Social media represents the wave of the marketing future for users of all types. If you own a business, one of the most important advertising and sales-boosting steps you can take is to establish a dynamic and engaging presence on popular social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Not sure how to get started? Following these tried-and-true suggestions will help.
1. Sell directly on social media platforms
When these platforms first appeared on the digital scene, people used them to share text and images, converse with each other, and explore shopping brands. If they ultimately wanted to complete a purchase, they needed to take the extra step of going to the business’s separate website.
This has become more streamlined in recent years.
Now, people can navigate through their entire shopping journey from original exploration, to final purchase and beyond, via one channel. All you need to do is to connect your ecommerce platform to social media platforms.
Popular examples include Instagram Shopping, Facebook Shops, and TikTok Shop.
2. Gain valuable insights from your data
If you are going to go through the time and trouble to make social media content, you might as well figure out which content is working to engage customers and increase sales, and which content is falling on deaf ears.
Focus on content you have created, such as promotions, links to your website, and product details. Target the UTM parameters embedded in the links to track visitor behaviors with Google Analytics.
The key performance indicators on which to concentrate should include both organic and paid measures.
Organic refers to elements such as social media traffic referrals, engagement rate, click-through rate, purchases, and form submissions. Advertising services that you pay for are also important and include things like conversion rate, return on ad spend (RoAS), and cost per conversion.
By leveraging the results of your analysis, you can tweak the goals for your campaign and plan your budget more accurately to enhance sales and profits.
3. Foster conversations
Social media sites furnish you with the unprecedented opportunity to facilitate dialogues. Visitors can chat with each other, organically learning about your products and benefiting from the experience of their peers.
Additionally, you can directly talk with customers to answer questions, register your own opinions and personal details, and even respond to concerns publicly so that everyone can recognize your commitment to customer care.
Direct engagement among and with potential customers can lead to immediate sales, but that’s not all. It also provides a way for people to be transformed from one-time buyers into loyal ongoing brand ambassadors who will share their excitement about your business with their own separate set of contacts.
In the end, this means that more people will learn about you and your products, increasing the likelihood that you will accept online payments and make a sale.
4. Utilize social listening
While you can learn a great deal from what people say to you and to each other on your TikTok or YouTube feeds, you also need a more comprehensive measure of what your customers think about your brand, competitors, and trends in the types of products they want to buy.
Social listening uses online analysis tools to make this happen by gathering these vital public details and presenting them to you at your request.
Once you have your ear to the ground with social listening, you can make more accurate predictions that are perfectly suited to guiding your company on the best path forward.
While you will never get a complete picture of what every person is thinking and feeling about your brand and the industry in which you operate, you will gain crucial details that can help in inventory purchasing and market forecasting.
5. Use social media influencing and de-influencing
You have probably heard of influencer marketing, the social media tactic that involves partnering with a micro- or macro-celebrity compatible with your brand and products who has already accumulated a significant number of followers.
When that person endorses your store, their fans are likely to check it out and just might make a purchase on their recommendation.
By discouraging excess purchasing and waste and persuading customers to only buy high-quality items that they genuinely need, de-influencing works hand-in-hand with influencer marketing.
Depending on your products and the niche you occupy, you can harness one or both of these techniques to connect with an expanded customer base and maximize sales. Just be sure that you choose your partners carefully to ensure that your messages and customer bases are compatible.
Are you ready to change your business game for the better? Do you want to appeal to customers, have and facilitate conversations, and elevate your creative content? If your answer is “yes,” don’t wait another minute to initiate your multi-layered social media campaign.
North is a leading financial technology company that builds innovative, frictionless end-to-end payment solutions designed to simplify and grow businesses of all sizes. From the front door, to the back office, the developer world, and partnerships that expand the payments landscape, North offers proactive, comprehensive merchant services, in-house processing, and more.
