4 Strategies For Hooking Social Visitors

If the internet is a sprawling ocean, marketing is the bait, hook, and line that entices us from the expanse.

Make no mistake, the internet provides a wealth of opportunity for the world over. Yet all too often remains unrefined with shoals of social visitors floundering around search engines with no defined destination.

Similar to how one big take makes up for a hundred nibbles, one customer is better than a hundred views. Successes in the eCommerce market have shown business the perfect tactics for landing the prized customer.

Here are four fantastic strategies for hooking social visitors:

Tell Your Story

Your business story is unique and that is what sets you apart from the crowd. Who inspired you? What are you passionate about? When did you start?

Visitors want to understand who you are and what you represent. Telling your story builds connections and captivates the viewer as the latest Tarantino film would.

The first step in hooking social visitors is to make yourself interesting and memorable. Items or services can always be bought elsewhere. Adding emotion and passion to your business gives visitors a reason to stick around. With this enticing bait, viewers will read on to eventually become paying customers or engage with the rest of your content.

There are numerous businesses that have articulated themselves to great effect. For example, the Sole Supplier - trainer news and information platform - has tailored its ‘about’ page’ to define its purpose and the wider community. From Instagram to the store, they cater to and engage with ‘sneakerheads’ because that is who they are and what they love.

Humanizing your business into a story is a timeless method of hooking social visitors. Before setting up your store think: what’s my story? Then make it clear.

Make A Cast With Social Media

A strong reach maximizes the rate at which visitors become customers. A great way to begin is by establishing a social media presence.

Fishing analogies all to often forget to mention the cast. A strong cast is a difference between getting tangled in the reeds and catching a king carp. The use of social media marketing is no different. You must pay attention, and plan a course of action to best place efforts where visitors are most active.

Whether it's Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Social media is an exciting way to hook potential customers.

To be effective, you must take a consistent approach to audience building. I recommend using social media organizers to plot out campaigns months in advance. Take Hootsuite for instance, an online calendar that integrates with social media platforms. This allows you to schedule posts across the internet via a simple interface.

Ensure that your posts lead visitors to a destination through links. This tends to be a blog, sales page or whatever else you wish to draw attention to.

Links add cohesion to your social media. Without links, your presence on social media will seem fragmented. Confusion will lose the visitor like a bad line.

Create A Great Landing Page

The landing page is where marketing efforts convert leads to sales. Fail here and your line has snapped at the final stage. Designing a great landing page is pivotal for any business mind trying to hook visitors. It is down to you to close the deal.

Thanks to developments in accessible tech, you no longer have to be a coding maestro to build a professional webpage.
If you’re using an eCommerce site builder like Shopify, it will come with integrated drag and drop templates that make building your own page landing page easy. Or, if you’re using WordPress, design tools like Unbounce can help you create a landing page that will create more customers and boost conversions.

Even with all this software at your fingertips, you still need to know how to create a landing page people will want to read and engage with.

An important aspect to consider is your use of copy. The written word on your page must be convincing and persuasive. Your website is the most precious single entity of your business, so write like it is. Outline the necessities, don’t waffle and be in clear in your instructions.

Your design must be simplistic and appealing to not overwhelm the reader. The last thing you want is for the landing page to appear cluttered and confusing. Research can go along way in design - what is working for your competitors? It is surprising how far a strong hello can go.

Open A Direct Channel Of Communication

Say you do make a sale, there is no guarantee that visitors will ever return. The key is to scatter bait, leaving a trail so they return again and again. It is easier to maintain connections than it is to fish new waters and attract new ones

A subtle strategy is to set up a subscription-based newsletter at the point of service.

Hitting the web with a barrage of spam is not the right approach here, or ever. The online visitor is notoriously flighty and will shudder at such an act.

Noting an email (with permission) generates links between your business at its visitors. Many successful companies use this to create a channel of communication, often tailoring information packages to people’s previous purchases.

With the lack of face to face time on the web, clear communication is more important than ever. Also, by providing extra useful information the customer is receiving more than a product. This shows that the business is valuing visitor uniqueness and can be a trusted source of information.

Recommended reading: Top 5 Tips To Improve Your Text

The internet is an ocean of opportunity. With the right tools, you can fish it for customers who will stick around for years to come. Hooking social visitors is not an easy feat to accomplish and it is why so many sites and businesses fall. However, utilizing these four tips will put you on the right path for online success.

About the Author:

Kayleigh Alexandra is a writer for Micro Startups, your online destination for everything startup. She's passionate about hard-working solopreneurs and SMEs making waves in the business world. Visit the blog for your latest dose of startup and charity insights from top experts around the globe@getmicrostarted.