Few people still need to be convinced of the value of social media marketing. Nevertheless, take a moment to absorb this fact: there are now over 4.62 billion social media users globally. 

This huge number shows the immense power social media can have in growing a brand. 

Now for the million-dollar question – how can you take advantage of the many benefits that social media offers?

One of the biggest problems that brands and businesses face is learning to generate leads, drive sales, and maximize ROI from their social media marketing efforts. To achieve any of these, you must first learn to increase your social media conversion rates.

Fortunately, that is what we will be looking at in this article. If you are wondering how to improve your social media conversion rates, read on.

Before we go into the strategies, we would first see some interesting conversion rate optimization statistics and why social media should be part of your marketing strategy.

Why social media is key to your marketing strategy

It is impossible to neglect the importance of social media in digital marketing today. When effectively optimized, social media can help you reach millions of customers easily. If you haven’t doubled down on social media for your marketing strategy yet, here are some reasons why you should:

Conversions: It doesn’t matter if you are a B2B or B2C type of business; social media effectively generates new leads. Every social media post, whether images, text, or video content, is an opportunity for leads to convert and move further down your sales funnel.

Traffic: They are billions of users on social media, and having access to all these individuals can help boost your traffic. This is especially important for new websites that are still trying to build traction. Getting traffic from Google can take some time so you can use social media to boost your traffic in the early stages of marketing.

Customer insights: Have you heard of social listening? Social listening is a way to understand a brand’s popularity by analyzing information from various social media channels. Social media listening allows you to get valuable insights into customer feedback, brand mentions, and the type of content, product, or service your audience engages with the most.

Brand awareness: Social media is a great way to build awareness for your brand. No matter how great your product or content is, you would not receive any leads or generate traffic if no one knew about you. With social media, you have a chance to promote your content to a broader audience and increase brand awareness.

We’ve seen some reasons why social media should be part of your marketing strategy. Now, let’s look at tips to improve your social media conversion rates.

1. Optimize social media landing pages for conversions

Your landing page can make or break your social media marketing campaign. Doing it right can cause a significant increase in the number of leads that you convert. 

Before we proceed, understand first that what works for one website might not work for you. It is important that you first understand how landing pages work so that you would be able to optimize them to meet your specific needs.

What is a social media landing page?

A social media landing page is a destination on a website created to serve a social media audience with a specific purpose. This purpose is broadly classified into two categories: to capture leads you can market to in the future or to warm up potential customers you are trying to sell to.

Knowing the purpose of creating a landing page would help you optimize it better for conversions.

Optimizing a landing page is predominantly for one reason: to convert as many people as possible. Each time you make changes to your landing page, it is in the hope that it converts better. 

It is important that you design your landing page based on the objectives that you want to achieve. It would be easier to convert visitors to the landing page when you have figured out these objectives. Depending on your objectives, your landing page could take one of these forms:

The click-through landing page

This landing page aims to get the visitor to go deeper into your site. This is achieved by asking the visitor a simple question. This question is usually a problem the visitor wants to solve. For example, bills.com demonstrates a good example of a click-through landing page.

When the visitor clicks on the question and answers it, they are taken to the next step in the sales funnel.

The lead gen landing page

This is one of the most popular types of landing pages. The landing page aims to get the visitor to give up their name and email address.

Real estate site Trulia offers a good example of a lead gen landing page.

Why does this landing page work? It’s very simple. The landing page doesn’t ask for much. They ask for your email with the promise of telling you how much your house is worth.

The app/mobile landing page

They are several reasons why you would want to increase conversions. One of these might be to increase the number of mobile or app downloads. An optimized landing page can help increase the number of downloads. 

Weathertron’s landing page is a good example.

The visitor is asked to do just two things – download the app or just watch the video. 

To improve conversions of your landing page, use some of these tips below:

1. Decide on the objectives and the campaign type you want to run

It is important that you understand why you are starting the campaign. Will your landing page be created solely for generating traffic? Would it be for capturing leads? Would it be tied to a social media campaign? These are some of the questions you need to answer before you proceed.

