typical example of fast-moving content, accompanies very well the Influencer market and its ability to communicate quickly with their followers. In this perspective, in addition to using appropriate tags and hashtags in sufficient quantity to attract the attention of the buyers, you gain notoriety by managing your Twitter accounts as the channel that gives both the opportunity for its audience to communicate with you and to be always updated on the activities of your business.
This social channel is aimed primarily at a type of B2B communication. The audience is, of course, a group of professionals with whom you have to communicate and kept interested following a rather simple rule: offer content that gives insights about your brand. At LinkedIn, professionals try to expand their business — it’s no coincidence that is one of the main places to look for work or make new business contacts — and are interested in the news about the field in which they work. Compared to other social networks, the interaction is very low, but the suggestions are still used to move the content of a brand. Plus, you can be sure that whoever is following you here is curious about your ideas and eager to learn more.
- What a brand can do on this social channel:
LinkedIn requires a professional approach, but not necessarily a formal one. Posts must be structured to present content that may be of interest to the followers who follow us, but giving an idea of who we are and what we do. So if our brand deals with products related, for example, to the children’s entertainment industry, it will publish a different post than a bank announcing a merger to its shareholders. Although the interaction on LinkedIn is lower than on other social networks, its users are driven to consume more full-bodied content. Yes, therefore, to substantial posts that refer to articles in the industry or materials that professionals we have designed may find interesting.
Now that we analyzed them let’s have a look at the major mistakes entrepreneurs make when it comes to social channels:
- Many businesses don’t take care of their social media pages: some brands either causally pick a single social media to be on ignoring the others, or they don’t put a special effort in the content. Having a social channel page without updating it or without having any content worth of reading is like not having one at all. How can you convert users into customers without interesting them in your brand?
- They don’t answer their customers when they post a request or a comment. Hence they don’t offer valuable customer assistance and rubbing off potential customers isn’t going to bring any advantage to a brand. 71% of customers affirmed they’re more prone to buy from a business which can take care of them online answering questions and interacting.
- Some brands don’t see feedback as a way to gain an honest insight about their business and reply rudely or not at all to feedback and reviews. Do you think these people will be interested in becoming customers?
- They don’t diversify their posts on social channels, they don’t post often enough, and they consider Facebook just a place where to repeat the message they wrote on the website. Doing so they don’t tempt their customers to visit their social channels and miss the opportunity to have significant customer retention.
As we saw, social channels can be a great — and mostly free — tool to use to convert users into customers. This fruitful conversion can happen, though, only if they’re managed by someone who knows how to approach the different types of audiences. We’re talking of a digital marketer, of course.
Digital Advertising Agencies like Targeto can help entrepreneurs building a strong online presence and take advantage of the numerous opportunities the social channels offer because they know that different audiences require a different approach.
And, most importantly, they can provide it!
