10 Tips To Increase Your Social Media Conversions In 2020

At this point, I’m sure you don’t need to be convinced of the value of social media marketing. Nevertheless, take a moment to absorb this fact: there are now over 3.48 billion social media users in the world. To put it into perspective, that’s a whopping 46% of the entire world’s population. 

These numbers show the incredible amount of power social media can have in growing your own brand. 

Now for the million-dollar question – how can you take advantage of the seemingly endless benefits that social media has to offer in 2020?

One of the biggest problems that brands and businesses face is learning how to generate leads, drive sales, and maximize ROI from their social media marketing efforts. To achieve any of these, you must first learn how to increase your social media conversion rates.

If you are wondering how you can improve your social media conversion rates, then read on.

Before we go into the strategies, let’s take a quick peek at some interesting conversion rate optimization statistics and why social media should be part of your marketing strategy (If it isn’t already).

Conversion Rate Optimization Statistics

• Only about 22% of businesses are satisfied with their social media conversion rates (Econsultancy).
• Adding videos to landing pages can increase conversions by up to 86% (Eyeview Digital).
• For every $92 that is spent in getting new customers, only a meager $1 is spent in trying to convert them (Econsultancy).
• The phrase “conversion rate optimization” is searched more frequently than in previous years (Google).
• 68% of small businesses do not have a documented conversion rate optimization strategy (CXL).
• Just by using correct targeting and testing methods, you can boost your conversion rates by up to 300% (Marketing Experiments).
• B2C companies that take advantage of “marketing automation” can boost conversions to as high as 50% (Emarketer).

The average conversion rates of visitors that see user-generated content (UGC) is 161% higher than those that don’t (Yotpo).

Why Social Media Is Key To Your 2020 Marketing Strategy

It’s impossible to ignore the importance of social media in digital marketing today. When effectively optimized, social media can help you reach millions of customers with ease. If you haven’t doubled down on social media for your 2020 marketing strategy yet, here are some reasons why you should: 

Conversions: It doesn’t matter if you are a B2B or B2C type of business, social media is an effective tool for generating new leads. Every social media post, whether it is images, text or video content is an opportunity for leads to convert and move further down your sales funnel.

Traffic: They are billions of users on social media, and having access to all these individuals can help boost your traffic. 

Customer insights: Have you heard of social listening? Social listening is a way to understand a brand’s popularity by analyzing information from various social media channels. Social media listening allows you to get valuable insights on customer feedback, brand mentions, and the type of content, product or service that your audience engages with the most.

Brand awareness: Social media is a great way to build awareness for your brand. No matter how great your product or content is, you just won’t receive any leads or generate traffic if no one knows about you. With social media, you have a chance to promote your content to a wider audience and increase brand awareness.

We’ve seen some statistics and reasons why social media should be part of your marketing strategy, now let’s look at tips you can use in improving your social media conversion rates.

1. Optimize Social Media Landing Pages For Conversions

Your landing page can make or break your social media marketing campaign. Doing it right can cause a significant increase in the number of leads that you convert.  

Before we go any further, understand that what works for one website might not work for you. It is important that you first understand how landing pages work in a more general sense so that you would be able to optimize it to meet your specific needs.

Make sure check out: 10 secrets to an amazing high-converting sales page

What is a social media landing page?

A social media landing page is the destination on your website created to serve a social media audience with a specific purpose. This purpose is broadly classified into two categories: to capture leads that you can market to in the future or warming up potential customers that you are trying to sell to.

Knowing the purpose of creating a landing page would help you optimize it better for conversions.

Optimizing a landing page is predominantly for one reason: to convert as many people as you can. Each time you make changes to your landing page, it is in the hope that it converts better. 

It’s important that you design your landing page based on the objectives that you want to achieve. When you have these objectives figured out, it’ll be a whole lot easier to convert visitors on your landing page. Depending on your objectives, your landing page could take one of these forms:

The click-through landing page

The aim of this landing page is to get the visitor to go deeper into your site. This is achieved by asking the visitor a simple question. This question is usually a problem the visitor wants to solve. For example, bills.com demonstrates a very good example of a click-through landing page.

