September 20, 2022
6 Ways You Can Use Social Media For eCommerce
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Approximately $992 billion will be sold through social media platforms by the end of 2022. By 2026, that figure is expected to reach $2.9 trillion. Moreover, online stores with active social media profiles, such as those with a Pinterest or Instagram account, generate 32% more sales than the average store without a social media presence.
The numbers speak for themselves: eCommerce and social media combine to make a powerful cocktail that makes them the most influential advertising medium and the most effective marketing assistant.
Why?
Using social media alongside your eCommerce platform will help you connect with your audience and convert them into buying customers. Creating attractive, informative, and practical social media content can have a significant impact on online sales, making it vital for eCommerce businesses.
Here, you'll find tips on incorporating eCommerce into your social media marketing, driving better customer engagement and higher conversion rates for your business.
While SEO and PPC are effective ways to raise brand awareness and attract new customers, eCommerce marketing through social media can also increase brand visibility and drive targeted traffic to your website.
Sprout Social found that once consumers follow a brand on social media, they continue to engage with the brand in multiple ways. 91 percent visit the brand's website or app, 89 percent spend money, and 85 percent tell a friend about the brand.
Social media provides organizations with information about consumers' preferences for products and services. By posting their new product and obtaining feedback on them, businesses can better predict how the market will react. Not to mention, social media is a great direct channel for honest consumer feedback.
A customer experience team can monitor social media opinions, including the very same honest feedback and complaints, to learn more about their customers' experience. These social media interactions are crucial to customer retention and demonstrating a commitment to overall customer service.
This is why eCommerce marketers use social platforms to boost sales through organic posts and ad campaigns, increase brand awareness, and build customer relationships.
At the same time, social media is a hotbed of sales. Did you know that approximately 30% of Americans make purchases directly on social media? And they're not even in the first place. As a major player in social commerce, China is ahead of the pack. You might find it interesting to know that more than half of Chinese internet users use social media to do their shopping.
There is no denying that the future of eCommerce lies in social media, a place that is becoming more than just a platform for brand promotion.
Furthermore, social media platforms have grown beyond Facebook and Twitter alike. There are a number of new, well-known platforms, such as TikTok, Snapchat, and others, that you can use to get your content in front of your target audience.
Online stores are available from almost every major retailer in the world, and more are being added every day. As a result, consumers are now able to choose from a wider range of products.
However, for eCommerce store owners, this just means the industry is becoming increasingly competitive, thereby emphasizing the importance of using social media in eCommerce.
If you dedicate time and resources to eCommerce social media marketing and advertising, you want to make sure you meet your audience's expectations. After all, customer satisfaction and engagement ultimately come down to how well you meet their needs.
Not only do consumers expect brands and businesses with a social media presence to interact with them meaningfully, but they also expect free and fast shipping when ordering online. In addition, consumers want a sense of brand identity to be mixed into their shopping experience.
Business owners should remember that even with physical stores returning, many people are still using more online channels than ever. Thus, bringing their brand identity into the digital space - and especially to social media - is a must.
The key to effective eCommerce social media marketing is a strategy that outlines how your company will market through social media platforms, engage its followers, and communicate with them. Investing in professional marketing services allows you to create a strategy that is tailored to your needs.
Through search engine optimization and running PPC campaigns, you can connect with users who are actively looking for specific items, but social media allows you to also reach them where they hang out online.
There are brands that never directly sell on social media, instead using it to engage their audience on their own terms, which again results in increased revenue.
eCommerce can benefit greatly from social media across the entire buyer's journey: from promoting services and products to attracting new customers and ultimately keeping them satisfied.
As a matter of fact, statics show that social media is a leading source of revenue for eCommerce businesses. According to Yotpo research, eCommerce stores with social media presence sell 32% more than those without.
Where does that growth come from?
In its Global State of Digital 2022 report, Hootsuite reports:
It’s clear why your online business should start investing in all the right social media channels. And the sooner you take social media eCommerce strategies seriously, the quicker you'll reap the rewards.
There are numerous social networks, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest... The list is not exhaustive. However, in order to fully exploit their potential and increase your success chances, you must know each network, as each is not necessarily suited to your company, your goals, or your services.
For example, social networks like LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, and Facebook Groups, where social networking and interaction dominate, are perfect for social selling, particularly if your market frequents them.
On the other hand, aesthetic visual content, including short videos and live sales, fit best on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
While you should leverage all of these social media platforms to expand your business, overhead costs such as maintenance may limit your options. Here are some popular social media platforms eCommerce businesses might find useful.
Even though Facebook isn't the most popular social media platform anymore, it still offers unrivaled brand exposure.
Did you know that, on average, users spend almost 20 hours a month using the Facebook app? And approximately 60% of social media members have Facebook accounts.
Surely, you can agree that those numbers speak volumes.
The platform has more than 2.5 billion monthly active users, so you can reach just about any group of users. It goes without saying that you should create a Facebook business page for your eCommerce business if you haven't done so already.
Given Pinterest generates 33% more referral traffic than Facebook for e-commerce websites, its potential as an eCommerce marketing channel cannot be ignored. As a result, Pinterest is a great platform for finding products and curating content, and you can leverage its features to sell more products.
Pinterest is renowned for its visual and aspirational content, which makes it an ideal platform for product discovery as well as full-funnel campaigns.
To make shopping more convenient for its 500 million users every day, Instagram is always coming up with new ideas.
