Sell on Socials this Silly Season Part 2

Priming your audience

Before we dive into posting and emails, it pays to understand a little more about how your customers make the decision to buy. Very few will see something and instantly whip out their credit card, they need to be convinced. As a general rule of thumb a customer will need to hear your message at least 7 times before they purchase. As they hear more about your products they’ll move through a process call the buying funnel that looks something like this. 

You can start this process well before you officially kick off your campaign by ‘priming’ your audience so they’re already aware and interested before you even begin selling. Remember, if you just hit a customer with a single post or ad, it’s very unlikely you’ll see the results you want. 

Priming can take a  lot of different forms, it might be “did you know” posts explaining an ingredient or before and after demonstrating your product. 

Resource – Campaign checklist

Use this checklist to plan your campaign, including helpful ways to prime your audience. Try and do at least 4 priming posts in the lead up to each campaign.

What makes an engaging post?

All the best messaging in the world won’t make a difference if people don’t stop to read, so here’s a few things you can do to make sure your message lands!

• High quality visuals – Speak to your suppliers about providing you with beautiful product photos, and take the time to get nice images if you’re taking them yourself. Aim for soft, natural light with no harsh shadows, crop your images so the subject fills the frame nicely and make sure important information like the product label is clear and in focus.
• A compelling ‘hook’ – This is the first line of text in your social media post. It needs to be interesting enough to make people click ‘view more’, try and be emotive and engaging.
• Good ‘calls to action’ – This is what you want you audience to do when they see your post, you might want to direct them to a blog to learn more, to your shop to purchase or to comment to enter a competition. Good calls to action are direct and action based ie “Click here to learn more” or “Buy now”
• Faces! – People buy from people and in study after study posts with faces in them outperform others. Where you can get in front of the campera and show that your brand is human.
• Visuals on brand – Developing a cohesive look for your brand helps your audience recognise you quickly and connect with your marketing. Keep your colours and fonts consistent.
• Post across different channels – You’ll only read about 32% of your audience through posts, about 8% through stories and somewhere between 5-20% through email. Sharing the same message across different channels gives it more chances of being seen.
  

Planning your campaign

Now you can start to plan your campaign! The first thing is to decide what you’re going to focus on, here’s some things to help you choose:

• Check the numbers – Take a look at your product sales in Timely, you could pick one of your best sellers that you know resonates with your audience, or you could pick something less known that you think should be performing better.
• Talk to your clients – Ask them about what they’re interested in, who they’re shopping for this year and what they’d like to hear more about.
• Talk to distributors – Ask them what’s been selling well in other businesses, if there are any new products on their way and if there are any incentives for certain products at the moment.
• Start small – This is the big one! Don’t be tempted to try and boil the sea, you can run a really effective campaign on just a single product! Starting small helps you stay in control. 

Once you know what you’re focusing on, pick one of the following campaign ideas and get posting!

Campaign 1 – Use existing reviews as social proof

Concept: These days customers are much more likely to trust the recommendations of their peers. Showing them proof that others like your product is an easy and effective way to encourage your audience to give it a go!

This campaign is great for: Products, gift vouchers

Priming ideas: Key ingredients, before and afters, screenshots of conversations

The Campaign 

Step 1: Go to Google, Facebook and wherever else you collect reviews and copy or screenshot all your positive reviews

Step 2: Pick your best reviews in relation to your key product/treatments for that post

Step 3: Drop review into template (and restyle if needed)

Step 4: Share across multiple channels – still posts or carousel posts, share on stories

Repeat 4 times over a month

Resource – Social proof campaign templates

Campaign 2 – User generated content

Concept: Real stories about people using your products are always so powerful and if you don’t have reviews you can lean on it’s helpful to go encourage your clients to create some new content for you! Run a competition to reward clients for sharing their experience and generate compelling content to help you sell more products!

This campaign is great for: Products, gift vouchers, helpful for newer businesses

Priming ideas: Actively speak to your clients at each service, tease the competition on social, key ingredients

The Campaign 

Step 1: Pick your prize, create post and email announcing campaign and update your automated customer messages to include a note about your competition

Step 2: Remind clients about your competition each time you see them

Step 3: Reshare all content as clients start sharing and keep a record of all client’s posts. Make sure you save it for future content!

Step 4: Pick your winner!

Step 5: Use your lovely content for further posts (see campaign 1)

Resource – User generated content campaign templates

Campaign 3 – Feature driven

Concept: People like to feel like they’re buying from an expert, if they can see you know why a product works and how it can help you they will be more likely to buy. Share your expert knowledge in this educational campaign.

This campaign is great for: Products, specific services/devices

Priming ideas: Educational posts – did you knows, how to’s, ingredients

The Campaign 

Step 1: Select your key product 

Step 2: Gather high quality images, key info (lean on suppliers!)

Step 3: Select your templates, add images and copy

Step 4: Post across multiple channels, post + story, email.

When posting to Social Media ensure you are tagging your offers/products when possible to encourage direct sales.

Focus on: emotions and solutions. Address the pain point, Offer a solution, followed by a CTA.

Resource – Feature driven campaign templates – Christmas Theme
Bonus templates – Extra product templates you can use year round

Need help using Canva? Check out our quick tutorial here.

Want more campaign ideas?

Join Kayla’s Socials for Salons to access:

• Monthly Zoom Classes
• Monthly Empower Hours (Facebook)
• Monthly Content Creation Lesson (Facebook)
• Training Bank of Classes and Resources
• PLUS over 600 customisable templates!

Instagram/Facebook @socialsforsalons
www.socialsforsalons.com.au