How Buyer Personas Can Skyrocket Your Inbound Traffic and Social Media Engagement!

Social media content creation is a key component of any successful marketing plan. It helps engage customers, brings attention to your brand, and drives conversions. But when it comes to creating content for social media that really resonates with an audience, the most important step you can take is understanding who your target audience is – namely through developing buyer personas. Buyer personas are simply representations of different types of potential customers or clients; they help you think about how those people might interact with your product or service to craft more effective social media posts that fit their needs. In this blog post, we’ll examine what “buyer personas” are, how they can be useful for creating social media content, and provide some helpful tips on getting started crafting content tailored towards these distinct personalities!

What is a buyer persona and why you should have one

A buyer persona is a powerful tool that serves as a compass guiding businesses toward understanding their ideal customer. This semi-fictional representation of the target audience is characterized by their demographics, goals, challenges, and preferences, ultimately shaping the framework for marketing strategies, product development, and customer service. By giving life to these personas, businesses are better equipped to tailor their approach, fostering meaningful relationships that resonate with their audience. Crafting a well-defined buyer persona is more than just a step in the process; it is the heartbeat of a thriving business, propelling growth and success by putting the customer’s needs and wants at the center of all decisions made. So, invest time in creating and refining your buyer persona; it’s the guiding light that will steer you toward building not just loyal customers, but an empire of brand advocates.

Building your buyer persona – what to include

Crafting a well-defined buyer persona is an essential step toward achieving your business goals, as it serves as a blueprint for understanding the unique characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of your target audience. To build a comprehensive buyer persona, it’s crucial to consider a mix of both demographic and psychographic elements, such as age, income, occupation, location, and interests, alongside insights into the pain points, goals, and motivations of your ideal customer. In addition, evaluate their purchasing habits, preferred media channels, and common objections to tailor your marketing efforts more effectively. Remember that new insights will continually emerge, so always be prepared to adapt and refine your buyer persona over time. By giving life to your target market, you’ll ultimately be able to forge stronger connections with your audience and inspire them to engage with your brand in a meaningful way.

Curating content that resonates with your target audience

Curating content that captivates your target audience is vital in today’s fast-paced digital world. A professionally curated, compelling inventory of information resonates with your audience, driving greater engagement and fostering stronger connections. To achieve this, it’s essential to have a deep understanding of your audience’s demographics, interests, and needs, and to align your content with these insights. By presenting inspiring stories, thought-provoking perspectives, and valuable information in a polished and coherent manner, you create an unforgettable experience for your audience. The result is a loyal following that shares, discusses, and actively participates in your content, thus positioning you as an influential thought leader in your industry.

How to repurpose content for multiple platforms

In today’s fast-paced digital ecosystem, mastering the art of repurposing content is essential for maximizing your brand’s reach and maintaining a consistent brand narrative across multiple platforms. The art of taking a piece of content and giving it new life in various formats allows you to extend its value, engage new audiences, and save valuable time and resources. To successfully repurpose content, begin by identifying the strengths and core messages of the original content, and then creatively explore new ways to present that information through various media, such as podcasts, social media, webinars, or infographics. By thinking beyond traditional content formats and tailoring your approach to each platform’s distinct audience and features, you will not only expand your brand’s presence in the digital landscape but also inspire those who encounter your content to think deeper, learn more, and keep coming back for more.

Tips on creating engaging captions, headlines, and hashtags

The art of crafting engaging captions, headlines, and hashtags is a key ingredient to successfully capturing the attention of your audience and effectively conveying your message across different channels. A professional and inspiring tone adds a unique flavor to your content, setting you apart from the vast ocean of information available online. To ensure readability and impact, it’s important to encapsulate your content’s essence in a concise, yet powerful headline that speaks to your target audience. Creativity and wit play a crucial role in formulating captions that spark an emotional response, encourage sharing, and stimulate discussions. Furthermore, strategically utilizing hashtags not only amplifies your content’s visibility but also connects you with like-minded individuals and communities. By meticulously honing these essential elements, you elevate your content’s appeal, empower your brand’s voice, and create a lasting impression on the digital landscape.

