The importance of appealing to different levels of customer interest
When it comes to marketing, it’s important to remember that everything is a value exchange. This is important to remember when learning how to convert social media into sales.
What do we mean by value exchange?
You are giving value and receiving value in return – for your business that you run, you offer a product or service, and your customer gives you money for it.
That part is simple enough and you probably have it under control. Yet, what about the need to constantly be reaching new customers? This is the part that slowwwwly slides off the edge of the cliff amongst the chaos that is running your own business.
Converting social media into sales
How do you get people to learn about you and your product? That’s a new value exchange. The customer’s attention is now what you want, and marketing is where you offer different things to get it.
In the best case scenario, your product is awesome and just by learning about it, the customer wants to make the transaction. However, it’s never that easy… why? Because there are hundreds of thousands of products always trying to get our attention.
Below we go through the three different types of customers to consider when creating your social media content. You might have heard the old ‘don’t post for the sake of posting’ which is essentially very true.
Build the good habit of justifying each social media post with:
- Which level of interested customer it would appeal to
- A larger marketing goal (increase followers, increase brand awareness etc)
- Is this true to my brand?
Turning followers into customers
The High-Interest Customer
The easy win is a high-interest customer. A high-interest customer is someone who has actively decided to buy a product or service like yours and is looking for you, and businesses that offer what you are offering.
Challenges with capturing and converting a high-interest customer:
- Being visible in the exact spots they’re looking and,
- Standing out from your competitors
The first thing we need to remember is that most people look for things online – we would be willing to bet you do! Did you know that 63% of all shopping begins online – EVEN if that purchase itself happens in a store!
This is why you hear marketers bang on about needing to understand your customer and also how they seek you out. Ever created a persona or a customer profile? Cover these important questions to analyse your customer.
- Is your customer reliant on search engines for an exact fit to their needs?
- Does your customer use social media to see what others are recommending?
Next, your high-interest customer will likely compare you to similar brands, so you need to know what your most valuable points of difference are that will help you win that toss-up.
Know what you’re worth to a customer and find the right balance between the value you offer and the price point. Sometimes, you need to be the cheapest, sometimes you need to be the most interesting, but this is something you need to know and communicate in the market.
On social media, high-interest customers respond to posts with tagged products such as Instagram Shop, they respond to product or service images and they respond to posts where value is instantly and easily shown. The end-game is to have your high-interest customer view your social media content, say “yep that’s exactly what I am after!” and click purchase either on the product tag on post, or by clicking through to your website link in your profile.
The Medium-Interest Customer
Then, there’s a medium-interest customer. They know they want something but they’re still deciding what that something exactly is. Let’s say, you’re thinking about making your cleaning at home easier, so you’ve been tossing up the idea of a new vacuum cleaner. You have no idea if you need a pet-friendly vacuum cleaner, robotic, or cordless. You are also open to other products that might also be effective in cleaning. You’re going to do some research to get your head around the differences, the cost of cleaning products and the value each product provides. You’re also open to getting a cleaning professional, so you aren’t married to the idea of purchasing a specific product.
This is where content marketing is king. It’s not only great for building your authority as a brand, but as that medium-interest customer gets ready to make that final decision, you’ve already caught their eye during the research phase, and are more likely to be considered.
Different people research for different durations, so you need at least a written article on your website or some awesome and informative social media posts. At EmpowerUp Marketing, we preach connective marketing, so we recommend you always consider email marketing and other automated touchpoints for someone who’s going to take their time weighing up options.
On social media, your medium interest customer is likely to become a follower first, engage with your posts but initially not take any further action. You want to encourage your medium-interest customer to ask questions directly to you, either in DMs or your post comments. You want to focus on content that goes into detail about why your product or service solves their problem, so that when you offer that irresistible offer – like a sale – they convert! Remember this type of customer will research you, click links in your profile, read reviews online and conduct their research. They will also be looking closely at your competitors as they seek to solve their problem.
The Low-Interest Customer
Finally, there’s someone you know will love what you offer, but has no idea they need you… the low-interest customer! This is where awareness building is important.
Why is building awareness so important?
Take our content marketing concept again, and keep it super non-pushy. Just ‘hey, did you know 75% of people will be more impressed with you if they come over and your floors are clean?’
At this point, we’re not even talking about the vacuum cleaner in the opening lines. We’re focusing on the customer’s problem, so we can address it and then offer why a specific vacuum cleaner is a solution. Your low-interest customer’s attention is captured by cleaning specific content as they know their problem – they want a cleaner house. They just don’t know how to solve that problem.
Focus on the problem in the awareness phase – connect with the low-interest customer over the problem they are experiencing.
This is where we’ll take action to get details from the customer so we can keep in contact with them whilst they go through the journey of deciding how to fix their cleaning problem whether they want a vacuum cleaner, which one they need, and if they’re going to buy it again.
Wait, get the customer’s details? Why would they give us that? Yes, this is another challenge in digital marketing. It’s a lot easier to market to people we know are interested rather than shouting out into the void. Let’s remember that social media is not a platform you own, therefore you do not have control over the algorithm changes, irrelevant followers, privacy updates and other influential factors. This is why on social media, without content that relates to one of these three customers, you can feel like you’re shouting into the void.
Why capturing a customer’s details is so important
Getting your customer’s details is another value exchange. The customer hears “I want your details so I can continue to convince you to buy my product,” and wonders, “Is the value I receive from your business really worth it?”
Now we need something other than just visible information to offer our potential customers, hidden behind the ‘gate’ of receiving their contact information. This could be a report or fact sheet that they’re interested in, that we’ve written as an expert in the field, which they can have in exchange for their contact information. Or maybe, we’re willing to offer a discount code or a giveaway. Think about what your low-interest customer would love at this early stage in their journey, that will increase their intent to communicate further with your business.
For good digital marketing, we need to find the right combination of:
- Providing something the customer wants in exchange for details we can use to stay in touch with them,
- Giving information that is interesting to the customer in exchange for their attention,
- Having an active presence in the spaces the customer looks for your offering – so they can easily buy from you when they’re ready.
Yes, that’s a lot of ducks to get in a row. 🦆🦆🦆
This is where an understanding of your customer or industry leads to a digital marketing action. Some questions to consider when thinking about digital marketing as a business owner:
- Do you need search advertising to be the first thing a high- interest customer comes across?
- Do you need to build positive reviews to offer customer validation of your brand for your medium-interest customers who are conducting research?
- Do you need email automation to follow up a low-interest customer who’s not ready to buy yet, so you don’t have to waste your time on cold leads?
- Do you need well written and researched content marketing that you can share on social media, that is optimised to bring organic traffic back to your website?
- Are you considering everything you actually need?
Maybe not! It’s an overwhelming space and that’s where we come in. As professional marketers in the biz to support small businesses, we know that some of these marketing activities you can absolutely do yourself. We also know that a little professional guidance can save you months on a strategy that may not actually suit your business and space you operate in. Most of all, we know time is a precious resource, and there are several marketing activities you might not want to waste your time on.
We can help you find the online spaces you need to fill, help you put the best version of yourself out there and handle any of the elements that you don’t want to do yourself.
We Empower small businesses across Australia to have the same comprehensive digital marketing presence as big brands. We do this in a personalised way that keeps you, the business owner, in the driver’s seat, guided by affordable marketing solutions.
So, to answer the opening question, “Why don’t my social media posts bring in business?” You’re not offering value to your customers of different interest levels when posting about yourself on social media.
Are you ready to start building your business bigger online and connect with the right customers? Enquire with us to see how we can help you grow!