2. Test your headline 

Did you know that only two out of 10 people would keep reading after seeing your headline? This is how important your headline is. Your headline is the first thing visitors see when they enter your site, so it’s essential that it’s compelling enough to make them want to keep on reading. 

Here are a few things to think about to get it right:

  • It should be simple and clear
  • Consider promising to solve a problem that the visitor is facing
  • Try starting it off as a question. For example: Want Better Car Insurance For Less?
  • Remember to match your headline with what your social media ad was advertising
  • A little bit of humor goes a long way if it fits the context

3. Optimize your lead capture form

Your lead capture form is one of the most important aspects of your landing page. Take a look at these two examples:

Example A

Example B

Which of these lead capture forms do you think would convert the most? 

After Cash4UsedCars.com changed the form from the first example to the second one, they noticed a 77% increase in conversion rates. 

This landing page is more appealing and less cluttered, and that’s why it works.

4. Optimize your CTA buttons

The color, shape, size, and message of your CTA buttons play a significant role in your conversion rates. Since your button is the most clicked thing on your landing page, ensure that it is optimized for conversions.

Color: The best three colors for CTA buttons are red, green, and orange or yellow. The worst colors are black, white, and brown.

Size: Your CTA button needs to be visible. If your visitors find it difficult to find your CTA button, you might not get any clicks. And trust me, most visitors won’t go looking for the CTA button.

Message: Messaging is very important. For instance, instead of “Sign up,” write “Sign up & Get daily tips”.

2. Take advantage of influencer marketing

The power of influencer marketing cannot be understated. Due to the huge amount of followers and engagement influencers receive, they can help your brand get more conversions and improve brand awareness.

Research done by TapInfluence shows that influencer marketing offers 11 times more return on investment than other traditional forms of digital marketing. Further study showed that 95% of consumers would trust recommendations from other social media users over a brand.

The problem is that most people believe that working with influencers can be very expensive. In reality, you don’t need to shell out thousands of dollars before you can work with influencers.

Micro-influencers with a few thousand loyal followers regularly engage with their content. It would be best to find the right influencer for your business, depending on your niche or industry. 

3. Use video-centric posts and ads to boost conversions

The human brain was created to consume video content. 

Wondering how you can use videos to boost your social media conversion rates? Use these tips:

1. Create short and interesting videos

People get easily distracted and can lose interest over time. When your videos are too long, you risk losing the viewer. The shorter the video, the better (usually). Your aim should be to create short videos that are interesting and captivating.

2. Add a lead capture in the first 10-20% of the videos

Most people do not know you can capture leads within videos. You can use a tool called Wistia Turnstile to insert lead captures inside your video.You can place this turnstile anywhere in your video to capture leads and improve your conversion rates.

3. Use video testimonials

People trust first-hand experiences from other customers more than the brand itself. They are constantly looking for social proof before they might decide to make use of a product or service. You can use video testimonials to take advantage of this. A client explaining how your service helped them with a problem would urge other users to want to use your product too.

4. Don’t underestimate the power of user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is an efficient way to increase conversions. By posting customers’ photos, reviews, and videos, you can significantly increase your social media conversion rates

In fact, A/B tests on an e-commerce site showed that including Instagram photos on the product page of one of their top sellers boosted their conversion rates by 24.3%. 

The reason why user-generated content works is that it improves your brand's authenticity. It shows users what the experience with your product looks like in the real world, thereby increasing the trust they would have for your brand. 

A good example of UGC is this Instagram post from Modcloth.

This picture shows one of their customers getting married in one of their wedding dresses. This image generated over 4,000 likes and a lot of comments. UGC is great for increasing engagement and improving brand awareness.

Pro tip: Remember always to ask permission from the original content owner before you upload it. After getting permission, remember to tag them in the caption too

5. Run social media contests and promotions

Nothing gets your audience more excited than the chance of winning something. You can run a social media contest if you are trying to grow your follower base, increase brand awareness, grow your email lists, and jumpstart engagement.

