11 Tips to Improve Your Online Sales via Social Media
Follow these tips to improve your online sales with social media.
Social media is no longer an abstract thing; it’s very much a part of our everyday lives and most of us begin and/or end the day with it. Businesses have been smart enough to realize the power of this medium, and are leveraging it to enhance sales and revenues like never before.
If you haven’t got on the social bandwagon yet, it’s high time that you did: a few well written and well-timed posts can help you reach thousands of people all over the world in minutes, and at negligible cost!
What’s more, you can read how people react to your campaigns in real time – allowing you to make the necessary tweaks or change strategies to have maximum impact.
We present a few smart ideas for you to boost your online sales:
1. Make it easy to buy from your social platforms
DUH! Seems obvious, but surprisingly, many brands miss out on the opportunity to do this. Social driven retail sales are increasing astonishingly fast, so don’t miss this bus. With the buy button introduced by Facebook in 2014 and Pinterest the following year, now buying is a one-click process for your customers. If you have a Facebook store, you can display your best products, run special sales events, showcase special products, and interact with customers.
2. Create a hashtag for each occasion
If you’re having an off season or holiday sale, create a special hashtag for it and use it across all your social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and so on. Make sure your hashtag is distinctive and describes your brand focus and the current activity. Let’s say you are selling ladies handbags, and your brand name is Wow; you can have a hashtag like this: #WOWholidaysale or #TheWOWoffseasonspecial, or similar.
3. Create Content that’s currently relevant
As an ecommerce business, you’re most likely to operate on a seasonal calendar; just like you have special ‘collections’ for each season, and offer discounts and incentives, you need to produce and post content that is relevant to the specific season as well as your activity. For example, you want to highlight your jackets and other winter wear; of course you need hashtags when you post photos, and give discounts, and post on your Facebook page about the great new arrivals for the season; but you also can write blogs on how to care for your skin in the winter, how to store and pack your winter wear, best food to keep you healthy in winter and so on – stuff that is not overtly promotional in nature. This is value addition for your customers, and they will lap it up. Trust me.
4. Announce a flash sale
Have a sale for no reason at all! The average consumer’s mindset is such that if they hear something is on sale, they have to get it, whether they actually need it or not. Announce the sale on all your social networking accounts, and loads of people will be queuing up to buy.
5. Post lots of pictures
Again this may seem like a very obvious thing to do, but sometimes we tend to forget. Post high quality original pictures of your products, your employees, your premises (if you have a physical store too), behind-the-scene photos and more. Generic stock photos are a big NO! You can also create infographics using these photos, and impart some valuable info to your customers. Your customers or followers – a good many of them, will share your photos if they like them, helping you reach an even wider audience.
6. Curate and display user generated content
Your customers would have taken pictures wearing your company’s clothes, shoes, bags – or if you’re a salon, their latest hairstyle, mentioning your salon, riding a cycle your company makes and so on. Pick up all such content, curate it and display it on your page to show potential customers how much your customers love and enjoy your brand.
7. Run a contest
People love to compete – especially when they know they are going to be rewarded. The reward can be something small; it’s the winning part that matters. You can encourage your clients to come up with slogans, punch lines, even hashtags – just knowing that words they came up with could be the tagline for their favorite brand will spur them on. You can also have contests where they have to post photos – Facebook, G+ and Pinterest are great for this stuff. You can even give out small gifts – say discounts – to everyone who contributes, to ensure maximum reach and participation.
8. Discount Coupons
When the recession set in, the use of coupons soared as most people started looking for bargains and cheaper prices. Now many are hooked on to them; in any case, who doesn’t love a good discount? Encourage your customers to buy more with coupon codes given as rewards for performing a specific activity – say commenting on a photo you uploaded, sharing a video, and so on. Not only will this increase your followers, you can expect more customers coming in. Remember to pair it with a special hashtag!
9. Giveaways to generate leads
Festival seasons present great opportunities to generate new leads for any business. You can try a giveaway that requires the user to go to a signup page from your social platform, which has an option to subscribe to your newsletter as well. So they have a shot at winning a gift, as well as stay abreast of latest products you may introduce, or policy changes, and so on. The promotion will generate leads, increase brand recognition, and boost your social reach too.
10. Increase exposure of your social media
I’m pretty sure you have social media buttons on your ecommerce site; awesome! But have you incorporated them on your email signature, blog posts and newsletters? If yes, then great going; if you haven’t, then you need to do this now. Make sure your social pages can be accessed by users from whatever material you use to interact with them.
11. Try Launchrock
If you aren’t using Launchrock already, it’s a big miss. What this site does is that it helps create the hype for products that you’re ready to launch; not just that, you can also create a buzz around the launch of your impending website, or even a special sale! It has automatic integration with your social media accounts, helping you broaden the scope of your campaigns like never before.
Vipin Nayar is a Digital Marketing Strategist at Acodez. He has expertise in all facets of digital media marketing be it SEO, SEM or Social Media. Thus his vast experience over the years enables his clients enhance their online presence and open up new business avenues. Keeping updated with the latest online trends, together with his keen insight into customer behavior he formulate innovative strategies that succeed.
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The postings on your site are always excellent. I really loved the content in it. Thanks for the sharing please keep updating. Keep up the fantastic work!
Vipin, thanks for the tips. Can I ask you what is the best way to track all social media activity? to see what’s working and what is not? thanks
I truly appreciate your kind words for my efforts for the blog. I really need your support for further endeavours. Thank you again.
That’s really a nice share Vipin. Social media is very powerful and this is not at all niden now a days. I am sure these tips will help many product owners who are selling their products online. A perfect social media campaign is the key to drive huge sales.