Making the Best Use of Social Media for eCommerce
Khalil Arouni
Husband, Father, Author, Keynote Speaker, Growth Catalyst, International Media Consultant, Helping companies increase profit and get a better Marketing ROI, Business Owner
With an increasing number of internet users purchasing online every year, it’s safe to say that the eCommerce industry is thriving. Nearly every major retailer now has an online store, and new online-only stores seem to emerge daily.?
This is excellent news for consumers as they have more options when buying something. However, for eCommerce retailers, it means that online retail has become increasingly competitive. Thus, brands must use social media to promote their eCommerce?
While strategies such as PPC and SEO allow you to enhance your online visibility and acquire new customers, eCommerce social media marketing provides another effective way to increase brand awareness and generate qualified web traffic for your site.?
Please continue reading to learn more about eCommerce social media, including how to make the best use of it, what platforms to use, and a lot more.?
What Is eCommerce Social Media Marketing?
eCommerce social media marketing refers to using social media to promote an online store by creating brand awareness, generating interest in products or services, and boosting sales.?
The most common eCommerce social media tactics include:
Several brands use all the tactics mentioned above to create a successful eCommerce social media marketing strategy.?
How to Make the Best Use of Social Media Platforms for eCommerce?
There’s no correct way of using social media platforms for eCommerce. Your social media marketing strategy might vary depending on your business, your target audience, and the products and services you sell.?
However, after much research, we have discovered the best practices to power up your social media marketing efforts to create a successful and profitable eCommerce business.?
Come Up with a Clear and Impactful Bio?
Businesses are often too focused on developing engaging and fun content for their social media accounts to ignore the essentials.?
It is important to remember that when someone views your content on social media, they go to your profile to find out more about your brand. They might check out some of the content you have shared, but they will look at your bio or about section!?
Thus, don’t forget to spend a little time on your bio or about section to adequately define what you are selling and highlight your value proposition.
Run Paid Social Media Campaigns Optimised for E-Commerce Businesses
Almost every social media platform has a version of paid advertising that allows you to boost visibility as organic reach gets more challenging to attain.?Moreover, there are various types of ads on each platform. Thus, it can be beneficial to experiment with the multiple options available on every platform. For instance, you can use Shoppable posts on Instagram but choose retargeting ads on Facebook. Leverage the audience targeting capabilities on all the platforms.?
Use a Shoppable Link in Your Bio?
Even though platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter let you add different links to each post, you can only add one link to your bio. This is because changing the biography each time you upload new content can take too much time and result in errors. Moreover, social media platforms such as Instagram let you add only one link to your bio.?Usually, brands try updating this link each time they run a campaign. However, this means someone viewing an old post might not see the link they were interested in a week later. That’s when you need to use link optimisation tools such as?Linkpop. It’s a free link in bio tool developed for commerce business, bearing in mind the limitations levied on social media channels.?
The tool allows you to develop a customised, branded page of all your recent links depending on your running campaigns or the content you wish to promote. Thus, when someone comes across your posts many days after it was uploaded, they can still find a URL of the same on your Linkpop page and click through to get to your website.?
In addition, it allows you to generate a shoppable link for the page. Interested individuals can tap the URL, add the item to their cart, and checkout rather than going to the website, browsing for the product, and then purchasing it.?
Use Buyable Pins on Pinterest
Pinterest is an excellent social media website to boost your conversion rates. Studies indicate that the average value of a Pinterest shopper is $50. This is considerably higher than most social media platforms. Thus, you can use Pinterest to acquire high-value customers and get high traffic for your conversion rates.?
You can use a ‘buy now’ button for your brand to ensure users can buy your products by simply clicking on the button. It is significantly easier for your customers to shop this way, and it can boost your e-commerce conversion rates.?
Experiment with Live Shopping?
Statistics reveal that live content gets watch time per viewing. But what’s more interesting is that you can do more than engage individuals in a live video and drive actual sales! This is where live shopping enters the picture.?
Several brands use this format to market and sell their products by live streaming on social media channels. Live shopping aims to make it easier for people viewing the live stream to make inquiries and purchase the displayed products.?