A study conducted by the social media giant in 2021 found that 44% of people use their Instagram accounts to shop on a weekly basis. It’s no surprise considering how content-driven and user-friendly the app is. Furthermore, it integrates shopping experiences with content through its handpicked commerce features.
That said, you probably won't gain much attention without outstanding visuals.
The popularity of TikTok, a short-form video app, has soared, and it is expected to become one of the top three social networks. Together with Shopify, TikTok has also embraced social commerce and introduced TikTok for Business, a platform for connecting online stores and TikTok accounts.
With TikTok, you can attract new customers and engage existing ones by using hashtags, partnering with influencers, and creating four ad types:
Social media eCommerce marketing involves using different strategies on different platforms to promote an online store by increasing brand recognition, customer interest, or audience reach.
These six tips can make eCommerce social media work for your business, enabling you to generate even greater ROI.
The biggest benefit of user-generated content for social media eCommerce is that it saves companies money they’d otherwise spend on advertising. Many users are willing to share their photos with you so that you can use them on your official social media pages. You can use user photos and videos to prove that your brand is respected and loved by your customers.
Getting your customers to share their experiences on social media will help you build trust and expand your audience. After all, the opinions of their peers are more likely to be trusted than those created by brands on social media.
A potential customer can determine how useful your products are when they see other customers who have bought them. People also find it motivating to see how others are using the same product they intend to buy.
One of the biggest obstacles to successful social media marketing is the amount of time you can waste researching, studying your competitors, answering comments and direct messages, scheduling posts, and analyzing results. There is a lot of work to be done from day one (and a long time before the results appear).
Using social media is like making your business available 24 hours a day, every day (including holidays!), so you don't want to risk losing customers or not responding to important inquiries.
To make social media work for you in your sales strategy, look into automation tools and take advantage of them. Consider using customer support AI chatbots (available on many social media platforms) or schedulers for a streamlined work process.
AI chatbots can:
By clicking on shoppable tags, users can begin their shopping experience right away. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are the main platforms where you can enable customers to shop right away.
Instagram posts can show products and, when tagged, customers will be able to view purchase details with ease. Once you click on the tagged product, you will be directed to the item's purchase page. The Instagram browser opens within the app, so when you're done shopping, you can return to exploring the rest of your feed.
Pinterest took social media eCommerce one step further by adding a selection of style options, for example, “Scandinavian”, “Mid-century”, “Cottogecore”, and so on, so you could design a room like an interior designer. The pins also let users purchase similar products that are currently available after clicking the image.
The topic of tags brings us to the next tactic: direct social sales.
It’s true that the majority of social media platforms allow users to create ads that link to their product websites. There are, however, social media platforms that provide an entire online shopping experience through their integrated shops, making shopping convenient for visitors.
The following social media apps currently have their own built-in social selling capabilities, but the list is expected to grow:
Also, Snapchat and Twitter have partnered with Shopify to build their social shopping platforms. Use our summary to decide on the best platform for your business – one where your target market is active and where eCommerce solutions are applicable.
Among the perks of using social commerce solutions are:
There may be times when all the above tips are of little use if you aren't reaching the right audience or if you aren't attracting enough clients from the right demographic. On the other hand, you might not even have many followers on social media.
Even though organic social media can be immensely powerful over time, most companies must put in months or years of work before their account starts to flourish. Advertising campaigns on social media, however, are much easier to run.
By paying for social media advertising, you can reach people who don’t follow you or are unfamiliar with your business. The purpose of such campaigns is to:
If you’ve ever looked into influencer marketing before, chances are you found contradictory information, ranging from how you should absolutely use social influencers to all the reasons you shouldn’t.
Like any marketing strategy, an influencer campaign's success hinges on careful planning and execution. Success in business does not come from giving free things away to random people or to people you already know.
Recommendation marketing's biggest advantage is that it does not look like a traditional advertisement. Business owners value influencers because their audience already trusts them. This allows them to mention brands and promote products and services without being intrusive.
It's not surprising, then, that 89% of marketers believe influencer marketing delivers at least as good an ROI as other marketing strategies.
eCommerce players are heavily investing in content creation and user engagement on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest in an effort to encourage brand awareness.
And they’re right to do so since a smart social media eCommerce strategy can promote your brand, engage your audience, and boost your online sales revenues. But using social media for eCommerce is not a one-size-fits-all approach.
You may need a different social media marketing strategy depending on what kind of company you run, who your target audience is, and what you sell. JM&Co. understands that every company is unique, so we customize campaigns according to your needs, providing exactly what businesses need to succeed.
We are fortunate to have individuals with a wide variety of backgrounds and expertise on board who fuel our ambition to achieve results. Get in touch to find the best social media strategy for your online store and incorporate it into your marketing and development strategies.
Social media has a crucial role to play when it comes to generating online sales.
Investing in the right social media channels can help you grow your eCommerce business. Platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook allow you to attract social media users to your eCommerce site and foster community engagement.
Don't forget to consider your product or service, audience demographics, and team expertise before starting a social media campaign, and keep the number of channels to a minimum (at least in the beginning).
With the right approach, social networks can make it easier to present products, facilitate purchases, and engage potential customers. We hope you found our edit helpful in navigating the social media eCommerce landscape. Check out our blog section for more informative articles about marketing.
The art is building the right growth campaign. The science is in the results.
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