Social media has become one of the best ways to increase online sales. While you have been using social media platforms only to connect with your loved ones, smart businesses leverage the power and reach of social media to maximize their business reach and improve sales.
Well, if you are already working with other marketing channels like content marketing, PPC, email marketing but missing out on social media marketing, you need to rethink your marketing strategy. In this blow, we will see how you can efficiently utilize social media platforms to generate revenues and increase sales.
Many businesses focus on simply creating accounts and sharing content. But if you want to make the most out of social media marketing, you need to create a custom plan that works best for your e-commerce brand.
So, without any further ado, let's see how social media marketing can help you boost your e-commerce sales:
Following are the social media strategy for promoting products
The very first thing you need to know about social marketing is choosing the right platform. I mean, you can’t simply sign-up on any social media account and expect to get customers there. You need to use the platform with most of your target audience. For instance, Facebook and Instagram might be the best platforms to promote fashion items, however, if you are offering professional services, you might need to sign up for LinkedIn.
So, before you start considering marketing on social media platforms, identify the most suited platform for your business. However, as a general rule, you may maintain a presence on all possible social medial platforms, which is a good marketing tactic. Still, your main focus should remain the platform with the most number of the target audience.
As mentioned above, Facebook with massive users is suitable for all types of businesses. Whereas, LinkedIn would be a good choice as well if you want to target a B2B audience.
There are various online tools that can help you find the best social media platform for your business. You only have to paste a hashtag relevant to your product on the tool and conduct a search and you will find the best suitable platform for your brand.
Social media is loaded with bloggers, influencers, and vloggers. Influencer marketing is one of the most trending ways to market your product. According to the reports, a huge number of people are compelled to buy a product after watching an influencer's post.
Promoting your brand through influencers or bloggers can increase your product sales. Get in touch with them, give them your free product, and in return, they will review your product or post tutorials.
But it is not the only way to promote your business. You can also advertise using campaigns on Instagram, or you can start a #hashtag campaign on Twitter and make people follow it.
The hashtag campaigns are very much effective if they are done properly. There are many hashtags being used for different purposes by marketers across the globe to increase their Followers and Likes. Many people create new hashtags on their own for getting more followers, while some are successful in using the already created hashtags to increase their followers on Instagram.
The success rate of the hashtag campaigns is very high, but they are not at all easy to do. You need to plan your campaign well in advance to get involved people in it. When you promote a specific hashtag for your business on Instagram, it becomes much easier for your customers and potential clients who are using that same hashtag to reach you easily.
You can also involve your friends in this campaign so that they can help you in promoting it among their own circle of friends. When a friend tags you on the photo he or she has shared using a specific hashtag, you get involved automatically. Also, make sure to let people know how they can get more Followers from the activity which is going on using a specific hashtag.
The key to a successful campaign is engagement with the followers. You need to respond to the posts of people who have tagged you in their posts and thank them for doing so. Also try to ask people about how they were involved in the activity, by tagging them as well.
In order to get more Followers from the activity, take a look at the posts which have been tagged with your business name or product. Try to engage people in a conversation using these tags, and ask them what they liked about the activity. You can then thank them for their participation in your campaign by offering discounts or rewards.
Similarly, when you are involved with other brands in promoting a particular hashtag, it becomes easier for you to get involved with the audience which is using that same hashtag. You can also create a competition between your friends where you can ask them to post photos of their products on Instagram using your business's specific hashtags.
Usually, people do a lot of research and read reviews before purchasing anything online to ensure that the product and brand are reliable.
Positive or negative has a huge impact on your brand publicity. Positive reviews ease the nervousness about purchasing from a brand they are not familiar with.
When people read their opinion and experiences they feel like honesty so they are more likely to place their order which automatically increases your product sale.
A positive review is good for your brand promotion.
Negative reviews are not cool because they may have a bad effect on the image of your products or company, so you should take action against negative reviews.
However, there are some people who post bad comments about your business to get offers or discounts. You need to act smartly when you see a bad review because it might not be true.
You can either try to take your brand back or ignore it, but if reviews are really hurting your company's reputation and image then you should do something about it.
Here are some tips on how to deal with negative reviews.
1) If the reviews hurt your business's reputation and image, you should take action immediately. For example, if someone writes a bad review to criticize your company's poor service quality, the solution is simple - contact them and give an explanation about why did they have a negative experience with your business.
2) If you suspect that the reviews are fake you should do some research to find out the truth.
3) If the reviews are true you should apologize to your customers for not providing them with a better experience, explain what you are going to do about it and try to get their email address so that you can contact them afterward.
4) It's also important to take action against competitors who post fake reviews to bring down your business. Here are some tips on how to identify if a review is fake or not.
5) Keep in mind that customers read reviews before they make a purchase, so positive reviews will encourage them to buy your product and negative ones will discourage them from buying it. So you should take the necessary steps to deal with negative reviews because it helps your business.
Creative and informational content plays a major role to get traffic to your brand. The content must be engaging and interesting that can convince your followers to make a purchase.
Valuable content should contain complete specifications, guidelines on how to use it, and enough information about your product will entice your followers to try your product. Adding useful tips provide your followers with more reasons to make more purchases.
Your followers are the decision-makers of your business. Your content should be designed in a way that is engaging, informative, and useful for them. This will give them an idea of what to do with your product. Adding fun facts about your product can make it possible for users to convert into customers too.
There are different ways to come up with valuable content. It can be through creating a series of posts that are consistently released every day or week. You can split your post into categories and then you can create an entire website for it. This is where influencers play a vital role in helping you reach out to people.
Influencer marketing is considered one of the most effective digital marketing. This will help you increase your reach and expand your audience among other things for free. Using an influencer requires a lot of research on which influencers can deliver such results.
Engaging your followers with creative content will open doors to benefit listeners to your brand. If you are able to do that then there's no stopping you from getting more customers. Engagement is also one of the ways to get social proof for your brand which impacts people making purchases through referrals.
Social media has billions of users. Even if you have found the right social platform for your business, still none of your followers knows about your brand then you must make more effort to promote your product.
Social media advertising is another effective way to promote your business. Even almost every social media has an option to create an ad. This strategy improves your brand visibility among your targeted followers. Increased invisibility will also improve sales through social media.
Also, you can spend on advertising campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, or sponsored posts to target your audience.
Well, above mentioned ways show how a sale can drastically increase by using social media platforms, only you have to target the right audience and win their trust. You also have to make sure that your brand must have higher visibility among your audience.
So, whether you are a local business or an international one, there is no doubt that social media can be very helpful for your sales. Last but not least, social media can be an excellent platform for promoting your business, only you have to get the right audience.
