Does Engagement = Sales?

Are You Doing Numbers?

It's so funny. We all know social media can be fake and fleeting, but so many of us fall for vanity metrics regardless.

I've been working in and around social media for almost 15 years. Despite my solid track record as an organic marketer and strategist, sometimes I run into people - prospective clients, peers, random onlookers - who think success is directly attributable to the kind of engagement a person or brand has on social media.

So, I'm going to address the question head-on: Does strong engagement lead to strong sales?

Eh...it depends.

Come on - if you've been around for a while, you know how I'm going to answer! Marketing is such a tangled web with so many different moving parts. It's difficult to say definitively that good engagement will translate to strong returns.

Sure, getting more eyeballs on your products and services helps a lot! It's especially helpful when you're selling something that people need quickly, and if they know you exist, they're more likely to buy from you. I'm thinking storage solutions, office supplies, things like that.

Instead of focusing on all that for this post, I want to talk about what matters more than strong engagement. What really translates to revenue, especially for businesses with long conversion windows like mine.

Reaching the appropriate audience

Starting with a target persona, and more importantly, refining over time, will help you reach the right audience who will actually want to buy what you're selling.

Sometimes marketing feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall, I know. You do need to do some level of spaghetti-throwing to see what sticks. That's part of the deal.

At some point, and it should be sooner rather than later, you need to start focusing on what your audience looks like, what they want, and how you can address them in your content.

Ideally, you should be thinking about one person as you write marketing content. You may also have more than one persona, but each piece of content should be addressing one audience in particular. If you keep it that laser-focused, it's a lot easier to answer the right questions.

Answering the right questions

Here are some of the questions you should be answering on your website and in social media content (I'm being your prospect right now):

• How will this help me?
• What are you doing to counter my objections?
• What is it like to work with you?
• Are you going to make my life easier?

You might also want to answer these questions for me (I'm still pretending to be your client, shh...)

• What will it cost?
• What do you need from me?
• How long will it take?

There's a lot of research out there about how prospects get anywhere from 60-90% of the way through the "buyer journey" before they even reach out to you. You may have prospects checking you out right now and you have no idea that they aren't reaching out to you because they haven't gotten all of their questions answered, and they're not ready for a one-on-one discussion.

The more questions you answer upfront, the better.

Providing clear instructions

Someone said this at a conference and it's stuck with me ever since. I wish I still had the name of the presentation, but this was the general idea:

What do you want people to do? Just tell them!

You can make your calls to action super clear:

• Book a call with me
• Email me
• Download this free thing
• DM me
• Take this quiz

Direct your audience where you want them to go. It doesn't have to be all clever. In fact, clear is usually better.

Offering real value

When I said I was going to start a LinkedIn newsletter, I had some people tell me they thought it was a bad idea. They told me I should "own" my list instead of having LinkedIn own it. I should have an email newsletter that I run myself. Otherwise, I'm losing the value of my list!!

I do a lot of email marketing for clients, but for some reason, when I sit down to do an email newsletter for myself, it never ends up sticking. I mean, never say never. I have collected some emails from the eBook I published, but email hasn't been something I've cared about much for myself.

I've been a professional blogger for 16 years. I've been a writer for much longer. I've always felt like my strength lies in blogging. LinkedIn articles felt so much better suited to that compared to email.

Here's what I'm trying to say - Focus on where you provide value, and how you can provide value, and focus less on where you're trying to extract value from your audience.

I don't think there's anything wrong with gating some content. I made a meaty book with 54 tips for punching up your marketing. Yes, I want your email for that. Between that and my assessment, that's the only gated content on my site! I want you to get my thoughts for free.

On LinkedIn, I have almost 300 subscribers who may read my newsletter any given week I publish it. You know how long it would have taken me to rustle up 300 email subscribers?

You have to understand what people will and won't be willing to do to access your content. Demonstrate your value so that they understand what you're all about. When they're ready for you, they know where to find you. Trust me.

What's going down in the DMs

Likes, emojis, and GIF reactions (are we still doing those? I mean, I am!) are cute and everything. But let me tell you what I know intimately after working in this industry for a decade and a half. Something a lot of people won't tell you.

