How to use paid social media to nurture your customers

Marketing isn't about the quick sell or the spamming the hell out of prospects anymore and that makes us very, very happy. There's only 1 thing worse than receiving spam advertising and that's knowing you're the marketer responsible for sending that "special offer" or click bait subject line.

Every spam email or unsolicited piece of direct mail sent - a little piece of your soul dies. True story.

So how do we get past spamming and to a place where consumers want what we're peddling and want to interact with our brand? The answer is to create small interactions that introduce the consumer to your brand and subsequently makes them feel at ease, nudging them to your desired outcome.

This isn't achievable with PPC ads, bulk email or the king of spam, "voice broadcast" but with a touch of well placed content, paid and organic social you have a unique opportunity to interact, delight and convert consumers. So how do you do it?  

Brands that perfect their inbound lead generation strategy see falling marketing costs, better quality leads, greater client engagement and other benefits that outbound methods simply can't provide. If you want to know more about inbound lead generation read our guide "Everything you need to know about Inbound lead generation"

Create, confront and console

The most successful marketers create and entice interactions with their target audiences frequently, often through engaging content. Social channels were made for sharing so by creating content, boosting it or spreading it using the paid platforms you have amazing scope to reach your audience.

These engagements shouldn't be sales pitches, they should aim to fit with the user even 'helping' them where possible. They also shouldn't be all the time - modern marketing is about presenting the customer with the right message at the right time in the way that they want to be spoken to. Pictures, information pieces and memes should all make up part of your social engagement. Informing your consumers and making them laugh can be far more valuable than the 'hard sell'.

Once you start receiving comments don't shy away from the interaction. You should be constantly trying to speak with your consumers. Don't delete or hide negative comments confront the issue and if necessary console the consumer about the issues at hand, this is proper engagement.

In many cases, we've worked with clients posting, speaking and dealing with their consumers publicly and each time we see a direct correlation between proactive, positive engagement and sales increasing.

Use social advertising at every stage of the journey

If you think of a basic sales funnel from the first interaction through to sale it's a four stage process, awareness, consideration, intent, decision. You need a variety of channels to get your consumers to the final stage right? Not necessarily. Both Facebook and Twitter as examples, have all the tools you need to interact at every stage of the cycle. The channels available for paid social media (social media ads) are growing, week in, week out more than likely there is a channel suited to your audience.

With the new behavioural targeting you can start delivering your ads to applicable audiences almost immediately creating awareness of problems existing in the market and the solution you're offering. It can considerably expand the reach of your content, dropping it in front of well targeted eyeballs.

Next you need to build consideration about your product. You know what your consumer wants so you can use boosted posts and sponsored posts to push "The 10 best SME market shortcuts" or "How to build your customer base overnight" and start to inform your audience with a slight push to your product. Where social advertising edges out in front of other channels such as Search Ads (Google, Yahoo and Bing) is it has a residual effect of building audiences, not just sales and leads.

Now you're at the intent stage where you start to push the difference between your product and competitors. Get a bit sales-y, push your product without spamming and highlight your offerings key selling points. Use a targeted paid ad campaign to push your product to the new followers and audiences you've gained.

Finally your at the decision stage and you need to hook in your prospect. The new Facebook lead generation cards and their Twitter counterpart are ideal for hooking a prospect. Create a punchy tag line with a strong offering and great image and within three taps (or clicks) you have your lead. This can then feed straight in to a sales team or enter a new nurturing cycle, qualifying and preparing the customer for a sale.

Simplicity, Consistency, Integrity

Your Brand should mean something to your consumers and your staff. It's important that this is communicated simply and powerfully to your consumers on each interaction.  Across a social media campaign your brand needs to be communicated from your business page all the way through to you lead generation cards, but how do you achieve this?

No matter how big the brand, the key to consistency is simplicity. Having a robust brand tone-of-voice paired with checklists, conversion path ways, prompts at key times and a toolkit of pre-approved graphics will allow you to get the marketing right without mixed messages.

Get your landing page content written with input from your all your team, from marketing to sales and build a content universe. This should include topics from influencers, advocates and sites which you can link to and share with. Once you have this it should form the base for sales conversations and post sale communication. This ensures consistency for the life cycle of your customer.

Finally and most importantly you need to ensure integrity in your communications. You don't want to be the "Didn't read the small print" company. If you make an offer ensure your client sticks to it. If a person complains deal with it promptly. If you're asked to provide details do so with transparency. Use your social presence and data to become receptive to change and use it to boost your company, not panic and become defensive, alienating your prospects.

Marketing isn't about forcing your message into people's psyche anymore, it's about a string of interactions that build a conversation leading to a mutually beneficial outcome for the consumer and your business.

A great content strategy pushed across the right channels will give you a far better outcome than blanket bombing your audience with spam emails. It's moves the sales process to being helpful, not interruptive.

People don't want you to pester them, that's just human nature - "Do small things with great love". Get your interactions right and see your conversion rates soar.

Brands that perfect their inbound lead generation strategy see falling marketing costs, better quality leads, greater client engagement and other benefits that outbound methods simply can't provide. If you want to know more about inbound lead generation read our guide "Everything you need to know about Inbound lead generation"