Whether you own a small, medium, or large-scale business, or work for an eCommerce giant, your primary goal should be increasing your online sales. However, it is not as easy as it appears to be. Now, if you are already using channels such as email, content, SEO, and PPC as part of your online marketing efforts, it is time you explored the opportunities offered by the social media to get to the next level. This is because social media is not an abstract concept any longer. It has already become an integral part of people’s lives. As a smart business owner, you must leverage the power of social media and enhance your sales. Having said that here are 7 tips for improving online sales using the media networks:
#1: Provide Native Chat Sales Support Service
Native chatting, also known as conversational eCommerce, is all about making use of messaging services within different social networks for automating, customizing, and personalizing your communications. As a result of the increase in engagement and retention rates, these apps have fast become the best options for customers who look forward to connecting directly with businesses. If you are lagging in the use of chat apps, you are missing out big time on the social eCommerce opportunity. However, it is important to use them with caution as the line of demarcation between the human and inhuman sides is very thin. So, check with one of the best social media marketing services providers near you before using chat apps.
#2: Track Conversations/Mentions About Your Business
Customers are always talking to each other through various social media networks. They are talking about your business too! The constant onslaught, however, makes it difficult for you to glean important information. This is when brand listening – the art of gaining valuable insights about your brand, competitors, and industry by observing, collecting, and analyzing conversations – comes to your aid. Keeping a tab on the conversations of your audience helps you to generate new leads, identify creative marketing techniques, reward brand advocates properly, identify customers’ pain points, gauge motivations, track sentiments, and overcome tricky situations. Talk walker, a social media analytics platform, will be of great help to you in this regard.
#3: Encourage Customers to Share Their Experience
Social media marketing success is more dependent on how much and what your customers say about you and less on how much or what you say about yourself. Therefore, you must encourage your customers to tell you about their experience before, during, and after a purchase. Statistics show that 1 out of 3 Facebook users make a purchase after they share or comment on a product themselves. The on-site eCommerce platform Add Shoppers which makes word-of-mouth sales easy through incentivized purchase-sharing strategies such as refer-a-friend campaigns and social rewards might be of help to you in this regard.
#4: Make Buying Easy on Your Favorite Social Channels
Retail sales driven by social media are growing faster than ever before and have even overtaken that driven by other online channels. Buy buttons have played a key role in driving sales on social media platforms. These buttons enable users to make secure purchases seamlessly from social networks. In fact, it reduces a multi-step clicking process to just a single click.
Facebook and Messenger unveiled the buy buttons in June 2014 and September 2016, respectively. Pinterest rolled out option in 2015 to a few select retailers at first, but it is now available to everyone. Instagram introduced the checkout feature earlier this year.
#5: Curate User-generated Content and Feature Them
User-generated content refers to that created and shared on social platforms by your customers, fans, and followers. They may do it spontaneously or as part of contests or giveaways. It does wonders for eCommerce. Business Insider has found that users coming across user-generated content are 97 percent more likely to become customers than others that haven’t come across such content.
Images created by customers wherein your products are featured are very powerful. In a study, people who shopped online were asked to choose between content provided by users and professional images available on product description pages. They overwhelmingly preferred Instagram photos. The ratio was 77 percent to 22 percent.
#6: Buy Instagram Followers
Buying real Instagram followers is a helpful strategy that you can consider for turbocharging the exposure of your brand. It goes without saying that sufficient exposure is essential on the chosen social media platform in order to boost your sales. This is because thousands of businesses are using Instagram for marketing purposes and millions of content are being added on a daily basis. As such, it is not easy for you to reach across to your audience in an organic manner. When you purchase Instagram followers from a reputed service provider, you are not only enhancing your brand’s visibility but also its credibility. This, in turn, drives sales.
#7: Buy YouTube Subscribers
Uploading quality videos into your YouTube channel alone is not enough to drive sales using this social media platform. You need to have a large enough subscriber base in order to get your videos across to your target audience. Otherwise, they would just get buried within the content posted by more popular channels. People would subscribe to your channel only if they trust your brand and also feel that the content provided by you would add value or resolve their concerns. Buying YouTube subscribers helps you to boost your brand’s popularity and credibility. As your brand’s popularity increases, your subscriber base further improves and this leads to increased conversions and hence sales.
Summarizing, the above are just a few of the strategies you can employ on social media platforms to increase your sales. There are other options as well. However, these are some of the key ones. Try out these strategies and stick with those that work best for you.
All said and done, these strategies need to be implemented in the right manner in order to achieve desired results. At Social Bar, we have the experience and expertise to make it happen for you. Call us right away for an appointment!