4 Reasons Your Audience Isn’t Buying on Social Media

“First, people log on to social media, to be entertained, to learn, to be inspired, to catch up with their family and friends…shopping comes second.”  –Jerry Potter, Five Minute Social Media

Truth – if your audience isn’t buying at all, there are potentially thousands of reasons but we are going to break down four of the most common reasons why audiences don’t buy (and how to overcome them).

1. STOP ASKING FOR THE SALE – The first reason that businesses don’t get more sales on social media is usually because we ask people to buy too often. A lot of people hop on social media for their business, whether it’s an Instagram account or a Facebook business page, and they treat it like a commercial during live TV (remember LIVE TV ?) You have never opened Tik ToK going, “oooh man, I wonder what ads are here today!” 

If you’re asking for a sale on every single post, you’re probably going to have 0 sales from social media. Now there may be exceptions but that’s not the norm. 

This is the BIG BAD – if you are constantly asking for the buy, your audience will stop engaging with your posts. When they stop engaging, they will stop seeing your posts altogether. Now they might go and unfollow you if they’re really irritated, but what’s more likely to happen is that the social media algorithms on every platform (LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook) – everywhere will just stop showing them your posts. That’s why it’s important that you’re posting a nice mix of things where you aren’t asking for sales. People should know you’re a business, but you’re also providing value or entertainment or something else for them. 

Think of it as 80/20 – 80% of your posts be engaging, entertaining, inspiring, whatever it might be but not asking for a sale. The remaining 20% would be where you would ask somebody to buy or do something that feels like it’s going to lead to a sale.

TIP: If you can find a way to make your sales entertaining, amusing, inspiring, educational, whatever it might be, where people love it anyway, then you can absolutely do more than just the 20%.

2. WHO DIS? THEY DON’T SEE YOUR POSTS TO BEGIN WITH. The second reason that your audience may not be buying from you as much as you’d like on social media is because they’re not even seeing your posts. This means you need to focus on getting your posts in front of more people first. On any business platform, whether it’s a Facebook business page and Instagram creator profile and Instagram business profile, you can actually see how many people your posts are reaching. Another thing to keep in mind with reach is that the reach number is the number of people who saw your post, which basically means it showed up in front of them. Now they could have scrolled right past it, never looking at it. They could have been looking away from their phone or their device while they were on the screen. If it says reach at 500, it doesn’t mean 500 people looked at it and went, “Hard pass, not interested.” It means they, it may have appeared in their eyesight, you know, maybe even in the corner of their eye at some point. Don’t put too much stock in that reach number but check it because if people aren’t seeing your posts, then they’re obviously not going to buy. 

How do you get in front of more people? Spend money on ads? Obviously, that would be one way of increasing your engagement. You have a ton of creative options, definitely look at the list of our past episodes of Social Media For Streamlined Entrepreneurs for help with some ideas. 

3. I’M CONFUSED, JUST TAKE MY MONEY. Third reason is that you’re not getting as many sales on social media as you’d like, you may have made it too hard and they don’t know how to buy. They see your post on Instagram and you’re like, yeah, I mean, I don’t understand why it’s so hard?! All you have to do is leave the feed, click on the username, go to my profile, click my link, which will then take you to another page, which has 10 links and scroll through the links. 

People are busy, they’re distracted and they don’t have time to figure out things that are complicated. As one of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, who wrote building a StoryBrand says, “if you confuse, you lose.” A confused customer will almost never buy and they will not take the effort to figure out. As my former t-ball coach used to say – use the “K.I.S.S. Method” Keep. It. Simple. Stupid. (Could you imagine him coaching kids in 2021?)  

Think about it, what do you want them to do? Click the link to buy now? Leave a comment so they can set up a discovery call? Send a message so that you can book a free consultation? The easier you make it, the more people are going to actually go through and do it.

4. 3 IS THE MAGIC NUMBER. Three magical things have to be lined up in order for sales to happen. Audience, Message and Offer. Your audience = the right people. The Messaging = what you’re offering and how it solves the problem that they have. The Offer = what you’re actually offering.

“Example: Let’s say that I am selling heavy winter coats. Oh, these things are so warm. You can wear them on one of those icebreaker ships that goes through Antarctica! 

Audience: Lives in a hot desert climate and they have no intention of leaving (WRONG) 

Messaging: Are you going on an icebreaker ship in Antarctica? You need this jacket. It’s rated the number one warmest jacket in the world. (And the person is actually going on an icebreaker breaker ship in Antarctica. RIGHT!) *The more likely scenario is that the person is trying to buy a winter coat to go snowboarding, and I’m saying, this jacket is perfect for an icebreaker ship in the Arctic, then that’s the wrong messaging. Somebody is reading that going, “Oh, I don’t need that. I just need a coat to go skiing this weekend.” 

Offer: If I said, this jacket is only $10,000! The buyer would be in shock – “I do not have $10,000 for a jacket! Is it a jet-pack?! Also, in addition to your product being priced right, if the rest of your offer is confusing, then it’s not the right offer. [All you have to do is make 74.3 payments at different varying amounts and pay for some of it, with a check and some of it with a credit card and I accept magical crystals too!] The buyer is thinking, “What just happened? Did I blackout?”

Like I said, there are potentially thousands of reasons why your customers are not buying on social media but start by adjusting these 4 and let me know how it worked out! You can do this! 

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