58.11% of the world’s population is active on social media; that unleashes an outstanding opportunity that no eCommerce business should miss out on. With the right tools at your disposal, you can reach your target audience and make social media platforms one of your main selling points.
Social media platforms enable you to boost brand awareness and visibility, support your customers, and, ultimately, sell.
This article will show you how to successfully push customers further down this social media sales funnel on Facebook and Instagram.
Let’s start with introducing your offer to the right audience:
Grow brand awareness
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Social media is the perfect space to find your target audience and showcase your brand and products. Here’s what you can do to reach the right people with your message.
Collaborate with others
If you wish to reach your potential customers in no time, it’s best to find influencers whose audience is similar to your target audience. For example, if you sell baby clothes, you need to partner with a popular Instagram mum, and if you sell dog food, you need to partner with people who run their pets’ social media accounts.
Another idea is to partner with brands. Again, choose companies that share the same target audience but offer different products or services. For example, if you sell superfoods, you may want to partner with a fitness club or a sportswear brand.
Once you find the perfect partner, it’s time to work on your perfect growth plan. Consider sending PR packages to influencers or organize a contest together with another brand. The goal is to showcase your brand in front of the right audience and direct them to your profile.
If you organize a contest, make sure to ask your and your partner’s followers to follow both parties and spread the word about you further through sharing with their friends or tagging them in comments.
A UK-based supplements brand, Bare Biology, teamed up with a couple of wellness-related brands to organize a contest in which Instagram users could win a package filled with their products. To be eligible, participants needed to follow all these brands on Instagram and tag a friend in the comments.
And that’s how Bare Biology’s followers can now find their way to a yoga apparel label or a natural energy drink, products that may interest someone who takes care of their wellbeing.
Show your face
Social media is a space where everyone can share (almost) whatever they want. In theory, it gives people a wonderful opportunity to talk about what’s important to them, to spread the word, and do good. But it’s also a perfect environment for scams and dubious deeds.
That’s why your followers must trust you, especially if you’re a rookie, a brand that isn’t recognizable yet.
One of the ways to do that is to showcase who stands behind the brand.
Although it sounds trivial, it may seem challenging to some. In the end, not everyone feels comfortable in front of the camera. But this is something you need to do if you want to appear trustworthy.
Tap into the power of social ads
When it comes to targeting ads, there’s no other medium as powerful as social media. You can easily set up your ads and decide who will see them.
First of all, you can boost your brand visibility by carefully choosing the demographics of your audience. This will help you reach those people who resemble your customer persona.
For eCommerce stores, the retargeting options may turn out to be even more important. With your social media ads, you can reach out to those people who have already interacted with your content or abandoned a cart on your website.
That’s exactly what Meller does, constantly tempting me to finally buy the sunglasses I put into my cart last week and never bought. But I just may, as I keep thinking about the product, and the brand won’t let me forget about it.
As an eCommerce brand, you can use the power of targeting and retargeting ads to reach new customers and stick in the minds of those who already know what you have to offer.
Take care of your customers
Social platforms aren’t just a great place to post content and advertise your brand. Any business with a public profile knows that social media is an interactive space.
There are two kinds of social media interaction that brands should actively apply: engagement-driven interactions and customer service-oriented interactions. Here’s what’s in it for your eCommerce business:
Build engagement
Building social media engagement is a complex process: first, you need to post engaging content, which means asking questions, running polls, or triggering discussions.
Social media platforms offer a bunch of features that will enable you to do all that. For instance, you can build B2B relationships and online communities through LinkedIn. Refer to LinkedIn B2B marketing strategies.
Then, once that engagement is generated, you need to manage the buzz, which means replying to all comments and messages, and perhaps actively becoming involved with content that others have posted. It takes time and effort, but building engagement pays off in more ways than one.
By interacting with users, you not only build trust and sympathy but also expand the reach of your content. Engagement is one of the key factors responsible for a higher reach of your publications on social platforms. That’s why it’s advisable to encourage users to comment, share, or like your content. And by engaging back (aka. replying to comments), you double the engagement under your posts at a minimum.
Provide customer service
Data speaks for itself, 1 in 3 social media users prefers social media customer services to telephone or email. This means that you simply need to be there on social media to assist your customers whenever needed.
But as 60% of customers who contact you via social media expect a reply within an hour, it’s a tough task to provide timely answers. Especially if you’re just starting and don’t have a dedicated customer service team.
If you’re unable to provide around-the-clock customer service, consider automating some of your responses – it’s easy. Most of the questions that people ask are repetitive, for example, they probably ask you about shipping or sizing.
Such questions can be answered automatically in no time with a social media engagement tool. In this way, you can save yourself time for queries that require special, individual attention and, most importantly, maintain a work-life balance.
Sell directly on social media
Finally, there’s the part that all the previous activities lead to: selling your products on social media. Here’s how to facilitate the buying experience for your social media audience:
Use product tags on Instagram
Creating an Instagram Shop is your first step to unlocking all the amazing product discovery opportunities that Instagram has to offer. Among others, this feature allows you to curate a list of shoppable products that users can access through your Instagram profile and which you’ll be able to tag in your content later on.
The product tags are clickable, which means that Instagram users can:
- go to your product listing, discover details, and browse other pictures,
- share the listing with their partners to give them a hint of what they would like to get for their birthday,
- save it and come back to buy the product later on,
- buy the product directly on Instagram (that’s still in closed beta, the Instagram checkout is available for US-based Instagram users and some eligible brands only),
- go to your website and buy the product.
Once your Shop is ready and you have added tags to your posts and Stories, Instagram will become a legitimate selling platform for your business.
Make your products available in Facebook Shops
If you actively promote your business on Facebook, you mustn’t miss the opportunity to convert this platform into a selling platform.
Facebook Shops work similarly to Shops on Instagram. You can set up one in Commerce Manager and add products that you would like to make available for purchase.
Once that’s done, a new tab called “Shop” will appear on your Facebook page, where all the products that you have added will be displayed. Just like on Instagram, users can save and share your products as well as head directly to your website to purchase the items of their choice.
Recap
Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms create exciting opportunities for eCommerce sellers. Thanks to collaborative work, social media ads, and authentic content, you can effectively present your products to the right audience.
These platforms offer you all the features that you need to build engaged communities and support clients whenever they need assistance.
Finally, thanks to shopping features, you can cut the distance to your checkout. That’s basically the entire sales funnel in one place, a place where people truly hang out these days.
