Master Social Selling Find Out How to Use Social Media for E-Commerce
Social selling is a LOT different than optimizing for traditional E-Commerce sales, find out how to use social media the right way to drive online sales.
The majority of successful E-commerce businesses have mastered social selling.
There are rules to using social media for eCommerce gains, so what do you need to understand before you begin?
Let’s take a look at how social media can be used effectively for generating revenue through social selling.
Customers spend 20-40% more with companies that they have social media engagement with.
Every business wants to know how to make the best use of social media, unfortunately there are many businesses using social media very ineffectively.
It’s easier to do than yo might think – mixing business with social media is difficult.
Think about it…
Nobody wants products inconveniently popping up while they’re looking at family photos or the train wreck photos of the drunk VP at last nights company party.
Even though more business recommendations, referrals, marketing and successful deals are being completed through social media every day, social selling appears to simply be a myth to many. The magic of social selling only takes place once a business understands that the social angle comes first.
Turning Social Media into an E-Commerce Platform & The Caveats to Social Selling
- Have a Strategy – There’s no room for dumb luck here, have a plan in place.
- Start small and on the right social channels.
- Don’t lose your voice. Keep your brand messaging consistent always.
- Keep it conversational. You’re NOT advertising, you’re opening a dialogue with your audience.
- What value can YOU provide to your audience? You must be sure of this before you start.
- Quality, Quality & Quality. Your content, especially images and video, but other brand assets such as your logo, catalogs, etc have to be high res and awesome in nature or your brand will suffer.
If you want to achieve ecommerce social media success, we’ll cover social selling a little more in-depth below.
Grow Your Friends and Followers List
The number one priority would be to get the audience that you want to market to.
Even when you make posts public on your social media pages, it’s your friends and followers that can only see them or people that your friends refer to them. Because of this, you have to increase the number of people following the social media pages.
It’s common sense that posts are more effective when more people see them.
For you to do this, you have to throw out fun, exciting, and useful posts. None should outweigh the other here.
When people see posts as interesting, they tend to share, and this helps to get your message to your friends’ friends. You can also appeal to your friends and followers to share posts from time to time in a very mild manner. The last method of trying to grow your follower base is by offering incentives.
Incentives are something you should be using in E-Commerce anyway. Offering incentives like the ones listed below are designed to generate buzz and motivate action;
• BOGO
• Free gift with purchase
• New customer discounts
• Returning customer discounts
• free account sign up
• Contest, etc.
Understanding Your Audience
Every social media page will include two sets of audiences.
The first set is your current customer base, while the second involves the prospects you are searching for.
You can only be effective if you know how to reach them, especially the prospects. You can easily identify your customers. But can you identify prospects, turn them into customers and get them to buy from you?
There are lots of tools available on social media that can help you do this. These will assist you in generating new leads and converting them into buyers. The interests and demographics of your target customers must be studied before you engage them.
Getting Your Promotional Posts Right
Promotional posting – what’s your end game?
Whenever you want to promote a product on social media, the one thing to keep in mind is the end goal of that promotional post. If you want to make a post where the target is to clear out stagnant inventory, it must be different from what you would post if you are seeking to grow constant sales or to reward loyalty.
If you are making a post that intends to reward loyalty, for instance, things like pre-order opportunities and a modest discount will help you avoid loss.
For you to give the people involved the feeling that it is exclusively for them, limit the promotion to a few social media channels. This is a very effective tool in marketing, as it will spur others to work to get to the level that qualifies them to enjoy the exclusive offers.
Another way to achieve this exclusivity is through flash sales. Make it last for just a few days or hours and let it involve just a limited number of items. The promotions are best when the speed of sale is high, and where the discounts are good. This pushes customers and prospects into action.
Looking for more? Check out these 7 Persuasive Social Media Optimization Tips!
Retargeting
Retargeting is another very essential tool in social media marketing.
Throwing out info about products and presenting promotions to people that do not need them is a waste of time. That is why retargeting has to be used!
It involves showing the customers those items or products they have shown interest in their past visits to the page. Retargeting dynamically presents the exact product or even related products to the customer.
Research has shown that customers normally do not buy products on their first visit. The retargeting system is used to remind and show the customers the products they’ve searched for in the past, ultimately increasing conversions. It’s always nice when customers buy now, but since they’ve shown interest in the past, it might just be a better time to buy the second time around. Customers are keener on buying when they see products they’ve searched for on other websites being presented to them. So, you have to embrace this while using social media for e-commerce.
The Call to Action Button
The ‘BUY’ button. In the digital marketing world, this is the ultimate social selling Call to Action button.
More often than not, you need to push your followers and guide them to what you want them to do. However, apart from this general Call to Action, the social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have incorporated something known as the ‘BUY’ button. Through these ‘BUY’ button links, you are allowed to buy directly from their page, making them direct marketplaces. This eliminates the hassle and network issues associated with having to get to their e-commerce store to buy the products.
If you want to succeed in using social media as an E-Commerce platform you’ll need to motivate consumers to buy, be clear about what you want to achieve and be realistic in your expectations.
