The explosion of growth in the online stores has made it tougher for ecommerce sites to attract the prospective mass of visitors needed to survive in business. If you run an ecommerce business, knowing this fact is very important - regardless of the age, gender or economic standing, your customers are active on social media sharing sites. Social media is one such platform that can add value to your business other than direct sales.
There are a lot of great reasons to maintain profiles on social channels - as an approach to build brand awareness, an extension of customer service, improve customer engagement and have an insight into what your customers care about. To put in few words - all of these things can contribute to a tremendous rise in overall sales. Have a look, how!
1. Engage with Your Audience
Allow your users to use their already existing social profile to log in, cutting down the registration steps (which a lot of people find frustrating) thereby increasing conversion.
Keep a watch that your homepage, product pages and check out pages, all have simple to use social sharing buttons. Don't take the power of a simple social share lightly. Testimonials from customers are very influential in building a brand. Let them be your brand advocates by making it easy for them to review/give ratings to your products.
2. Get Visually Creative
Images possess the highest sharing potential. Image promotion sites like Instagram and Pinterest seems a perfect fit for online businesses selling products (clothing, accessories, home products). With a little creative thinking, a brand can find a meaningful way to build and share visually appealing content. Quotes, motivational images, infographics, and usage guide are all types of visual content that should be taken into consideration.
3. Monitor What Your Competitors Are Doing
Spend quite a time by conducting a competitive analysis review of your top 5 competitors on the social channels:
- Social platforms where they are active on
- The type of content that they publish on these channels
- How frequently do they do so
- The number of likes/fans/followers/views they have on each site
- How they endorse specific products or events via social media
4. Post Daily Content for Continued Growth
Post content consistently to grow your social communities over time to of all the brand's social accounts - Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterst, Instagram etc. To make a strong relationship with your audiences, connect with them on regular basis. Examine and know the best time to post.
Facebook's best time frame: between 11 and 4pm.
Twitter's best time frame: between 1 and 3pm.
LinkedIn's best time frame: between 7 and 9am.
Google+'s best time frame: between 9 and 11am.
Pinterest's best time frame: between 2 and 4pm.
5. Grow Exposure of your Communities With Social Buttons
The best way to radically increase the number of impressions on your social profiles is by embedding the social buttons within your website and in your marketing communications. Most blogs have social sharing buttons shown prominently to encourage readers to share the article.
Places where you may place social buttons:
- In your newsletter
- In your email signature
- Header of your website and blog
- Footer of your website and blog
6. Avoid Overselling
Don t Just Push Products and Promotions Look for means to convert your audiences into prospect without actually selling to them. Yes that s tricky indeed! Keep it a 80:20 ratio; where
- 80% of your content - being stuff that interests your audience & keep them in conversations
- 20% of your content - being promotional
Integrate some of these thoughts into your ecommerce social media marketing strategy:
- Share articles/news stories from external sources
- Create a blog on your website and feed it into your social accounts
- Create contests, ask questions and participate in discussions
- Post pictures of company events/corporate videos
7. Run an appealing Campaign
Run sweepstakes or giveaways to give clear incentives to let the audience become your fans. It can be:
- Voting polls
- Running contests
- Interactive quizzes
- Newsletter signups
and everything in between; there is a wide array of options to promote your online store. All you need is to make sure the message has a potent incentive to allure your visitors to share the promotion with their social communities & friends.
Something which says, " Get a chances to win the soccer tickets by inviting your friends to join the promotion ", or " Get 5 friends to like us and win prizes worth $300 " will upturn the share rate exposing your promotion to a number of people.
8. Leverage Social Reviews to earn brand trust
Every online review that endorses your business is a powerful form of marketing Online reviews give you a better chance to develop a closer relationship with your customers. Let the customer leave their experience and testimonial on your ecommerce portal which then after you can utilize on your social profiles promoting it as a word of mouth.
9. Measure and Improve: To stay ahead of the competition
Keep your eye on the statistics :
- Find out the best times to post
- What sorts of content get the best engagement
- Which products come out to be most popular
You can then use these insights to improve your ecommerce site and refine social media activities.
10. Sweeten the Deal
Believe it - People love to feel special! Invite and reward your social following in terms of exclusive offers and bonuses. Keep the feel of love ON and see how it converts to customer loyalty.
To sum it up: Be smart Be focused and Be consistent in your efforts. Never stop, keep going! If you are looking to set-up an online store or you're already in but want to make sure you are having a good to go online presence - contact Cognus for social media marketing services for Ecommerce to help you in your way to success.