If you know anything about e-commerce, you cannot deny the importance of social media in marketing and establishing a business brand. Studies show that shoppers’ purchasing decisions are largely influenced by information found on Social media platforms inform of reviews, comments and feedback, particularly from their own friends. It is evident that social media platforms are big drivers for e-commerce, from the beginning to the end of each customer’s journey.
However, the real value for an e-commerce business or any other business comes when social media traffic is converted into revenue. Here are practical tips for turning likes, comments and tags into new sales:
Share engaging content.
Social media platforms are a wonderful opportunity to share informative and engaging content and establish yourself as an expert and an authority in your niche. You can use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to share engaging videos, stories and links. This way, you get to engage a target audience even in real time and get them to respond to a call-to-action.
Having fresh and engaging content on a platform that is accessible is imperative as it helps your audience identify with you and also be in touch. To keep things interesting you can share content that isn’t always about your business or product; for instance, a how-to video.
Offer exclusives.
The best way to get your target audience to respond through social media platform is to offer social media exclusives like discounts, sales and giveaways that are tailored specifically for purchases from a given platform. The Canvas Factory in Australia has used this to great effect – “It’s a win win situation in all ways we’ve found, to give our social media followers some deals that are exclusively for them. They feel special (and they are!) and we stay first and foremost in their mind for our product”.
Cross promote.
There definitely will be times when you need to use different social media platforms in order to appeal to different types of people. You can ensure that you reach more audience in the various platforms by cross-promoting each social platform on the other. For instance, you can give your Facebook followers links to Instagram, Pinterest followers your links to Twitter and so forth. This way, you get more opportunity for exposure across aboard.
Always include your contacts.
It is important to ensure that every social media platform that your business is using has the most convenient contact information that your audience can instantly use to reach you. You can offer multiple contact channels such email addresses, web address, phone numbers, etc. so that people can contact your business in the shortest time possible.
Make the transition easy.
Social media platforms are not your website. They are just complimentary platforms to get word out about your product and brand. You should have a website that will provide more information about your business and product in addition to offering visitors an opportunity to place orders or subscribe to new letters. With that in mind, you need to ensure that the transition from any of your social media platform to the website is as easy as possible. You need that visitor on your site to turn them into a customer, so everything needs to lead to that goal. Incidentally that is one of the pitfalls of pushing out content that is clickbaity but unrelated to your core offering. You’ll get the visits to the content on social media, but the visitors will most likely not be part of your core demographic groups. ‘Message to market match’ is still a rule to live by, even if you’re content marketing on social media platforms.
Create landing pages that link directly from social media platforms. Ensure that the landing page is fast loading and that it offers the visitor a soft landing (matching content and feel to where they came from) and an opportunity to respond to call-to-action.
One other way to ensure that there is seamless transition is to ensure that your site is mobile friendly. In the present internet environment, you will not survive long if your site is not mobile-friendly. Most people engage social media platforms from their smartphones and other mobile devices. If you are going to have any links from your social media platforms to your website, ensure that the website is mobile-friendly.
A sure way to ensure that having a mobile-friendly site is to use the responsive design. A responsive website design strategy allows the website to adjust according to the features of the device used to access the site. These features include screen size, screen orientation and the mobile device software or platform. Another option is to use adaptive delivery which uses HTML and CSS codes that display different versions of the site page based on traffic source, geographical location and device.
Take away.
The whole goal for social media marketing and engagement for a business is to ensure there is revenue. Any investment you make towards social media in terms of money and time should have its end goal in generating new leads that will then be converted into revenue. It is also good to ensure that you measure the return on investment to check whether what you are doing is worthwhile and where you need to make adjustments.
