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Podcast Show Notes
You are eager to use social media to sell and increase sales in your business. But without the right content strategy, your posts could end up in the black hole of Instagram. Inside this article, I share what you are doing wrong when it comes to setting up your audience for your ‘sale’. When you get organic support and attention ahead of time your sales will be higher with this content strategy.
How we use social media
So we get on social media and in the back of our heads we’d love more sales in our business… so we think of a product we carry or choose a promotion our company is having and pitch it to our audience.
We talk about the sale or product in our feed captions and inside our stories… over and over again.
But most of the time… we hear crickets in response.
It’s not that the product or offer is bad, but our audience wasn’t primed to receive it. They commented on your cute kid photo last week but seeing an offer out of the blue got lost in the sea of other posts and announcements in their daily scroll.
The biggest mistake you are making on social media to sell
This scenario leads me to the biggest mistake I believe online marketers make which is continually shouting out on social media with a call to action. “Buy this, download that… click here” without the proper warm-up.
I’m all about selling on social media but without the proper starter posts and story to set your audience up for the sale – you are essentially throwing offers out there hoping they stick! Hoping you hit someone at the right time who needs your offer.
What is a warm audience
What you want is a warm audience to sell to.
A Warm Audience is people who have recently engaged with your social media page in some way. They could have watched more than three seconds of a video, liked your page, shared or saved a post, or commented and engaged on a post.
They are paying attention to you. You aren’t a stranger to them.
How to warm up an audience
So how do you warm up an audience to then sell to them? I’m going to share with you just that.
The process is about giving and then giving some more before using your call to action for selling. When you get organic support and attention ahead of time your sales will be higher.
Think of your call to action as the Ace card in your hand that can only be played when the timing is right. And the face cards, the King, Queen, and Jack as the cards played to warm up your audience.
You wouldn’t start with your Ace, then play your face cards and hope they’d purchase. You’d warm your audience up to be ready for a call to action when you played your Ace card.
This same approach works whether you are launching a new business, promoting a new offer, or simply promoting a current digital or tangible product. You need to essentially warm your market up. You need to get the attention of your followers and audience. You don’t do this with a big FOR SALE sign or OPEN SIGN – you do this by connecting with them about a pain point or problem they have.
When you know your niche well – you then know the exact problems they have and can talk to them in your captions.
Three stages to a buying level
I believe there are three stages of a consumer’s buying level: Connection, Shift, and Educate. You need to meet them at the right time with the right content. When you can lead your prospect through these stages the next thing for them to do is to purchase your offer.
As I teach in my Content Marketing Strategy + Planning System BOOTCAMP, setting up your content calendar for the month requires you to look at what campaigns or offers you want to promote when. Then work backward with the type of connection, shift, and educate buying level posts you’ll schedule and when.
For example, let’s say the last week of the month you want to promote a product your direct sales company carries. We will choose the sleep balm with chamomile.
Connection posts
For the connection posts – I believe these are sprinkled in throughout and in between your campaigns.
And when I say campaign I mean a launch or product offer. It’s a specific product or launch that you promote for a fixed time. This fixed time could be a week, two weeks, or month-long. Most of the campaigns I promote are 1-2 weeks long in total. From teasers to final CTA.
But connection posts are meant to do just that. Help your audience stay connected and engaged with your brand. You do this by sharing your core beliefs around your company or business and sharing the lifestyle you have when it comes to your family, hobbies, and interests.
A connection post with your sleep balm in mind – without talking about your sleep balm – could simply be how you believe getting 9 hours a sleep at night has helped you become more efficient at work. One way you did this was to give yourself a cut off time for caffeine and managing your tech time at night. Your goal is to get people talking about how much sleep they get and what they could do to improve it.
Shift posts
Now that your audience is somewhat engaged with your brand you can then lead to SHIFT buying level content. Your goal is to get people to see things differently that makes sense.
So, for instance, they think they don’t get enough sleep because they work too much, and can’t slow their mind down when it comes to going to bed. Maybe they’ve tried diffusing essential oils in the past, shut their phones off an hour before bed, or tried reading before bed, and nothing worked. So their limiting belief is that nothing is going to work for them to get better sleep.
So a SHIFT buying level post you could share your story around how you used to get only 4-5 total hours of sleep a night because you tossed and turned. You’d drink 4 cups of coffee by lunchtime just to get through your afternoon. You tried diffusing essential oils at night to no avail but when you started taking a bath before bed with lavender and used a sleep balm with chamomile it changed everything for you.
Again, to warm up your audience you need to not talk about your product specifically – but the pain points of not getting enough sleep, or the limiting beliefs that nothing is going to work for them.
All you are doing is share your authentic experience. If you don’t have a past experience with the product, share about someone who does. As you do this you start to SHIFT their beliefs on the topic. They start to think, “well maybe I could try something else to get better sleep?”
Educate posts
Then lastly when you’ve connected with your reader, made the shift and they are listening to you – EDUCATE them. So maybe this is sharing testimonials from the product or proof behind your topic.
And as you educate them on the product and how it can help their pain point – you insert the call to action.
You must know your ICA
To make this content strategy work you must know your ideal client and share your stories and beliefs. You have to know what the pain points and limiting beliefs are of your ideal client avatar.
I cover this in about every episode. But this is part of your CORE Brand foundation and taught inside my Personal Branding Playbook™. It’s step one of my Business Building Roadmap. You can learn about this course and others online at kristinkorn.com/roadmap.
Social Media Types: How to learn more about this topic
I know setting up content strategy is a lot to shove into a bite-sized podcast episode. But I offer two ways to learn more about this topic.
- Social media is what so many online marketers are consumed with getting better at. So to help you increase awareness and generate high-quality leads I have a Content Marketing Strategy + Planning System online course.
- But when you join Social Note Community – mentorship membership you not only get access to steps one and three of my roadmap – but you also get a look into how I and my co-founder Jenny Taylor schedule our content using this same strategy when it comes to digital products, direct sales products or memberships.
The Social Note Community opens for new members, only 4x per year. ENROLL TODAY while the doors are still open at thesocialnotecommunity.com
2020 Social Media Statistics
Again, I believe there is a time and place to use social media to sell your products. I’d be silly not to use these free platforms to benefit my business.
At the end of 2020, Over 1 billion people used Instagram every month and Instagram reached 140 million U.S. users.
That makes Instagram the second-ranked traditional social network in terms of active users, behind Facebook.
At the same time, 14% of U.S. adults have never heard of Instagram. So keep in mind that while Instagram does have a huge reach in the U.S., it does not reach everyone. That’s why understanding your audience is so important. Maybe they are on Facebook, and you should direct your efforts there.
But if Instagram is your chosen platform, 81% of people use Instagram to help research products and services.
In closing
But you have to remember people don’t like being sold to. But they will listen to your story, stay connected to your brand and if done well… might shift their thinking and become a paying customer. All because you didn’t’ shout out sales and products left and right.
But because you took the time to warm up your audience, then sell to them when they were primed and ready.
Ep 44: 5 Ways To Make Sure Your Lead Magnet Isn’t A Big Fail
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