Continuing on from last week’s blog post, today we look further in depth into an effective social media strategy plan and ways to trigger purchasing via your social media business profiles.
Psychological triggers for purchasing
It’s really important to understand how consumer behaviour works, and to know how to communicate with consumers, not from a sales perspective, but from a buyer perspective.
Social media is a fantastic medium for connecting and building this initial business-consumer relationship.
Here are some of the biggest psychological triggers that compel consumers to purchase:
- The driving force of all human behaviour: Seek pleasure, avoid pain. If pleasure is associated with an action, we seek it out, even if it seems painful. For example, learning to ski is no fun for a lot of us initially.It’s cold, it’s damp, it’s hard work, and it’s uncomfortable. But the joy of conquering the challenge and the sense of accomplishment represents pleasure that makes the pain worthwhile.Another example is why women insist on wearing high heels. They hurt at worst and at best they are not comfortable. Yet they look amazing – and this gives women pleasure.From a marketing perspective, you need to understand what consumers associate with both pain and pleasure, and appeal to these. This is where clever target audience identification is of paramount importance.One person’s greatest pleasure is another’s greatest pain.In social media marketing, your aim is to move your targeted leads as close to where they want or need to be with your product or service before pushing the hard sell. Psychologically, they will soon associate your business with pleasure.
- Give consumers a reason to buy and they will: We, to varying extents and whether conscious of it or not, search for meaning in all things, even when there is no real meaning to be found.If marketers give consumers a good enough reason to purchase, no matter what that reason might be, the target audience will respond in what for the business is a positive way. So the consumer doesn’t really need an item? Even purchasing to make others envious is a good enough reason for some people to buy!
>> Fear of missing out (FOMO) is another great motivator. Create a sense of scarcity or time sensitivity and consumers will be more likely to be triggered to take action instead of waiting for “later”.
- People appreciate novelty: New and unfamiliar things that we find pleasurable release dopamine in the brain – and dopamine is one of the brain’s “happiness” hormones. We equate the item that triggers this effect with reward. This is a great motivating factor in seeking it out and buying. This is why so many people upgrade their phones, cameras, and other items on a very regular basis: the new model doesn’t really do any more than the old, and the old works fine, but the novelty of having something new is too much temptation to resist.“New”, “latest”, and “current” are very powerful words when it comes to the psychology of marketing. Social media is a great tool to impart these messages.
- Storytelling is powerful: Great brands tell great stories. Great stories trigger an emotional response. Storytelling activates the brain and imparts an experience. This triggers a decision to act – in this case, to buy. Social media is a great medium for storytelling without the obvious selling attached to it.
- People want and need to feel that they are personally significant: This need can be fed via social media by appealing in a personal way. Ask for opinions, feedback, and show consumers that you as a business and brand care for them individually.Outstanding customer service is critical, and should be offered via social media as well as via your website. Additionally, offer rewards for loyalty in the form of discounts or giveaways.
- Curiosity might have killed the cat: But it can bring your marketing campaign to life. Curiosity bridges the gap between what we know and what we seek to know. It inspires positive action, and activates the brain’s pleasure centres. Curiosity is what makes social media users follow a page, share and promote content, read blogs and click on links, open emails, and ultimately buy. Offer high value social media content to pique interest and curiosity for your business and link to your website – the right social media users will click through to discover more.
- Have a strong plan: A clever social media strategy plan to trigger purchasing will actively build anticipation in the minds of consumers. New product releases, events, holidays – in all of these, the anticipation ahead of time is part of the fun. Anticipation is a very important psychological step to happiness. Looking forward to something delivers happiness long before it ever occurs. Publicity pre-launch of a product, “coming soon”, “sneak peeks” – these are all clever slogans to build anticipation and excitement so that when the product becomes available, people are already primed to spend.
People are social by nature. Social media offers unlimited potential for persuading consumers to speak to their peers on your behalf – through word of mouth, shares, testimonials, reviews, and tagging in comments.
When others are seen to benefit from a product or service, people are more likely to be compelled to act accordingly for themselves.
Remember that people are fickle creatures – they lose focus. Memories are short. Keep a consistent presence on social media, posting frequently but not annoyingly. You need to keep your brand in the forefront of consumers’ minds.
Social media tactics for conversion
Finally, here are some ideas and tactics for social media conversion which you can implement in your own social media marketing strategy. With almost 50 per cent of all time online spent on social media, and with more than two billion social media accounts held worldwide, any business not harnessing the power of social media for themselves is not going to succeed to their highest potential.
- Create branded social pages
- Identify user interests and motivations
- Optimise pages and social profiles
- Post consistently and frequently
- Ask questions
- Use appropriate hashtags
- Personalise
- Be authentic
- Use high quality images
- Don’t oversell on social media
- Engage and interact – don’t simply broadcast
- Include links to landing pages and blogs
- Be concise
- Interact in real time and promptly
- Monitor campaign success
- Offer special deals and run competitions
- Be patient
- Learn as you go
Gone are the days when social media was just about connecting with friends. Social for business has taken off and is growing exponentially. Explore how it can work for your business, and watch your conversions grow.
The social media sauce!
How about some more social media secret sauce? Check out these 3 awesome blogs for your eyeballs!
BIZ CHALLENGE: As a new business or start-up enterprise, it can be a challenge to navigate the array of things you need to set in place for effective marketing.
This is particularly true when you don’t have vast amounts of capital behind you with which to pay for marketing, and revenue is still building – which is the case in the beginning stages of any business.
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We are all aware of how Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram can be valuable tools for social media marketing for business. But what about Snapchat? Can businesses take advantage of Snapchat as a marketing tool?
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The ultimate aim of any marketing strategy is to create consumer leads and convert these consumer leads into paying customers, right? One of the most effective ways to achieve both of these aims is to use social media for your brand and business marketing.
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