This is a guest article from Growr, a social media automation tool that helps small to medium-sized businesses grow their social media presence— increasing a brand’s engagement, audience, and social proof.
If you were to go back in time, say, 20 years ago, you would realize that, much like the Internet itself, ecommerce companies were virtually non-existent. Fast forward to 2018 and surveys reveal that the majority of the population now prefers making purchases online instead of going to physical stores. This growing consumer behavior has made the ecommerce space extremely competitive.
To thrive in such a competitive environment, ecommerce businesses must now be extremely creative in their marketing strategies. One marketing strategy today’s online businesses are finding great success with is social media marketing and other forms of digital marketing.
Here are seven of the top digital marketing tactics to boost your ecommerce business:
1. Customer Awareness Campaign
Ecommerce marketers know that to implement a successful social media marketing campaign, you must take the requisite time to understand your target market. Only by knowing who your potential customer is can you create a customer awareness project that yields results. Today, there are many tools that can help you track the people who visit your online shop. These tools tell you many informational points, including the gender of your website visitor, their location, the site from which they came, and what they did on your website upon arrival. This information can help you build accurate profiles of your ideal customer and help you with your customer awareness campaign.
Of all the online platforms that can effectively raise awareness, few would be as useful as social media. Social media is the perfect platform to engage with your customers, get to know them more, and to redesign your products and services to provide clients with better solutions. Social media platforms also now have many features that help you interact with your customers: from ‘live hangouts’ to polls and chats, you can interact with customers, inform them about your new products and services, and understand how to better satisfy their needs.
2. Retargeting Campaign
Any marketer who is not using retargeting is missing out on many money-making opportunities. The term ‘retargeting campaign’ refers to showing ads to customers who have in the past shown an interest in certain products and services that you offer on your ecommerce website. The truth is, most people who will visit your ecommerce site for the first time are not likely to make a purchase during that visit. However, the likelihood of them buying the product later if reminded, increases dramatically.
This is where retargeting comes in: retargeting serves as a subtle reminder to a potential customer that they should reconsider completing the purchase for the product they checked out on your website. A well-executed reminder, at the right time, can reignite the purchase intent in a prospective buyer.
3. Social Listening Strategy
An ecommerce website that does not have a social listening strategy is also missing out on a potential goldmine. By simply learning what customers are saying about your brand and its products, you can start to figure out what you are doing right, as well as what you are doing wrong. This information will help you address your customers’ greatest concerns. The idea behind brand listening is to derive valuable insights into your customers, your brand and your products with the aim of making improvements. You can also use social listening to understand what people are saying about your competitors, and use the information to better package your value proposition.
4. Customer Feedback
Create an environment in which customer insight is encouraged. Rather than utilizing social media to simply respond to customer inquiries and maintain a two-way conversation, open up the discussion between customers. Ask for feedback and proactively seek unbiased reviews for customers to share their experience. Encourage customers to talk about your brand and promote your products for you. Often, a potential customer is more interested in hearing about your products from people who have purchased them in the past, than from your sales team.
5. Social Buy Buttons
Social media can do more than just raise awareness of your product or service: it can help you make sales. At Growr for instance, you can learn how to make money on Instagram, essentially converting your followers into real customers. To achieve this, you must streamline the whole purchasing process on social media. By simply adding buy buttons and links to your social media channels, you can make it easier for customers to purchase the products you have in store. On Instagram, you can add a link to your products on your bio section; in addition, on Facebook, you can add a buy button, while on Pinterest you can add buyable pins.
6. Consistent Content Strategy
This may seem obvious, but it remains an important way you can boost your ecommerce business. The idea is to create relevant, unique, consistent content and to find creative ways to share it on social media. Content should elicit engagement, and ultimately, sales. Before settling on a set posting schedule, conduct some testing to determine the best times and days to post and engage your audience.
7. Add Social Buttons
Adding social buttons on your website and in your email newsletters can help boost your brand exposure. As impressions increase, more people will learn about your brand’s existence. When adding these buttons to your website, ensure that you display them prominently, in a way that will get the attention of anyone who visits your ecommerce website. You can add these buttons to your website header or footer, in your email signature, and on individual blog posts on your site.
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