Social Media sales are the new craze for marketing specialists all over the world. Contrary to an outdated belief, social media sales can be profitable for any industry – doesn’t matter if your target audience is millennials or generation X, schoolers or huge business owners, fixers, or college professors. Considering the fact that there are more than about 3 billion active social media users worldwide, can you really say that there are no people who would like to buy your product among them? Your job is to find these people.
Social Media sales, in comparison to traditional marketing, have many advantages – this channel of communication is relatively cheap and is seen as more authentic and trustworthy, which makes it perfect for conversion. You don’t need to take the words for it – just see for yourself at how much companies are spending on social media marketing. So, how and what are your plans to use social media for profit making?
Before we dig into the ways to turn social media traffic into sales, let’s first find out what are the reasons you get traffic but no conversions.
Key Factors that explains Why You Are Getting Traffic but No Conversions
Imagine for a moment that you have a car and it suddenly breaks down while you are on the road with it. What will you most likely first do to put the back in shape? Find out where the problem is coming from, isn’t it? That’s basically how things work.
So until you first know the possible reasons why your visitors aren’t converting, finding a solution might be a problem.
Factor 1: Your website is attracting the wrong traffic
How do you imagine things will turn out if, let’s say, you went about marketing baby skincare products to adult men? You will surely make some sales, but it will definitely not be enough to pay for a burger. So, if your website isn’t converting as you want, there’s a good chance that you are attracting the wrong set of people.
Factor 2: Visitors don’t find what they are looking for quickly
Did you know that the average attention span of a web user is about 15 seconds?
That means you only have 15 secs to convince a visitor to stay or move to the next tab opened in their browser. But is it even possible to make your visitors see reasons to stay on your website within that short span of time? Truth is you alone can answer that question. Just do the right thing, and you might never have to worry about losing your visitors. One of the things you can do is direct visitors to the right page that best fits their needs and not just your homepage.
Factor 3: Too many popups are showing your website
Pop Ups on your website can be annoying. But if you implement them right, they won’t be. That said, one mistake you can’t afford to make is showing too many popups at a time on your page; or, perhaps, showing them on every page on your website. That, too, is a grave mistake.
If you have been getting huge traffic but no meaningful sales and conversion, you are probably getting it wrong with your popups. It’s about time you did something about that. But what exactly should you do?
- Show one popup at a time on your homepage
- If possible, restrict your popups to one or two pages
- Use slide-ins instead
Factor 4: Your website is difficult to navigate
Poor user experience is a real deal-breaker you shouldn’t take likely. It comes in many forms:
- Difficult or confusing navigation
- Text and images slammed all over a page in an unthoughtful way
- Slow loading
- Unreadable text
- Poor or outdated design
- You won’t want any of those to be present on your website. Right!
Factor 5: Your sales funnel has leaky holes
Not every one that arrives at your site will make a purchase – that’s the harsh truth. As a matter of fact, only a small fraction of your visitors will eventually become buyers or subscribers.
So, how do you go about nurturing casual visitors into customers? Simply by developing a fruitful sales funnel. You can name it as a conversion funnel also.
But if your sales funnel isn’t optimized properly, or has leaky holes, you won’t see the sales and conversion you so desire.
How to Convert Traffic into Sales? – The Right Way
Prepare your website with authentic social proof
When starting an online business, one of the hardest things to do is to show people how trustworthy your brand is. And for that, you need lots of social proof.
Social proof is the idea that your site gains credibility as more people engage with your brand. This works exclusively because most online consumers experience fear of missing out or FOMO.
When your site’s visitors see that other people are buying your products, they’ll instantly assume there must be some benefits. As a result, they’ll be more motivated to engage with your brand and buy products. There are many forms of social proof, including but not limited to:
- Online reviews
- Testimonials
- Trust badges
- Social media posts from your customers (screenshots) etc.
However a live sales notification is one of the most effective forms of social proof. These show your site’s visitors when someone has purchased in real-time. When people on your site see a message like that, they immediately feel a sense of FOMO. And anyone who’s even remotely interested in sunglasses would be more likely to follow up with a purchase of their own.
Displaying customer reviews and testimonials’
More than 90% of users say online reviews impacted their buying decisions. The same applies to any website live on the internet today. So make your site look trusted and credible by displaying reviews left by your valuable customers. Similarly, testimonials are equally important for converting website visits into sales.
Build your email list
If building social proof from the start of your website is important, then growing your email list is just as important. That’s because, again, there are two factors:
- Email marketing drive sales
- Growing email list also takes a lot of time
That’s why one of the first things you should do after creating a website is to build a system for gathering emails. This usually includes a type of lead magnet. A lead magnet is a special discount, offer, or piece of information your target audience finds valuable. Then you can build an “optin campaign”. This is a special message that promotes your lead magnet in exchange for a piece of contact information.
When users sign up, their email address gets sent to your mail service provider (ESP). Then they’ll enter your automated email series to be nurtured down your sales funnel. This is one of the most important steps when you’re learning how to convert traffic into sales.
Not every sale will happen on a visitor’s first time to your site. You must create optin campaigns to grab your lead’s contact information and continue the conversation via email.
Create cross-selling campaigns
While gathering email addresses is great, you might want to learn a more direct method on how to convert traffic into sales. The same types of campaigns you build don’t simply need to collect emails. They can also be used to increase direct sales. You can create upsell, downsell, and cross-selling campaigns for your site. These three types of campaigns work to boost the overall average order total for each of your visitors.
Here’s how each type of campaign functions:
- Upsells: show users a related but more expensive item than what they’re currently purchasing
- Downsell: show users a related less expensive item than what they’re currently purchasing
- Cross-sell: show users a related item regardless of pricing
Leverage push notifications
Earlier, we mentioned that most of your site’s visitors wouldn’t purchase on their first visit. That’s why it’s crucial to start collecting customer feedback and growing your email list immediately. Another strategy you can use, however, is push notifications.
These are small static messages that rest on your user’s browser screen. But your subscribers don’t need to be on your website to see it. This gives you direct and immediate contact with your subscribers at all times.
You can use push notifications to convert customers into:
- Webinar attendees
- Email subscribers
- Paying customers and much more
Selling on social media sites can be confusing, but doesn’t have to be hard. Take time to understand what naturally interests your audience and pay attention to the data. Create content that moves and inspires them to take action. They’ll thank you for it as they come back time and again, eager to consume and buy what you have to offer.
Ready to create some action plan! Give us a visit at FCS! We’re here to help turn your social media traffic into sales.