Social media is like a gold mine for e-commerce and, if you’re not reaching your social potential, you’re missing out on the magic. You need to create a strong social media presence. Once your accounts are in place, set-up with your branded images, logo and company name, you need a commitment to the cause. Crafting regular, engaging posts is just one way to build brand awareness, drive traffic and make sales.
Are you fully taking advantage of social media?
Social media is still a major driver of traffic to e-commerce sites, second only to search traffic. A considerable chunk of your customers would rather use social channels to connect with you if it saves them picking up the phone or writing an email.
There are two main ways to use social media for e-commerce:
- To drive traffic!
Your strategy should be based around what mostly defines social media: engagement, relationships, and connections.
- Interact with customers: When users experience a positive interaction with your brand, they’re 3x more likely to recommend you to a friend. Also, don’t ignore the negatives! You should never leave customer complaints or questions unanswered. If you do, those customers are 88% less likely to buy from you in the future.
- Regular content: Use engaging content to send traffic to your site. Images, videos, and content relevant to your audience will all work to get their attention and send them to your e-shop. Accompany them with links and you should receive an influx of customers that are already engaged with and interested in your store.
- Facebook Ads: Investing in paid ads on Facebook is a quicker, easier way to drive traffic. Organic content can also work, but it gets lost in that Facebook jungle much more easily. 94% of companies are already paying for ads so you can bet they will get priority on news feeds over your organic content. Your social marketing is much more likely to be effective for your business if you’re paying for ads.
- Keep up with changes: Social media is developing all the time, so modern companies need to be able to keep up. Instagram stories, as we mentioned in a previous post, are taking off. They offer an authentic connection to your customers and they are fast becoming one of the best ways to increase visibility and engagement. Live streaming is getting some attention right now, too. It’s more exciting than regular video and 82% of people would rather watch a live video than interact with any other type of social media content.
- To make sales!
Prefer to use social media for sales, rather than to create brand awareness? Here are a few tips on how to increase your e-shop revenue from social media marketing.
- Don’t just sell: About 20% of your content should be product promotion, the other 80% should be around valuable advice, industry news or entertaining posts. You need to use social media to increase engagement and build brand loyalty before you can move customers down the funnel.
- Send traffic to the right place: The spot you’re sending traffic to is one of the biggest reasons of whether your strategy converts or not. Create clever landing pages that have: headlines that clearly displays what you do offers enforced by a sense of urgency, designs focused on the point, a couple of very important features, benefits and pain points and a clear, tempting call-to-action.
- Remarket to interested customers: Imagine a customer that shows interest in a neon yellow umbrella. You can target that customer over and over again by having the neon yellow umbrella follow him across multiple platforms. It works, too. Remarketing increases conversion rates: more ad impressions are more likely to tempt a customer to buy.
- Make their life easier: Create “in-app” shopping carts that don’t require the customer to leave the social platform. Customers can now buy things on Instagram using Instagram Shopping. You can achieve the same thing on Pinterest with the “Buy it” button, and on Facebook by installing apps that set up shopping carts on your page. Perfect for impulse buyers.
- Influencer marketing: This type of strategy provides an average of 7x ROI. For example, 40% of Twitter users said they have made a purchase purely because of a tweet from an influencer. Most social media communities trust influencers, provided their posts come across as genuine. Only work with influencers relevant to your industry.
What’s on the horizon?
It can be hard to imagine, but social media is going to become even more integrated into our lives. Think chatbots, more in-app purchasing, new social platforms and even more advanced advertising tools! Social media marketing services only work when businesses stay on top of changes.