1) Share things worth seeing

One of the easiest ways to improve conversion rates is to post more images. When you post photos or video, people are readier to engage with what you have made, and readier to send it on to friends and family. Lately some platforms, Instagram among them, have leaned hard into video. Many people baulk at appearing on camera, but this is good news all the same: video makes it easier to fit more in. Conversions on social media come down to how well you can compress a reason to act into a post, and video lets you catch someone's interest in a few seconds. The approach works better still when the audience is under forty. 

Posting alone, though, guarantees nothing. When you publish matters, if you want to reach a particular group. Read about a few approaches here.

2) Write a good call to action

A call to action tells your audience what to do next. With one or without, you have to give people a reason to like or comment. If you are offering a discount on a product or a service, say where they can find out more about it.

A button draws the eye, and raises the chance of a conversion, because it sends someone straight to the point of sale or to a person on the sales team. So take real care over the words on it. The way to use the tool well is to keep refining that text and watching the results closely, always looking for what could be better. Make the buttons noticeable and obvious — as you can see on the right-hand side of this page. 

3) Show some character

Prospective customers want to know what sets you apart, as a person and as a business. So let your character show in what you post. It humanises the relationship and makes plain that there is not a robot at the other end. 

Social proof is the psychological effect by which people follow what others do: if enough of them behave a certain way, the behaviour must be right. In business it is used to build recognition and drive sales. An empty restaurant may serve better food than the busy one next door, and yet the crowd next door is read as proof of quality, whether or not it is. 

Social proof produces strong emotional triggers that raise conversion directly, and the most important of them are trust and safety. Many things shape whether someone buys from you or engages with what you offer, but trust decides more of it than anything else.

One route is a channel of your own, on YouTubefor instance. It builds loyalty, converts customers, and gives you one more place to show what the business thinks and how it behaves.

4) Make the offer visible

Start by making sure your posts are clear about what is on offer. If people cannot tell what you are selling, they cannot buy it. Happily, as people spend more time online the formats and campaigns have adapted, so it is worth making full use of mobile features across devices that fold video into people's daily scrolling. You can also encourage people to recommend others on your page, or earn certifications that act as a mark of approval in your field, which lifts followers and likes considerably. An endorsement from a well-known figure, a specialist or an influencer does the same: it shows the company your brand keeps, and it reaches the audience gathered around that person.

5) Pay for traffic

Not obligatory — there are organic routes that will help. But paying for ads on social media does promote the business, and it does more than that: the ads tell you a good deal about who is engaging and who is interested. You learn how those people behave, which lets you go back for them later through remarketing.

And here is a point worth having. Ad blockers let people shut out intrusive advertising on their phones and computers. So if banners are your habit, a considerable number of people are simply not seeing them. Prefer native ads, which are shaped to particular formats and sites and fit what the reader is already doing.

There are also responsive ads, shown as text or image, which take on the characteristics of the publisher's site without the advertiser lifting a finger. Unlike a banner, native advertising is not something bolted onto the content; it is part of it, made to convey what the products and services are genuinely worth.

How to improve conversions on social media

At Manáry Digital all of this comes shaped around you. We make content for your audience, and sharpen the spend with campaigns aimed at the people who want and need what you sell, so the results you are after become reachable. There are annual plans, tailored to what you need: ad campaigns (Google Ads and Meta Business), site, page and content optimisation with an SEO plan, Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, and a good deal more — all to lift your sales and bring in more customers. We also build e-commerce and the whole digital strategy behind selling online, and we specialise in growth hacking, an approach that leans heavily on data. Want to read more about digital marketing? Take a look at our handbook. 

Fill in the form or get in touch with a Manáry Digital specialist.