When the visitor clicks on the question and answers it, they are taken to the next step in the sales funnel. Quick, simple and easy. If you can get it to work.

The lead gen landing page

This is one of the most popular types of landing pages. The aim of this landing page is to get the visitor to give up their name and email address. Real estate site Trulia offers a good example of a lead gen landing page.

Why does this landing page work? It’s very simple. The landing page doesn’t ask for much. They just ask for your email with the promise of telling you how much your house is worth.

The app/mobile landing page

Now this one is a bit of an outlier and requires a much more specific business model to work. There are several reasons why you would want to increase conversions. One of these might be to increase the number of mobile or app downloads. An optimized landing page can help increase the number of downloads. Weathertron’s landing page is a good example.

The visitor is asked to do just two things – download the app or just watch the video. 

To improve conversions of your landing page, try some of these tips:

1. Decide on the objectives and the campaign type you want to run

It is important that you understand the reason why you are starting the campaign. Will your landing page be created solely for generating traffic? Would it be for capturing leads? Would it be tied to a social media campaign? These are some of the questions you need to answer before you proceed.

2. Test your headline

Did you know that only two out of 10 people would keep reading after seeing your headline? This is how important your headline is. Your headline is the first thing that visitors see when they enter your site, so it’s important that it’s compelling enough to make you want to keep on reading. 

Here a few things to think about in order to get it right:

• It should be simple and clear
• Consider promising to solve a problem that the visitor is facing
• Try starting it off as a question. For example: Want Better Car Insurance For Less?
• Remember to should match your headline with what your social media ad was advertising
• A little bit of humor goes a long way if it fits the context

3. Optimize your lead capture form

Your lead capture form is one of the most important aspects of your landing page. Take a look at these two examples: 

Example A

Example B

Which of these lead capture forms do you think would convert the most? 

After Cash4UsedCars.com changed the form from example A to example B, they noticed a 77% increase in conversion rates.

4. Optimize your CTA buttons

The color, shape, size, and message of your CTA buttons play a significant role in your conversion rates. Since your button is the most clicked thing on your landing page, ensure that it is optimized for conversions.

 Color: The best three colors for CTA buttons are red, green, and orange or yellow. The worst colors are black, white, and brown.

Size: Your CTA button needs to be visible. If your visitors find it difficult to find your CTA button, you might not get any clicks. And trust me, most visitors won’t go looking for the CTA button. 

Message: This is probably the most important. You ALWAYS want your buttons text to align, and if possible use the same wording, as your headers.

2. Take Advantage Of Influencer Marketing

The power of influencer marketing cannot be understated. Due to the huge amount of followers and engagement influencers receive, they can help your brand get more conversions and improve brand awareness.

Research done by TapInfluence shows that influencer marketing offers 11 times more return on investment than other traditional forms of digital marketing. Further study showed that 95% of consumers would trust recommendations from other social media users over a brand.

The problem is that most people believe that working with influencers can be very expensive. In reality, you don’t need to shell out thousands of dollars before you can work with influencers.

 There are micro-influencers with a few thousand loyal followers that engage regularly with their content. All you need to do is find the right influencer for your business depending on your niche or industry. You can use tools like BuzzSumo and Klear to perform your influencer search. 

3. Use Video-Centric Posts & Ads To Boost Conversions

The human brain was created to consume video content. Research shows that the brain can process videos 60,000 times faster than text. 

According to reports from Eyeview Digital, just adding videos to your social media posts and ads can increase your conversion rate by 80%. 

Wondering how you can use videos to boost your social media conversion rates? Use these tips:

1 - Create short and interesting videos

People get easily distracted and can lose interest over time. When your videos are too long, you risk losing the viewer. The shorter the video, the better (usually). Your aim should be to create short videos that are interesting and captivating.

2 - Add a lead capture in the first 10-20% of the videos

Most people do not know you can capture leads within videos. You can use a tool called Wistia Turnstile to insert lead captures inside your video.

You can place this turnstile anywhere in your video to capture leads and improve your conversion rates.

3 - Use video testimonials

People trust first-hand experiences from other customers more than the brand itself. They are constantly looking for social proof before they might decide to make use of a product or service. You can use video testimonials to take advantage of this. A client explaining how your service helped them with a problem would urge other users to want to use your product too.