Before running a social media contest, you must know your goals. They would determine the kind of contest you would run.

For example, if you want to increase the number of followers, the contestants would have to follow a specific profile to qualify for the prize. 

Another example is lead generation. If you want to generate leads with contests, people should be required to input their emails to participate. 

Pro Tip: Running a social media contest is also a great way to get user-generated content you can use in the future.

6. Create content that suits your target audience

If you create content for the wrong audience, you would get no (relevant) conversions and receive little or no return on your investment. 

Your social media marketing success starts with finding your target audience and creating content that fits their needs. You don’t want to waste your time and resources creating content for an audience that would be impossible to convert.

You can use the following tips to define who your target audience is:

1. Define your audience persona

Your audience persona helps you define the kind of user you would be creating content for. It should answer questions like who your audience is, where they live, what they do, why they would need your product or service, and their social media habits.

2. Conduct surveys

You can use a tool like SurveyMonkey to conduct surveys of the people who interact with your content on social media regularly. This would help you get a better understanding of your audience.

3. Make use of social media insights

Even if you don’t use any social media marketing tool, most of the major social networks provide insights into who your audience is. You can use these analytics to quickly have an overview of your most active users and the content they engage most with.

7. Make use of right distribution platforms

Depending on your objective, industry or niche, different social networks would work best for you. There is no point in spending so much time on a social media channel where you are not seeing any conversions or engagement.

Ask yourself who your target audience is and discover which social media networks they are most active on. These are the places you should be concentrating on. 

Note that social media users have a specific kind of content they expect to see when scrolling through their feed. To help you make a more informed decision, here are a few suggestions for content that work really well on major social media channels:

Facebook: Videos and curated content

Twitter: News, blogs, and gifs

Instagram: High-quality images and high res videos

LinkedIn: Professional content, jobs, and company news

Pinterest: Pictures and infographics

Once you have decided on the kind of content you want to use, you will be able to create better content that converts.

8. Offer a clear value proposition

Your value proposition is a service or feature intended to make your company or product attractive to customers. It is a major part of why a social media user would purchase your product.

If there is one conversion optimization tip that you should never forget, it would be to optimize your value proposition.

It is the number one thing that defines if people will engage with your content in some cases. It determines whether people will click that button, give up their email address, and share your brand with friends and family. 

Your value proposition should do three things:

Relevancy: Your value proposition should explain how your products helps solve a specific problem.

Quantified value: It should highlight the benefits that the user would get.

Differentiation: You need to show what differentiates you from the competition and why they should buy from you and not them.

What defines a good value proposition?

  • It is easy to understand
  • It communicates the benefits of your product or service
  • It avoids hype, buzzwords, and unnecessary marketing jargon
  • It can be read and understood in about five seconds

9. Constantly perform analytics and tracking

If you are not performing analysis or tracking your social media conversion rates, you will not know whether you are getting it right or not. 

Tracking allows you to know where you need to improve. You would be able to determine your highest-performing social media channels and the specific areas you would need to put in more effort.

You can use Google Analytics to monitor your social media conversions. 

Such analysis helps you tie the results with your campaign objectives and understand if you are on the right track or not.

You can also use social media management platforms like Brandwatch to get more data to help you in your campaign. The tool Measure allows you to see the full spectrum of available metrics cross-channel. This kind of overview is vital to ensuring you can continuously improve your conversion rates and overall performance.

10. Whatever the format, think “value first”

While trying to increase conversions, don’t forget to use social media the right way. 

Most social media users don’t browse social media platforms to see brand ads. Most users have even learned to ignore branded content selectively.

Remember to give value first to get the best ROI on your social media marketing. When you offer value to users, they won’t complain when you decide to advertise one or two of your products or services. I follow the rule of thumb: for every piece of branded content I advertise for, I post six non-branded content offers.

That’s it from me. Which of these tips would you start implementing in your social media strategy to help improve your conversion rates?