How testing can help you understand the effectiveness of your content

As a content creator, one of the most valuable actions you can take is to test the effectiveness of your content. This process allows you to not only ascertain the strength of your messaging but also optimize its impact by pinpointing areas for improvement. By regularly analyzing your content’s performance through various testing methods, you gain insight into your audience’s preferences and can subsequently tailor your content to better resonate with them. The result is a higher rate of engagement, increased conversion rates, and an enhanced ability to meet your objectives. Ultimately, content testing empowers you to elevate the quality and impact of everything you create, paving the way for long-term success in today’s competitive digital landscape.

Overall, social media content can be a powerful tool to reach your target audience, but it takes knowledge and strategy to make sure the content resonates. Just like you have unique needs as a person, so do your prospects—understanding those needs is where buyer personas come in. By creating a buyer persona in detail, you can better understand what kinds of content will pique the interest of your audience and successfully drive conversions. Additionally, by repurposing existing content and testing different versions and captions, you will learn quickly what works best for your target market. Put everything together to create a data-driven marketing strategy based on insights from real customers—discover the power of buyer personas in creating targeted social media content!

From Clicks to Conversions: The Science of Turning Likes Into Sales on Social Media

Are you getting clicks & likes but no conversions (sales or leads)?

Clicks and likes are forms of engagement. Whenever a user clicks on a social media post, that user is engaging it in some way. On most social media platforms, there is no way to quantify just how interested a user is in your brand other than counting the number of times they’ve engaged it.

Conversions are the end goal of all social media strategies, whether it’s branding, product sales, or service leads. If you have an online store, one of your conversion goals could be to get people to purchase something from your store. Let’s say someone clicks on your Twitter profile and then purchases something from your store. That’s a social media conversion. If you have a Financial Planner (CFP) or Advisor service, a key conversion goal is to get people interested in your service to fill out an information form on your website. Again, let’s say someone clicks on your Twitter profile that links them back to your website landing page where they fill out their contact information. That’s a social media conversion.

How do you convert on social media? A few basic ways (as stated above) are:

  • Add a link in your profile that when clicked, leads to your product shopping page (cart). Make sure your product landing page is mobile-friendly.
  • For services, add a link in your profile that when clicked, links them to your website contact submission form. Make sure your website contact submission form is mobile-friendly.
  • Use Hashtags. Hashtags are a proven way to increase traffic to your content and to your website. Make sure that you’re using social media hashtags that are relevant to your business. Don’t overstuff with Hashtags (looks spammy). Use 2-3 Hashtags per post.
  • Your audience definitely wants to see engaging content from you. They also want to be able to connect with you as well. Your social media conversions will improve if you are commenting, liking, and sharing.
  • Include compelling calls to action working on your social media posts. Asking for followers to check out your recent promotions or product/service discounts is a call to action.

Last but not least, track your social media metric traffic back to your website or the product page. Using tools such as Google Analytics, or social analytics tools such as Keyhole, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite also allows you to identify the type of creative and messaging (posts) that performs best. Don’t wait to go viral. Grind. Persistence. Put in the work. Play the long game. Share your content across social platforms. All it takes is one of your followers to share a content post and the conversion amplification may go 2x.

Sales Funnels and Rambling Musings

To grow your business or service, you must identify and create your sales funnel as a key to your website design. Sales funnels are great, but content ecosystems are better.

Content ecosystems are like deploying tiny salesmen that live on the internet and sell for you 24/7. Content marketing’s goal is consumption, then behavior (leads, sales, new clients).

Content marketing helps businesses prepare and plan for reliable and cost-effective sources of website traffic and new leads that are working for you 24/7. A good content ecosystem “gels” over time and you will see the website traffic increase, SEO benefits (rank higher on Google), and hopefully a conversion (website funnel strategy) in the end. Strong pieces of content can help you become more visible online, both on search engines and on social media. Your social media platforms are one of the best ways to connect and share content with your target audience.

