Social Media & The Consumer Buying Process

Sales rarely happen on the first interaction.  In fact, they often take a handful of “touches” or interactions with your brand before someone decides to trust you with their purchase.  Social media and digital tools offer a great resource to both consumer/client and the business, but you need to be able to know how to leverage them.  Let’s walk through the consumer buying process to see how vital social media is in it and how we can leverage social media.

Acknowledge Need

In any sales process, whether to other businesses or consumers, the first vital step is establishing need.  Often we need to do this through proactive methods like email marketing, advertising, or even traditional mail.  Marketing is all about establishing need.  One of my favorite ways to do this is through content.  While this is a more passive way of acknowledging need, it still educates people about a particular subject with an underlying acknowledgement that there are experts who do this and can help you execute it well yourself.  Whether you take an active or a passive route, you still need to make people think they need your product or service.

So What?

Marketing is how you tell people they need you.  If you don’t have a strategic way of telling people they need your product or service, you need to map one out.  Figure out what you can realistically do now, and what you will do in the next few steps.  When you plan out, you can be strategic in your execution and messaging.

Information Search

Consumers today are educated consumers.  We are on information overload today with the various articles shared on social media, google searches, and Yelp reviews.  It’s easy to make an educated decision in today’s world.  And, consumers are using these tools more and more to make smart decisions.  By the time they’ve called you for a quote, they’ve qualified your business on some level by doing research of some kind.

So What?

Your business should care about the basics to make sure you have a solid digital footprint.  Can you say with confidence that your website is clear?  That people can find your number or contact info clearly?  That you have positive reviews about your company online?  If you can’t answer all of those questions confidently, then you need to go back to the basics.  Forget advertising, and focus on looking good.  Once you have the foundations in place, then it makes sense to send people to your brand online.  Make sense, right?!

Evaluation of Alternatives

Since consumers are so educated, it’s not surprising that most people will research a few other alternatives as well.  This isn’t anything new, it’s just now a lot easier.  Bloggers doing product reviews, online shopping websites, and just a simple Google search can bring up a ton of comparative intel for a consumer making a decision.  It’s important, to make sure that you know how you stack up to your competitors.  Online reviews matter, especially on sites that are easily public like Facebook and Google.  How your website looks compared to your closest competitors also matters because this is what your competitors are looking at and judging you against.

So What?

Periodically pay attention to what your closest competitors are doing with their digital footprint.  How does your website stack up to theirs?  How does your social media presence stack up to theirs?  While we know that we care about substance, try to pay attention to what people might notice in a quick first impression.  If your prospective customers and clients might care, then you should care too.

Purchase Decision

Once someone has decided to work with your company, you should do everything you can to make it a good experience.  In healthcare they talk a lot about the patient experience, and I think it’s a concept that can apply well in general business settings too.  The customer experience is paramount and is an entirely separate topic on its own.  However, simple steps to make the onboarding of a customer easy is important.  It makes their experience a good one, and hopefully makes your life a little better too!

Often business owners get excited because they closed a sale and think that the work has been done.  Well, the marketing’s job is kinda done, but your job isn’t.  Once someone converts to being a client, you have a huge opportunity to nurture that relationship.  The cost of retaining a client is far less than bringing on new ones.  Now, your job becomes client/customer satisfaction, which frankly, is much more fun and rewarding!

So What?

Between Google’s suite of business tools and other digital automation tools, there are easy ways to gather customer information for onboarding and make the process easy for both the client and you!  Using tools like these make your company appear more competent, and also make life easier in general.  They’re worth the time to invest to make your customer onboarding a breeze!

Post-Purchase Behavior

Social media and automated digital tools allow you to maximize a very valuable window of time in the consumer purchasing process:  the post-purchase timeframe.  This is an extremely valuable time where consumers are willing to engage with the brand and often happy to help.  It’s a crucial time for cementing their loyalty to your brand as well.  Use automated email marketing to make clients feel appreciated and make them feel part of the overall success.  You can also use automated tools to ask for reviews.

So What? 

Ask for reviews!  If you’re not in a home services or healthcare field, asking for reviews can feel awkward and vulnerable.  However, the more people review or give testimonials the more you can use those to your advantage on social media and on your website (thus giving you more tools for selling people in the future!).  If you’re nervous about poor reviews, this is a great opportunity to evaluate your own procedures and see if there are areas for improvement.

We know that most people don’t become customers on the first interaction with your brand.  That’s why strategic social media passive and active marketing is crucial.  That’s why combining that with email marketing, paid advertising, and content marketing can be so effective.  When you approach your sales strategy with the perspective that it is indeed a PROCESS.  You realize that your individual marketing campaigns are just a cog in a bigger sales machine.

How do you get strategic with your sales process?

  1. Look for support from someone who understands multiple digital marketing channels.  They don’t need to be the experts in them, but if they understand how various tools work together, they’ll do a better job as a whole for you.
  2. Spend time working on the foundations.  Don’t jump into advertising unless you have the foundations in place, which means a solid website with good copy and good branding, good branding if you don’t already have that, a baseline of solid content on your blog, vlog, social media and more, and any foundational sales tools you need for your active selling.
  3. Look for inspiration.  Yes, you can hire people to help, but unless you have some ideas of what you like or don’t like, it’s hard for them to do what you want.  Look for inspiration yourself of techniques or brands you like and appreciate.  It will help anyone you hire to get to know your style better.
  4. Use Data.  This is a big one because there’s so much data available.  Taking the time to do an analysis of your market may feel cumbersome at the time, but will give you valuable intel for any marketing you do.
  5. Use Data. Use data at the beginning, but then also evaluate your sales process with your own data. Do you know your close ratio?  Your bounce rates?  Your digital conversion rates?  Your cost per clicks?  The list goes on and on.  With social media marketing and digital advertising, you can get these insights easily to help measure what is actually working for YOUR business in your digital strategy.

Tintero Creative specializes in social media marketing and content marketing strategies with the perspective of growing not only a short term goal, but helping you achieve longterm success online.  We work with SEO, PPC, website developers, and data scientists to help bring comprehensive strategic marketing plans for our clients.  If your company wants to get more strategic and focused in your marketing and sales funnel, give us a ring!