With 3.78 billion social media users worldwide, the chances of getting someone to notice your brand is higher than opting for traditional marketing.
Whether you use a single platform for your business or have multiple sources, social media is one of the best places to advertise products and services. You can reach a wide number of users globally and offer them the products you have.
But like every platform and marketing strategy, it is not easy and the competition is tough. The use of social media for a regular user is different from a brand.
You don’t simply choose a picture of your product and post it. You’ll need to plan your content and monitor campaigns. You’ll even need to study your demographics to know how to build content for your social media.
If you want to use social media to boost the e-commerce conversion rate, you need to learn everything about it.
Your social media presence is more important for conversion. It’s a place to build brand awareness and improve the relationship with your customers.
Whether you have an online business idea or have had an e-commerce shop for a while, you can use social media to start making sales.
Use Content from Customers or User-generated Content
If you want people to trust your brand, showing them content from other customers can help.
If you plan to share images or videos of your customers talking about your product or service, make sure to ask permission about it.
User-generated content can serve as a testimonial or review of your product. When other people see it, they would want to purchase from you.
User-generated content can be a free advertisement and there is no need for your team to create content. Since 88% of online shoppers look for a video or photo from other customers before they purchase, you can use content from other users. You can post photos or videos of your customers wearing, using, or reviewing your product.
Create Video Content
Images used to be appealing content on social media, but now videos are the most engaging media. Even the photo-sharing app Instagram has focused on video creation rather than images.
About 84% of consumers buy a product after watching a video. Therefore, create product or service-related videos to increase the conversion rate. You can share videos of how consumers can use your product.
Videos let consumers stay longer on your page, which can help in their decision-making process. You can make short videos for your social media stories.
There are also platforms for longer video versions (Reels, IGTV, YouTube, Facebook) or you can even use TikTok to generate more traffic to convert.
People who’ll find your videos interesting on your social media accounts can click on them.
You don’t need to spend a lot to make a video. A short video will work and you can use affordable tools like your phone and cheap video editing tools.
Test Your Social Posts
Posting on your social media requires testing and monitoring campaigns. You need to look at the data to see if there are conversions.
Knowing what is happening behind each post can help you understand and adjust your strategy. You don’t have to waste time creating content that’s not selling. Besides, it’s not 100% of the time that brands get their campaigns right.
Use social media analytical tools or social media monitoring software to get an overview of all your social media accounts. Use the numbers to determine what content is paying off.
Sell on Social Media Directly
Social media is becoming more than a platform for socializing. It’s turning into a shopping platform today.
Customers may check out immediately from social media posts with social commerce, saving time for both the consumer and your conversion marketing efforts.
You don’t have to worry about driving traffic from a post to a specific product page and the rapid checkout procedure makes buying more tempting to clients who might otherwise quit their cart or browse their social feed.
Let’s take Instagram as an example. The platform has transitioned from regular video and images to a shopping platform. Consumers might visit your eCommerce shop for more. Users can shop on an image, IGTV or Reels on Instagram. Users can easily tap on the image and go directly to the checkout page. That’s a great way to leverage Instagram to boost the sales conversion of your product.
Leverage the Power of Influencer Marketing
Influencers have a powerful voice when it comes to buying behavior of people. What they say can affect people’s decisions and that’s why digital marketing professionals like to hire them. Instagram marketing in particular has seen a significant increase in the use of influencer marketing as part of their SMM efforts.
Social media influencers can connect audiences.
About 49% of consumers depend on the recommendations of influencers and 40% purchase on social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
If you want to drive more sales to your e-commerce shop, you can hire an influencer.
Most brands employ micro-influencers (less than 100,000 followers) because they have more interactive and engaging followers.
Unlike, mega-influencers where most of whose followers only watch them due to their popularity, micro-influencers are viewed as experts in their niche. People who follow them are those interested in what they say.
Brands spread their budget on multiple micro-influencers to get better returns. Just make sure that you only hire influencers who are within your niche.
Invest in Social Media Ads
Sometimes even making the best effort to post and create content may take time to reach the ideal audience.
You may have a few following which can also poorly affect the conversion rate.
The best way to gain traffic and get more followers is to invest in social media ads. Putting ads on social media networks is helpful and it can make your brand get noticed.
Creating an ad on social media is not difficult. If you have content, you can easily promote it. All you need to do is change the demographics and provide your budget. Then, you can start showing your ads.
Remember that 49% of online shoppers purchase from a business they saw from a social media ad.
Use Hashtags
Hashtags can help in boosting sales and traffic to your social media account. This is how people discover pages, brands and content creators. With the use of Twitter hashtags, people can find you on Twitter and so on.
People who use hashtags to search on social media for potential customers. They are interested in a niche or item that you might have. That’s why they are searching using a hashtag.
You must use hashtags relevant to your niche, product, campaign or one that is trending. Using these hashtags increases your visibility and conversion rates.
Optimize Your Website’s Landing Page
If you want your social media traffic to remain on your website and make a purchase, optimize your pages.
Most social media platforms are accessible through smartphones. Therefore, make your website mobile-friendly.
Make the web design fit any device’s screen, so viewers will not leave your page instantly.
You can run your website on Google Mobile-Friendly Test to see if your site is optimized. If not, it will offer suggestions alongside the result.
Add Call to Actions
Call to action can help direct users on what to do. You can add a catchy call to action to your posts.
The most commonly used call to action on Instagram is “Link in Bio.” But there’s an article that says Instagram penalizes posts or accounts that use the phrase “Link in Bio.”
Whether Instagram does decrease traffic to those who use that phrase, make sure to create a catchy or unique call to action to guide your audience on what to do next.
Run Contests and Promotions
People get excited when they see brands running a giveaway or contest. They are more likely to engage and join in such activities. But before you start your contest, you need to be clear about why you are doing it.
You can run a social media contest to gain more leads or followers or build brand awareness.
Whatever the reason is, you need to define it before starting.
If you have a goal, you’ll know how to run your contest.
If you want to increase followers, you can ask people who want to join the giveaway to follow your account. Or, you can ask them to tag their friends.
Choose the Right Platform
Just because there are plenty of social media platforms available doesn’t mean you have to try them all. You should know who your target audiences are and where they spend their time the most.
If you know what platform works best for your business, you can spend more time on channels that will pay off.
Check for Conversions
To determine if your social media campaigns are working, you need to track conversions.
Check your social traffic on Google Analytics to see the traffic that goes to your website. You can also use other social media analytical tools to track campaigns and their conversion. It’s the best way to see if campaigns are working or if you’ll need to change your strategy.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is essential in boosting your e-commerce conversion rate. If you know how to manage it, use proper strategies and create engaging content, you’ll be able to rip the benefits of it.
Author Bio
Vanessa Venugopal is a passionate content writer.
With four years of experience, she mastered the art of writing in various styles and topics.
She is currently writing for Softvire Australia – the leading software eCommerce company in Australia and Softvire New Zealand.