4. Don’t Underestimate The Power Of User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is an efficient way to increase conversions. Just by posting customers’ photos, reviews, and videos, you can significantly increase your social media conversion rates. 

 In fact, A/B tests on an e-commerce site showed that including Instagram photos on the product page of one of their top sellers boosted their conversion rates by 24.3%. 

The reason why user-generated content works is because it improves the authenticity of your brand. It shows users what the experience with your product looks like in the real world, thereby increasing the trust they would have for your brand. 

A good example of UGC is this Instagram post from Modcloth.

In this picture, they show one of their customers getting married in one of their wedding dresses. This image generated over 4,000 likes and a lot of comments. UGC is great for increasing engagement and improving brand awareness.

Another company I love, that you’ve heard me mention a ton before if you’ve read any of our previous blog posts is Hoaka Swimwear. Hoaka’s Instagram strategy is almost completely based around user-generated content allowing them to build an incredible amount of KLT while having an almost endless supply of free content.

Pro tip: Remember to always ask permission from the original owner of the content before you upload it. After getting permission, remember to tag them in the caption too.

5. Run Social Media Contests & Promotions

Nothing gets your audience more excited than the chance of winning something (take a look back at Hoaka’s IG feed). You can run a social media contest if you are trying to grow your follower base, increase brand awareness, grow your email lists, and jumpstart engagement.

Before you run a social media contest, it is important that you know what your goals are. Your goals should determine the kind of contest you would run.

For example, if you want to increase the number of followers you have, the contestants would have to follow a specific profile to qualify for the prize. 

Another example is lead generation. If you want to generate leads with contests, people should be required to input their emails to participate. 

Pro Tip: Running a social media contest is also a great way to get user-generated content you can use in the future.

6. Create Content That Suits Your Target Audience

If you create content for the wrong audience, you’ll be missing out on a ton of conversions and receive little or no return on your investment.  

Your social media marketing success starts with finding your target audience and creating content that fits their needs. You don’t want to waste your time and resources creating content for an audience that won’t convert.

7. Make Use Of The Right Distribution Platforms

Depending on your objective, industry or niche, different social media platforms might work best for you. There is no point in spending the majority of your time on a social media channel where you are not seeing any conversions or engagement. 

Ask yourself who your target social media audience is and discover which social media networks they are most active on. These are the places you should be concentrating on. 

Note that social media users have a specific kind of content they expect to see when scrolling through their feed. To help you make a more informed decision, here are a few suggestions for content that work really well on major social media channels:

Facebook: Videos and curated content

Twitter: News, blogs, and gifs

Instagram: High-quality images and high res videos

LinkedIn: Professional content, jobs, and company news

Pinterest: Pictures and infographics

Once you have decided on the kind of content you want to use, you’ll be able to create a much more effective social media strategy.

8. Offer A Clear Value Proposition

Your value proposition is a service or feature intended to make your company or product attractive to customers. It is a major part of the reason why a social media user would purchase your product. 

If there is one conversion optimization tip that you should never forget, it would be to optimize the heck out of your value proposition.

Your value proposition should be three things:

Relevant: Explain quickly and simply how your product or service helps solve your audience’s specific problem.

Provide Value: Highlight the benefits that the user will get.

Differentiate: What differentiates you from the competition and why should they buy from you?

9. Constantly Perform Analytics & Tracking

If you are not performing analysis or tracking your social media conversion rates, you would not know whether you are getting it right or not.  

Tracking allows you to know where you need to improve. You would be able to determine your highest performing social media channels and the specific areas where you would need to put in more effort.

Make sure to check out: The 9 Best Social Media Management Apps For Entrepreneurs

10. Whatever The Format, Think “Value First”

While trying to increase conversions, don’t forget to use social media the right way.  

Most social media users don’t browse social media platforms for the purpose of seeing brand ads. Most users have even learned to selectively ignore branded content. 

To get the best ROI on your social media marketing, remember to give value first. When you offer value to users, they won’t complain when you decide to advertise one or two of your products or services. Think of Gary Vee’s Jab Jab Jab Right Hook strategy here.

Now make sure you go out there and put as many of these to the test as possible to boost your social media conversions!