Content creation success is measured in many ways including:

  • Spike in visitor traffic and page views on a specific content post
  • The number of Shares, Likes, Pins, and ReTweets on Social Media
  • Media mentions and stories covering your business or firm
  • Website ranking (SERPs) increase
  • Conversions. Actual product sales or new clients (example: Financial Services)

The basic purpose is to create content and try to post at least 1 time per week. Content is scalable and you can add as needed or when more resources become available. Content Marketing is important! Without it, you’re going to struggle to attract the attention you need to collect leads and convert them into sales or clients!

How to Measure Leads Through Social Media

Every day, your customers are active on a huge range of channels, including social media. If you’re not present and engaging with them across all of these social media platforms… it’s killing your reputation, lead generation, and your bottom line.

How you define a quality “lead” depends on your industry, campaign, and goals. Generally speaking, a quality lead will include useful information and clear signs of intent to engage with your business.

Social media is now the preferred business contact platform. Use this to your advantage by actively engaging with (and converting) prospects and customers on all modern channels such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Reddit. If you’re collecting social media leads, you need to be collecting analytics insights. Whether it’s product sales or new client and services type leads. How do you measure it coming from social media? Here are a few ways:

  • Google Analytics. Watch and review social media platform traffic (goals) in Google Analytics to track leads on your website. This will allow you to monitor which social media platform is the best source for your business. If you notice, for example, that Twitter outperforms Facebook, it may be worth redoubling efforts on that platform.
  • Social analytics tools. Tools such as Keyhole, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite also allow you to identify the type of creative and messaging (posts) that performs best. Most of these tools offer easy-to-review dashboards that offer metrics such as the number of impressions, reach, posts, and engagements that certain accounts or hashtags you are getting from each individual platform.
  • Engagement. Engagement is one of the most valuable metrics in measuring social media lead generation. You need to evaluate if you’re engaging with the right audience, how they are interacting with your brand, and what they are doing to engage with your topic and spread your content. The ideal engagement metrics include the number of likes, comments, shares, and re-tweets.
  • Tracking via a specific social media “discount code” or “social shopping”. Many brands offer customers a discount code in exchange for a product or newsletter sign-up. Discount codes or rewards points encourage customers to make a return visit to your site, and ideally a purchase. If you plan to offer one, have a strategy in place for not just generating leads, but also nurturing and converting them.
  • Social Media Ads metrics. The main metrics include Reach, Impressions, and Click-Through Rate.
  • Link Tracking on Social. Link tracking answers the question – “How did you find us? It involves tracking the number of clicks obtained by specific links on your social media posts. Link tracking is helpful in monitoring if your audience is clicking on links associated with your ads.

The above bullets can help you measure leads coming back through Social Media. In the meantime, what can actually help boost the % Leads using social media? 5 tips are below…

  • Optimize your profile. Your profile should provide the means for customers to contact you, sign up for your newsletter, shop, contact information, YouTube channel, etc. Your profile should always include a “link back” to your business website. Make sure to “Add a link” to your bio.
  • Create clickable content. Without compelling content, you won’t collect leads (clicks). Clickable content includes social media posts. Social Media posts include clickable content such as blog posts, YouTube channel content, and call to action type of content (landing pages) that can be SHARED.
  • Use social lead ads. Call to action ads can be posted on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Linkedin, etc. Your best-performing Twitter posts can be “boosted” (just like paid ads) across that platform where you can dial in demographics such as gender, age, geography, etc.
  • Share testimonials as social proof. Customer stories and testimonials can give you the social proof you need to acquire new leads. Showcasing how clients have benefited from your products and services to demonstrate your brand value. Add these stories and testimonials to your website.
  • Leverage social media sponsorships. Instead of using paid ads, you could also attract leads from the social media content that your target audience is already consuming. Consider sponsoring shows, content, and YouTube channels that are popular with your target audience.

 

The use of Social Media in Financial Services organizations is not an option anymore

 

The use of Social Media in financial services organizations is no longer an option. At the advisor level, Putnam Retail Management found 84% use social media for finance industry business. Ninety-two percent of them said social media has helped them gain new clients. Social Media offers an easy and low-commitment way for potential customers (or clients) to express interest in your business and your products.

-Online Marketing Juice