You’ve taken the plunge and started your own startup business and now you want to know How to Use Social Media to Find New Customers. Startups live and die on new business, and there’s no other time when winning new clients or customers will have a bigger impact. Going from none to one, to two clients is arguably a bigger transition than moving from 20 to 25, and without any momentum or case history behind you, it’s tough.
Most decision-makers believe their business can handle their own social media in-house because almost everyone runs their own, personal social media profiles. Many leaders also believe that they should run their own social media pages themselves for authenticity’s sake: who better to post about “us” than us right?
Wrong! There comes a time when business leaders either don’t have time to run their social media effectively any more, or they grow frustrated at their inability to drive meaningful likes, shares, comments, replies, RTs, traffic and leads. This is where an outsource option becomes very viable for these startups.
Nine out of 10 startups fail, 42% of startups said there was no market need for their product
1. Let Your Customers Shine
Deep down, customers want to know that you care about them—their needs, their wants, their concerns, and their opinions. If you already have any testimonials you can get from customers, clients or friends and family that have used your product or service, then this is a great place to start.
You can acknowledge them on your social media profiles and encourage your customers to post photos of themselves using your products or write short summaries of their experience with your service. Encourage them to tell their stories, which you’ll share with the world.
By making your current customers feel valued and special, you can not only turn them into loyal brand ambassadors, but you can also show leads and prospects that you care about your customers, which increases trust.
According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers say they trust earned media – such as word of mouth from family and friends – above all other forms of advertising
2. Research Demographics
If you’re having trouble converting social media users to customers, you might be on the wrong sites. Consider who your buyer personas are. Now, what platforms are they known to use? You need to gear your marketing efforts towards the right demographics.
On Facebook, there are more female than male users, and although older users are becoming more common, it’s still a teen-dominated site. LinkedIn doesn’t have as many young people, but rather, more business-focused adults. It’s a good platform if you want to get new customers in the B2B world. Twitter is more heavily used by males than females. Pinterest is dominated by higher-earning women. And Instagram is preferred by young people.
Consider these facts when deciding where to focus your efforts so you can improve your results and successfully target the right audiences and get new customers.
3. Use Social Media to Collect Data
If you’re wondering How to Use Social Media to Find New Customers then Social media isn’t just a great tool for sharing information. It’s also a stellar opportunity for data collection. You can use it as a research tool to piece together information about customers, to gain information about the needs of your target audience, and to improve your personalized cold emails. Listen and take note of what people are saying.
4. Use Humour
An increasing number of brands are now marketing on social media in order to get new customers. It can be difficult to stand apart these days. Using humour in your content can help you stand out from the pack. People love funny content, and it’ll stick with them.
5. Use Hashtags
Hashtags allow you to easily interact with interconnected users en masse. People will follow hashtags that they’re interested in, so you can use them to find a wealth of new prospects to follow. Plus, when you use hashtags in your posts, then your content will be seen by everyone that follows them. Hashtags can broaden your reach so you can target new audiences in order to get new customers.
6. Engage
Above all, social media is about engagement. It’s about relationship building. Consumers don’t go on social sites to have advertisements shoved in their faces. They go to socialize, to chat, and to have fun. Remember this. If your attitude is to sell, sell, sell, you won’t get new customers. Instead, start and join conversations, engage effectively, interact with users, and be real.
Quick tips to apply now
- Participate in relevant groups, forums and don’t hesitate to share useful information, links, resources. Even reveal a few secrets – that will definitely carry some weight for you and bring you more authority in the niche.
- Offer freebies – In our case, this is the most successful strategy by far, for list building.
- Focus on customer retaining, repeat customers save you advertising costs
- Use call to actions to get social media shares for your brand. Ask for it when its right time.
- Use the incentivized system, content lockers, let me explain. You can use Facebook, twitter, google plus buttons with javascript that upon successful sharing can unlock special sections, special content, coupon codes etc for the sharer. This is a very effective method for effortless viral marketing.
- Use explainer videos. Videos keep your audience tuned, decrease bounce rate which betters SEO in turn. And also increases conversion rate by like 200% as we experienced.
- Use a live chat/ support agent. Socialize with your potential customers, whether they convert or not.
- Go extra miles to make sure clients are satisfied once you have your sales coming in. Care for “their” success, and you will see you don’t need a thousand new customers every month to be successful, but your retaining customers will keep you filled with orders.
- Keep an eye on who is advertising on Facebook, Instagram, youtube ads. This way you can easily find leads willing to spend money on social media marketing.
- Use @ and # marketing wisely. This is trending
- Post engaging content, invite tagging, answers, arguments from your audience. Be humorous, touch the trending topics, don’t shy away from controversial topics (let people discuss)
- Don’t hesitate to hire social media experts, content writers, SEO professionals, PPC specialists or VA – this will save a lot of time and allow you to serve your clients better.
For help getting your business off the ground with a full social media marketing plan, then contact us now for a free marketing health check.
Let us take a look at your business objectives, where you’re at in the business so far and what you need to do with your marketing to achieve it. Black and white feedback, no fluff, actionable insights that you can put into play right away. Contact us today on the form below for a free consultation.