You can make live shopping more engaging, immersive, and easy to shop from by connecting your social media accounts with the backend of your storefront using tools such as Livescale and Channelize.io.
Provide Continued Support through Chatbots?
Conversational chatbots and AI are reshaping the future of online shopping, and brands are eager to incorporate this feature in their eCommerce social media marketing. The best thing about chatbots is that they don’t call in sick and work round the clock to provide your customers with the best shopping experience.?
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Facebook provides this type of AI technology in its Messenger service to engage with customers and prospects through speech, message, or text. The bot allows users to ask questions, discover communities, find their size (in the case of clothing items), and a lot more. In an uncommon scenario, the bot will suggest the user leave a question and direct it to a live support expert who will handle the problem.?
Collaborate with Influencers
Collaboration is a crucial ingredient to achieving success on social media platforms. Working with influencers and engaging with other brands are two ways to make your collaboration profitable.
In 2022, influencer marketing was worth a whopping $16.4 billion. And it’s not difficult to see why. Influencer marketing has become one of the most popular eCommerce social media marketing strategies to increase reach, acquire new followers, and social-proof products.??
Collaborations are equally important. An increasing number of brands are working with other businesses with similar target audiences. Such partnerships can involve creating high-value bundle giveaways or promotions that both brands comarket to their followers.??
In both these cases, brands validate and amplify their products and services to massive social media audiences.?
Create a Lot of Video Content
Video has swiftly become the most influential and popular type of content on social media. Almost?90 per cent of people say they wish to see more brand video content. Moreover, they also said they had been convinced to purchase a product or service after viewing a video from a brand.??
Instagram Stories and TikTok are currently the two most popular social media channels. Both provide excellent opportunities for businesses to post organic and paid video content to engage followers.
Just to let you know, video does not need to be costly. Similarly, it does not require glossy effects or high production value. All it needs to do is highlight your personality, demonstrate value, and talk to your customer.?
Leverage User-Generated Content?
If your social media feed contains reposted user-generated content, it is time to use it on your website as social proof. Statistics reveal that nearly?30 per cent of the time millennials?spend viewing content is consumed on user-generated content. The study further shows that almost 48 per cent of consumers say user-generated content is an excellent way to find new products.?
The best thing here is that you do not have to alter the code of your website to embed UGC from your social media platforms. Instead, you can display your social media feed on the storefront using Shopify apps.?
A different method of showcasing user-generated content is to gather it all on your website. You can easily do this using various social proof applications such as Loox, Judge.me, etc., that let consumers upload their pictures or videos alongside product reviews on the website itself.?
Pay Attention to Social Listening?
Social listening is monitoring social media for comments, mentions, hashtags, and conversations about your products and brand. It also includes mentions of competitors and industry trends, allowing you to analyse your brand’s status in-depth.
This is an integral element of your audience research that will allow you to:?
Some tools you can use for social listening include?BrandMentions,?Adview,?Audiense,?ReviewTrackers, and?Hootsuite.?
Take Advantage of Social Media Targeting?
Social media platforms collect information about their users regarding gender, interests, age, and geography that you can use. Targeting allows you to show ads to those users who will be most interested in the product you sell. This helps you save money and deliver the ads to the most relevant people.?
Moreover, depending on the campaign’s success, businesses can determine the extent to which this kind of targeting gets results and whether it’s a good idea to continue to target advertising to a specific group of buyers.
The activity and engagement of the Instagram audience and the visual elements of the content make it possible to successfully use this feature on this social media platform for eCommerce. To set up Instagram targeting, you will have to:??
Enable Social Login?
Each stage of the sales funnels is necessary to convert your audience into a paying customer. However, the final scene, where customers take action to purchase from you, is critical. Therefore, each step must be comfortable and seamless in the final payment process.?
One way to make paying for an item easier is to let your customer enter their information with social login. You can even use social login to register a user and create an account on your website.?
Users will have to click the email or social media login option. And after providing the required permissions, their primary contact information will automatically enter the billing form.?
Finally,?
Are you ready to expand your eCommerce business using social media? Contact us, and we will help you with the top eCommerce social media marketing and lead generation strategies that will help you boost sales on your website.