Our consumers have learned what inadequate social media efforts look like, and they’re tired of direct response advertising.
People are tired of businesses marketing to them on social media only to sell them new products and services that they don’t want or need.
This direct type of social media advertising is burning people out.
It’s turning people away from our businesses and brands because we are not taking the time to meet our consumers where they are.
Businesses are trying hard to speed up the selling process that they forget about the customer and what the customer wants and needs.
Here’s an example to explain what I mean.
If you are at an in-person networking event, you wouldn’t walk up to someone you’ve never met and say,
“Hi, my name is John, could you give me your email address so I can send you my lead magnet?”
or…..
“Hi, my name is John, do you want to learn how to run better Facebook ads for your business? Give me your email address, and I”ll give you my lead magnet.”
This is a conversation most people would not be comfortable having.
But, this is exactly what we are doing to people online.
We are having premature conversations online with strangers who don’t even know who we are.
That’s why our ads aren’t working, and that’s why marketers and business owners are burning through audiences so quickly.
That’s why our businesses get a bad reputation because we aren’t putting our consumers first online.
When we take what we usually do, and we put our consumers first, we build their product awareness.
We go through the buyer journey through pieces of content rather than give me your email, then we can finally build good relationships with our customers.
It’s time to give people a new and better approach that speaks to them exactly where they are in their buyer journey.
So, check out this four-step social media strategy to engage and get results with an audience on social media without a million-dollar budget.
Step 1: Map & Plan Where You Want People to Go
The first step in getting results on social media is to map and envision where you want your ideal consumer to go.
Make sure to personalize this for your social media advertising so the consumer will flow through the buying process smoothly.
If you are unsure how to determine your next conversion point you could ask yourself the following questions:
- What journey or path are you trying to take your ideal consumer on?
- How do you want them to think or feel about your business?
- What action do you want them to take?
- Do you want them to sign up for your email list?
- Do you want them to buy your product?
- What exactly do you want them to do?
These are all questions to help you better understand how to be clear on your expectations and know exactly what steps you want your audience to take.
And then, once you understand what path you want people to take, you will learn how to properly serve your ideal consumer through their actions and buying patterns.
Now that you understand where your audience is going, it’s time to move to the next step and create content for your people on social media.
Step 2: Create a Piece of Content
For the second step, it’s time to create a piece of content that you can show to your ideal audience on Facebook or Instagram.
The content you create could be a video, blog post, or any form of content that will get them to take the first desired step in your process that we talked about before.
When creating content for your audience on social media, it’s important to remember to create content that intrigues your audience enough to make them want to learn more about you.
Another critical thing to remember is to make sure the content you create is for where your consumer is at today and for what they are thinking about today.
The goal is to create social media content that showcases your business, product, or service in the way you want your ideal consumer to see it, but it has to be super relevant to where they are at that moment.
Here’s an example to better explain what I mean.
If I want someone to dine inside my restaurant after the quarantine, I may want to create a Facebook video on what the safest precautions are for restaurants since businesses are starting to open back up.
The purpose of this first video is to ultimately meet your ideal consumer where they are in their journey and in their process.
This is to warm them up to you and to make them aware that you exist and could be an option for them.
Then, you would create another video or a different piece of content to move those people along further into the buying process, which leads to the next step.
Step 3: Build a Custom Audience
For this step, build a custom audience on Facebook of the people who engaged with your first video or the first piece of content.
This is where you want to take the people who just engaged with your video or piece of content and move them forward in the buyers’ journey or to the next conversion point.
These are now hot leads who are closer to purchasing with you.
Here is an example to better explain.
If the first piece of content you created was a video, take that audience who watched 50-75% of the video and push them to take the next desired action.
If they are ready, this could even be a purchase.
The goal is to serve the audience with a new piece of relevant content until they feel comfortable enough to purchase with you.
This could be as easy as creating another video; it’s whatever they need.
And by meeting people where they are at and serving them in the way they need on social media, it will drastically drive your advertising costs down, among many other benefits – especially when using social media ads to target your ideal target audience on Facebook or Instagram.
Facebook and Instagram want to keep people on their social media platforms so that they can continue to get their ad revenue and continue to get the user’s time.
You also drastically increase your ROI because you are only going to serve your direct response ad to the people already engaged in the product, program, or service.
Step 4: Get Those People to Take the Next Step
Studies say it typically takes a person around seven touches with a business before they make a purchase.
So, the goal for the final step is to get the people from the custom audience you created to take the next step in your social media strategy or to make a purchase.
This is where you can create specific content for each step in their buyer journey that caters to their wants and needs.
Once you do this, you will start to see a pattern in how many pieces of content your target audience will need before they make a purchase with you.
Wrapping Up
These are all steps we can take to avoid direct response advertising on social media.
We have to stop flooding people with our new offers, deals, and products when they don’t even know who we are.
We have to learn the patterns of our ideal people and serve them in the way they need and at the time they need it.
You have to show the right message to the right person at the right time with the right expectations or as we like to call it the #R3MAT Method.
Once you do this you will begin to build better relationships with your ideal consumer and ultimately create a better consumer at the end of the day that will have a higher lifetime value.
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