STAY WYSE Amsterdam 2020: Four steps to converting sales using social media

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On the second day of STAY WYSE Amsterdam 2020, we heard from Jason Rieff, hospitality and marketing consultant specialising in performance marketing and lifestyle branding, on the art of selling on social. With extensive experience within the marketing and PR field, most recently as Generator’s Chief Marketing Officer, Jason is well-versed in how to cut through the digital noise and sell via social media.

In a succinct presentation, Jason outlined his approach to defining a paid social media strategy (focusing on Facebook ads) to reach a desired target audience. What’s more, he broke it down into four steps – and made it look simple.

¨The first question I ask myself before creating a social media strategy is, ‘what is my media budget?’¨, said Jason. Golden rule number one: allocate more budget to paid media and less to your content, allowing the latter to be just ‘passable’. ¨You could invest a lot in beautiful content, but if you don’t have the budget to invest in the advertising, you’re not going to reach a lot of people,¨ Jason continued.

Once you have a media budget in mind, it’s time to set out your goals. Why am I creating a paid media campaign? To generate leads? To drive traffic to my website? Golden rule number two: focus on conversion. Your budget is better spent on converting users to customers than on building brand awareness; engagement and reach will follow naturally.

You then need to ensure that the right people are listening. This means checking that your targeting is tight on Facebook and that your money is not being wasted on an overly broad audience with little interest in your product. So, golden rule number three: scale down your audience as much as possible, so that the demographics and interests of your Facebook audience are aligned with the values of your product.

Finally, when your campaign is set up and launched, it is time to ask yourself; ‘how can I bring down my cost per result?’ And so we have it, golden rule number four; measure, measure and measure again. You want to make sure that your campaign is running as effectively and efficiently as possible; in short, testing with target groups and splitting test ads against each other until you achieve a low cost per result – think cents not Euros.

Facebook targeted ads are one of the strongest revenue providers available in the current marketing landscape. The key is to continuously optimise and measure your campaigns, until you hit the formula that works for your product. It may take a few tests to get it right, but as Jason summed up: ¨If you’re going to fail, fail hard, fail fast and fail cheaply.¨

And then maybe consider seeking advice from a digital marketeer.