The people who are doing big numbers on any social platform aren't necessarily making much at all in terms of revenue.

People can talk a big talk, but many influencers, coaches, and marketing consultants are still running their businesses as a "side hustle."

And listen, side hustles are great!

The problem is that a lot of them won't talk about their day job, and they still haven't figured out the way to convert their engagement into full-time revenue.

This isn't just me tooting my own horn, I swear. This is the advice I give to clients when they hire.

First off, you get what you pay for. If someone is pitching you at a low rate and showing big numbers, ask yourself why they aren't charging more. It's not a hard and fast rule, but...

Second, focus on the substance behind a service provider. What do their materials look like? Do they look like what you want to put out in the world? Does this person/agency/firm have a polished system? Are they responsive? Did they come to you via a referral?

I can't speak to everyone's back end, but I can talk about mine. Even when my LinkedIn articles don't seem to be performing as well as I want, even when my posts fall flat, the important business goes down in the DMs.

My social media presence and my web presence are extensions of my overall pitch to businesses. I share my portfolios with prospective clients wherever I happen to meet them. Sometimes it's here on LinkedIn. Sometimes it's in a Slack community. Sometimes it's through a brokerage or a referral from another business.

Especially for businesses with long conversion windows, publishing content that has value, answers questions for prospects, and is geared toward the correct audience will pay off over time.

I've had people message me months after I publish something to tell me how much they liked it and how they've been thinking about reaching out ever since.

You never know when it'll pay off. Focus on those one-on-one conversations and those form submissions where the right person at the right time got in contact with you. Track these if you can and tie them to revenue. It'll help you figure out what pieces of content are giving you the greatest ROI. They tend to fall through the reporting cracks, so don't miss this step if you can help it (I'm also talking to myself on this one).

Trust me when I say that there are people who are reading everything you write, but you won't find that out for a while. Especially for services that have longer conversion windows, that cumulative effort will pay off. Even if it's two years from now, they will show up in your DMs. This is where the balance in push-pull marketing comes in - more on that below.

Some important reminders!

• People can buy followers and engagement. This can look like traditional ads, bot farms, outsourcing to actual people, or engagement pods. If you can't figure out what everyone else is raving about, maybe that tells you something.
• You don't have to do it the way everyone does it. In fact, it's better if you do things in a way that feels genuine to you and your business. You can do things that boost engagement (provide value, ask questions, interact) and STILL operate in an authentic way.
• There's no shame in testing stuff. As a marketer, I use my social media platforms as a testing ground. I try different messaging strategies, engagement techniques, lengths of posts, you name it. This is still done within the natural framework of me being myself, but the only way anyone really knows what will work is by trying it and learning from trial and error. As algorithms change and platforms decide something else should take priority, you may have to adjust things. Remember that testing stuff is all part of the journey.
• Push and pull marketing, done in tandem, can speed things up when done right. Listen, I'm an organic marketer first and like doing everything else second. I'm going to tell you that organic marketing is the way to go. I'm a big believer in "pull" marketing - Providing audiences with enough information to make their own decisions so that when they need me, they know to reach out to me. This works really well for service-based companies, especially ones with year-plus conversion windows and prospects who may be slow to change from one company to another. However, this doesn't mean it's right for every company. "Push" marketing provides a strong counterpoint - Sending emails reminding people of certain services, running promotions, retargeting folks who showed interest, heck, even direct mail has its place. Doing a combination of push and pull will get you faster results, but you also want to be able to test techniques one by one, in an ideal world, to understand what will help you reach your REVENUE goals faster.

So, what have we learned?

I'm not saying engagement isn't great, or helpful in building revenue. However, what's more important is seeing the value TIED to that engagement. How are you getting more money through the door by what you're posting? Memes and trends are cute, but if you're not connecting with your audience about what really matters to them, it's not going to matter at the end of the day.

Have I sparked an idea?

Have I hit a nerve?

Either way, I'd love to hear from you. DM me and we'll keep the conversation rolling.

?? Sammi