New Business Social Media Tips – 5 Inspiring Ways To Use Social Media Marketing For Ecommerce Store
“Modern problems require modern solutions.” There is no phrase or principle more fitting for businesses entering the e-commerce scene. With the widespread use of social media networks, it would be a sin for businesses to ignore the opportunity it presents in building and growing customer relationships. After all, it was social media’s purpose to connect people and incite human interactions beyond geographical boundaries.
Social media are platforms and applications that enable users to create and share content and participate in social networking. Businesses can also use social media to establish their online presence, build their brands, and reach customers of varied age groups and locations.
As of July 2021, DataReportal reported that active social media users are more than half of the total global population, or 4.48 billion in numbers, to be exact. In e-commerce, a large customer base actively absorbing and interacting with content is a high advantage in scaling a business.
However, as both e-commerce industries and digital competition become saturated by the minute, businesses must find ways of strategically using social media to achieve any marketing goal.
What is Social Media Marketing?
SMM, which stands for Social Media Marketing, refers to how a business uses social media to achieve specific marketing goals. Social media is the digital melting pot of different audiences from near and far, making it an ideal platform for engaging your current customer and winning over new ones.
Social media platforms have features that not only help users connect and interact with each other but also allow them to express themselves through sharing of thoughts, ideas, and visual content.
For this reason, businesses can easily study the behavior of specific audiences and learn how to best interact with them. The ability to share content also allows e-commerce businesses to build and position their brands. The inexistent geographical boundaries help them send their message across wide audiences.
Importance of Social Media Marketing
A GWI survey reported by DataReportal shows that 26% of social media users between the age of 16 to 64 primarily uses social media to find products to buy online. In addition, the same survey shows that 27.5% of the similar age group use social media primarily to find inspiration for things to do and buy.
These statistics not only prove how effective social media is in the conduct of business online but also how much the digital platforms impact the behavior of customers when it comes to online buying.
With customers already half-committed in looking for and buying products online, a little push from your brand will go a long way in gaining new sales and customer loyalty.
With social media marketing, you can boost your brand visibility, strengthen customer loyalty and maintain your relevance to your audiences, and increase traffic and conversion to your e-commerce store.
Social Media Marketing Pros and Cons for Your E-commerce Store
Much like any other marketing strategy, there are pros and cons to using social media marketing. Below are lists of SMM advantages and disadvantages to help you decide whether or not social media marketing is right for your business.
5 Inspiring Ways to Use Social Media Marketing For Ecommerce Store
What’s great about social media is that you can leverage your fine points as a brand. You can focus on highlighting unique features of your products and services one at a time through content sharing.
With organic posts, you can build your brand reputation and create an image that resonates with your target market. Most importantly, you can create unique strategies because not only would you be able to monitor the moves of your competitors, you could also monitor your customer’s and potential customers’ behavior.
Below are inspiring ways on how you can use social media marketing for your e-commerce store.
- Update your social media site with content regularly.
Organic posts are anything you share or post on social media that is not paid or influenced by advertising. Texts, shared links, videos, pictures, and graphics you or your team curated to share on your business’s social media account are considered organic posts. These posts are called contents.
To hit any goal you’re aiming, for your business, you need to post consistently. Consistency and frequency is the key to always being visible to your target audience. It shows your brand and products on your audiences’ “feed” or “timeline.” Aside from the copy and content itself, consistency helps you stay relevant to your audience.
Still, you need to partner consistency with creative and up-to-date content. Always keep in mind that your content attracts your audience towards your products and store. You need to curate engaging and relevant content. You can use tools to make a posting plan and schedule your posts, so you’ll find it easier to deal with this time-consuming task.
- Choosing the right social media channels means choosing the right people – and vice versa.
Each social media platform caters to different sets of audiences. For example, the primary users of Twitter are people aged between 25 to 34 years old. For Facebook, it’s people between the ages 25-34 years old. But if you want to achieve lead generation with an older demographic, consider marketing on LinkedIn, where people who are 46 years old and over dominate the scene.
Each age group in each social platform demonstrates different buying behaviors. They also interact differently with brands. They have various product and service preferences.
They may also prefer different ways of connecting to brands. Therefore, it is vital to adapt the tone and voice you use for your content to the audience you want to reach. Knowing where your target audience is and clearly defining your target audience will help greatly in fulfilling your e-commerce goals.
- Run exclusive offers and promotions
Followers or subscribers are essential elements of your social media account. Psychologically, having more of them gives more credibility and legitimacy to your brand, therefore creating trust and customer loyalty.
To maintain your “following” and gain more of them, you need to engage them with exclusive perks, games, contests, and promotions. These kinds of activities create word-of-mouth, top-of-mind awareness, and referrals that would add to the number of your customers and active followers.
You can use coupons, free shipping vouchers, or limited-time offers to bring traffic to your e-commerce website or store.
- Connect and build relationships with influencers.
Social media has an inexhaustible supply of influencers. It’s because these content creators and social media influencers are paid or sponsored with products by actively promoting brands or products on their platform. The process by which a business uses influencers to market a brand or product is called influencer marketing.
Businesses would pay influencers to promote their brands and products, which they usually do in a stream or video content.
Sometimes, brands would enter into an exchange deal (ex-deal) agreement, where influencers promote certain products in exchange for receiving products for free. Influencers usually have a large “following” or active subscribers. They extend your e-commerce reach and help greatly in boosting your brand and product visibility.
- Share interactive content, images, and videos.
Social media platforms are interactive portals. The primary reason why people use social media is to connect and interact. These connections and interactions are not limited to friends, family, and new people. According to DataReportal’s report, 22.9% of active social media users use social platforms to see content from their favorite brands.
To gain new leads and web traffic while keeping your current customers interested and engaged, you need to curate engaging content. Images, videos, and interactive content enhance and personalize customer experiences. They also provide businesses with useful insights about customers.
Some effective interactive content that you can use on your social media marketing campaigns are .gifs, 360° camera or immersive videos, carousel posts, games, quizzes, and webinars. It gives life to your mundane “feed.” It also helps your brand become relatable to modern-day audiences.
Now you know some ways to use social media marketing for your e-commerce store, you should now check out this blog: Most Important Digital Marketing Channels for E-commerce for further tips.
FAQs
What social media platforms are best for social media marketing?
Establishing seamless omnichannel integrations can be a real challenge in digital marketing, especially that customers use different channels. Integrating with mobile is also an issue because it involves complex coding and algorithms. Lastly, creating engaging content is increasingly becoming difficult because of the rate by which brands, influencers, and individuals create and publish their content.
What are the different types of social media?
Digital marketing campaigns are much cheaper than traditional campaigns. Yes! You read that right. It’s because in digital campaign, you can customize your budget and only spend what you allow. Traditional campaigns like TV and magazine ads can cost thousands of dollars.
What advertising model do social media platforms use, and how much does it cost to advertise?
To measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns, you can use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Some of the measures you can include are click-through rate, web traffic, online conversion rates, returning visitors, cost-per-lead, and lead conversion rates.
Conclusion
One of the most effective digital methods to penetrate the digital shopping scene is through social media marketing. The vast consumer base, accessibility to any location, and targeted audiences are its benefits that play essential roles in building and scaling a brand.
With your moves in plain sight of your competitors, you need to create relevant, unique, and sustainable strategies that compel customers to follow your brand and stay loyal to it. The key to creating the best social media strategy for your business is to identify what your brand presently needs and narrow down and specify your target audience.
Knowing your target audience doesn’t only mean identifying their behavior and age group. You also need to determine the platforms they use to make sure that only the right people receive your message and to avoid unnecessary advertising costs.
