E-Commerce Marketing: 6 Social Media Strategies to Boost Sales

It’s no secret that social media has proven itself to be a staple for businesses today. It helps increase conversions, drive traffic, and build brand equity. Social media marketing isn’t about having the most likes or followers; it’s about what those likes or followers are leading to.

Social media provides brands with the opportunity to actually build a relationship with their target audience and establish trust.

Owners of e-commerce businesses usually struggle with one primary issue: how do you convince people to buy from you? Companies which are choosing just to sell online typically underestimate the importance of content marketing and are accompanied by poorly-written blogs and sub-par video marketing which do nothing for their search engine results. Alternatively, your budget might be tight, and it’s possible you can’t afford pay-per-click advertising. When everything feels hopeless, you can turn to social media marketing to drive traffic to your e-commerce store.

Engage Your Audience on Social Media

The beauty of social media lies in its ability to create meaningful connections. Regardless of which platform you’re using to target your customers, you can quickly look for the right people and engage with them. The best part is that you don’t need to sound corporate or formal at all; you can informally talk to your audience and be considered appropriate.

Regardless of the topic, you’re posting about; even if it’s as dull as your eCommerce shipping strategies and how your customers can avail free shipping, your target audience needs to see that they’re interacting with an actual human being on your company’s Twitter or Facebook account.

Without a proper emphasis on customer engagement, you’ll barely have any conversions. Here’s how you can engage your audience:

• Post pictures of what your company does on a typical day. You could showcase your team, the office, or an event you’ve hosted
• Set up polls and encourage discussions for your audience

• Share content from other sources, preferably authority sites

Leverage Live Video

Over the past couple of years, live video has become a vital tool for e-commerce business since your customers can engage with your business immediately. There’s no way live video can be avoided today; approximately 80 percent of people would choose to watch a live video instead of reading a blog post. Not just this, but according to Neil Patel, 82 percent of potential customers actually prefer live videos over any other form of social media content.

Regardless of which platform you’re using to connect with your customers, whether it’s Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, every popular social media platform today allows you to stream live.

Many fashion brands, for instance, create hype for their upcoming collections by providing sneak peeks through live video streams. Your customers would love seeing the newest designs before everyone else and would be prepared beforehand for the day of the launch.

For live videos to work, all you need to do is be completely authentic. Such type of content is particularly successfully merely because they provide an unedited view of your brand. It helps customers relate to you and your brand and highlights the people and the activities that make the brand what it is.

Using Product Videos

Perhaps the biggest drawback of e-commerce stores as compared to brick-and-mortar stores, and this is something everyone can agree upon, is the fact that you can’t look and touch the product in person before buying it. In the case of fashion and beauty e-commerce businesses, this cannot be truer.

Clothes, for instance, look different on every body type. The color may be different in person, and the size may be all wrong. Similarly, a lipstick shade that looks divine on your web browser may not suit your skin tone at all. Product images on websites provide a limited overview of the product, so it’s difficult to get the full picture.

Videos play an excellent role in countering these limitations. Video marketing can be used to provide a holistic view of your products and present different ways in which your products can be utilized. They can bridge the gap between online and offline shopping experiences and improve the appeal of your product through real-world demonstrations.

The product videos you post on social media can also be posted to YouTube. There are different ways you can explore this, including 360-degree videos, time-lapse videos, and animated videos. They’re an excellent way to drive conversions and show your product’s real picture.

Offer a Value Proposition

Your customers aren’t just following you to stay updated; they’re following you to get something out of your profiles too. To prevent them from unfollowing you, you need to provide them a reason to stay put.

For instance, you can offer exclusive discounts or promotions on your profile. You can also run social media exclusive contests that can help you gain more followers and expand your reach.

Split Test Your Way To The Top

If you fail to split test your online ads regularly, you’ll be risking good money, and with the opportunities available today there’s no reason why your ads shouldn’t be A/B tested.

Facebook, for instance, gives users the chance to split test ads based on where your target audience lives, where they’ve studied from, and even their relationship status. You should utilize this feature to your advantage and determine what would lead to the best results.

The best way to make the most out split-testing is by testing everything one by one. You can’t determine the effect of a variable if you’re changing four other variables with it. You should also run the ad for around two weeks to gather enough for you to analyze and evaluate. You will then be able to tell what improvements you need to make to your visuals, copy, Facebook ad size, or targeting.

Integrate Email Marketing with Social Media

This year, active email accounts are expected to grow to 5.6 billion. That’s a lot of potential customers. Social media marketing and email marketing, at first glance, may appear different facets that can’t be integrated. While email marketing can drive traffic your website and help with conversions, social media marketing assists with engagement.

However, when used together, both these marketing strategies can contribute to their advantages and work powerfully to improve your ROI. Integration helps you reach the maximum possible audience through both platforms, grow your subscriber list, and help you reach potential buyers through multiple touch points.

You can find email addresses and upload the subscriber list to social media, allowing you to get an idea of who your subscribers are and what they want and need. It’ll also give you new followers for your social media profiles who could turn into potential customers.

Lastly, don’t forget to add your social media buttons to every email you send out so they can learn more about your business and follow your channels if they’re not already doing so.

It’s crucial for e-commerce brands to determine the right social media platforms for their brand. When used in a strategic and creative manner, social media can help e-commerce businesses reach their target customers quite quickly. By creating effective social media plans and building strong marketing strategies, e-commerce brands can easily leverage the benefits social media has to offer.

Have you tried any of these strategies or do you have suggestions of your own? Sound off in the comments below!