Last Updated 2 years by Emily Standley-Allard
The digital world is immensely innovating by the minute. With one billion e-commerce shoppers it’s not a surprise to see how the e-commerce sector continues to grow. Businesses and industries of all sizes have gone digital. Developing targeted e-Commerce social media strategies is crucial to your success if you want to grow your business.
As an eCommerce marketer, you are fully aware of how challenging it is to build brand awareness, connect with customers, and ultimately drive traffic to generate more sales.
These specific e-Commerce social media strategies will help you.
Despite the buzz about social media, many marketers are still struggling to grasp its ever shifting nature.
Hence this guide is to help simplify everything about creating an effective e-commerce social media strategy. But first, it’s important to wrap your head around the concept of using social media as a marketing strategy itself.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
To simply put it, social media marketing is a process of using social media platforms to communicate, network and engage with a particular audience or potential prospects.
The content is tailored in such a way that customers should understand your brand better.
Aside from introducing new products and services, a social media strategy can also be a tool to build a positive relationship with both old and new customers.
What makes using social media as a marketing strategy different is that aside from forming relationships and establishing brand identity, it also helps widen your reach. (And improve your SEO)
Technically, it is the sharing of your superb content that will define the success of your social media strategy.
The more people share what they see on your social media posts, the more chances of convincing them to head on over to your site.
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1. Identify Which Social Media Channels Your Customers are Using
Considering that you have done your marketing research, study the demographic information and the online behavior of your current and target customers.
Which social media platform do they frequent the most?
Find out which age group finds your brand appealing. For example, a younger age group prefers using TikTok so maybe you need to focus on that channel for better exposure.
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2. Set your Goals
After knowing which social media channels to use for your brand, the next thing to do is to set your social media marketing strategy goals.
Determine the success that you need to reach after your campaign drive.
It would be best to create small goals for this type of marketing, especially if it is your first time.
Success in social media strategy does not happen overnight particularly if you are new in that channel.
One example of a simple goal for this type of ecommerce marketing is to increase your number of followers.
You can then proceed to bigger goals, like driving up traffic, once you are able to build up a solid follower base.
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3. Increase Your Following
As mentioned earlier, it is necessary to grow your number of followers in order to succeed with social media marketing.
Not a small task but there are plenty of tools to help you automate this without spending all your time on social media.
Aside from having a larger audience, there are also special benefits and features on some social media sites that can be unlocked if you have enough followers.
On Instagram, for example, having 10,000 subscribers will make it possible to add direct links into each of your Stories.
You can even create folders to organize your Stories so that customers will find it easier to find specific products.
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4. Link the Chat Feature to Your Website
Most social media platforms are built with a chat feature.
Linking it to your site makes it easier to communicate with your target customers.
You can send them about new products, promos, and other brand-related information.
At the same time, it would be easier for them to send you inquiries without leaving their favorite social media app. It is like having a traditional email marketing campaign and customer support in one place!
5. Sell Products Directly on Your Page
Being able to shop without going to an external website streamlines the shopping process.
In fact, it can help increase conversions when you shorten the distance between the customers’ interest in a product and checkout.
Another great thing about it is that social commerce solutions come free with your account.
Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have this feature so why not try creating your own shop on those platforms?
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6. Dedicate A Budget for Paid Ads
Although it is free to use social media even for ecommerce, there is also an option to purchase solutions that boost ad campaigns.
Facebook Ads, for instance, has a variety of ads that you may use for ecommerce purposes.
Paid ads are huge opportunities to grow your business because they can bring highly targeted customers towards your site.
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7. Activate a Dedicated Customer Service Support Team
Although social media is effective at reaching new customers, you can also make it worthwhile for existing customers.
It can be your ad hoc customer service channel wherein a dedicated team is there to handle comments and direct messages.
Don’t have the budget for a dedicated team? Hire a freelancer from Fiverr!
Consider it as a 24/7 management wherein customers form a notion that you appreciate them enough to offer support before, during and after their purchase.
Encourage them to give feedback or ask questions about your products.
Show them that you value their opinions and use their happy comments as social proof of your brand.
Negative feedback, on the other hand, must be treated as an opportunity to make it better and offer solutions to satisfy the customers.
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8. Showcase Your Brand’s Personality
Make it easier for customers to recognize your brand by presenting your bubbly and unique personality.
The important thing to remember with social media is that people are also using it for entertainment and relax time.
Your customers will not react positively to your brand and switch off quickly if all they see is sales content or content that is dull.
Perk up and you will be amazed at how much engagement you will receive from your followers.
One tip to do this is to provide humorous posts. A lighthearted marketing approach is more appealing and will definitely make the customers remember you.
9. Make Purposeful Collaborations
Social media influencers are great at promoting products to your target audiences.
But before choosing which influencers to collaborate with, make sure that they share the same values as your brand’s.
This will ensure that the customers will fully benefit from such collaboration.
You can start with looking for influencers who cater to the same audiences as you.
You can then invite them to try your products and let them share their honest opinion with their audience.
Other collaborations could be Q&A sessions with influencers and organizing give-away with affiliated brands.
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10. Experiment with Interactive Content Formats
News feeds can be flooded with too much content from all the brands and personalities that your customers follow.
To avoid getting lost in a sea of content, you can try to create interactive content like short-form videos.
Stories, Reels, and Fleets are just some examples where you can showcase your personality-filled posts.
The goal here is to not only drive traffic and sales but also to strengthen your relationship with the customers.
11. Post User-Generated Content
While influencer reviews are essential, positive comments from happy customers are also a gem with any social media strategy.
Encourage customers to tag your brand whenever they post about their experiences in using your products.
Share it to your social media account to create a more authentic appeal. These genuine and organic recommendations would also help increase your credibility as a brand.
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12. Be Consistent
After you are able to build a following, ride on this feat and do not lose momentum by regularly posting.
It would be best to have a regular posting schedule wherein you get to offer new content for the customers to interact with. This will not only increase visibility but will also ensure relevance.
13. Use Shop the Look Feature to Pins
Facebook and Instagram may dominate the social media ecommerce scene but Pinterest is also gaining popularity these days. It also offers an on-platform purchase feature with its “Shop-the-Look” Pins. Big brands like Timberland are already using this feature so it would be nice to be among the first few to start this trend.
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14. Go Live
Aside from scheduling posts, you can also try to promote live streams to promote and sell your products. It works like a live Home Shopping Network where viewers can send you screenshots of the products that they like through direct messages.
It is a nice feature especially if you want to close sales fast.
15. Always Offer Quality Content
Finally, the last but definitely the most important tip for a successful social media strategy is to offer quality content.
Honestly, the competition is getting tougher with ecommerce marketing.
It is essential that you always have something to offer that would be valuable to your customers. Make it worth their time to check out your social media posts by not only giving information but also entertaining them and providing plenty of fun contests and special offers.
On top of these strategies, it is also a must that you manage your social media strategy effectively. This would include scheduling your posts, boosting organic posts, delivering timely responses, monitoring social media mentions, and analyzing your performance in all social media networks that you use.
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Conclusion:
Even though using social media strategy is getting more popular among ecommerce sites, it doesn’t mean you can’t be successful.
With the right strategies, you can use ecommerce social media strategies to their full potential and make it a highly effective tool to drive more traffic to your site and generate more sales.
Author’s Bio:
As a digital and social media marketing enthusiast, Yen Pedrajas loves to share and write content about new insights on Startups, SaaS products and digital marketing. You can read her work at Medium.
She works full time as Lead Editor of Removal.AI, an AI photo editing tool used to make image background transparent – ideal tool for eCommerce, photography, web and app development.
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