The dynamic pairing of social media and ecommerce offers many advantages and has changed the way retailers interact with consumers. With online shopping soaring multifold, social media has become inevitable for every ecommerce business that wants to reach its scattered target audience.
The winds of change in this direction have brought a new social wave of targeted campaigns and the use of your consumers’ interactions to drive revenue. Well, apart from using paid campaigns, there is still a lot to do before you reach that stage. Starting from building your brand awareness to using social platforms to inform about your offerings and finally driving the traffic to the website.
As an ecommerce business, there are a few things you should get streamlined before using performance marketing. Let’s dive into this blog about how we are leveraging the advantages of online platforms to build our online presence.
What is ecommerce social media marketing?
Ecommerce Social media marketing makes use of various social media platforms to connect with the potential audience and inform them about the offerings of your business. By utilizing these channels you can effectively market your brand and facilitate online buying and selling transactions. This approach offers numerous advantages that can be transformative for your organization.
Why Ecommerce Social Media Marketing is important?
Advantages of Social Media Marketing plan are numerous if leveraged properly; given that you have a robust strategy in place. An effective plan will offer the following advantages:
- Drive organic website traffic and sales
- Building a community fostering direct interaction
- Bringing products to a larger audience using Influencer Marketing
- Get accurate data on consumer behaviour and use targeted advertising
- Use product reviews and UGC content to influence product purchases
7 Advantages of using Social Media Marketing for your Ecommerce Business
After we know the essentials of what constitutes a robust ecommerce social media strategy, let’s see how an online commerce business will derive advantages from implementing it.
1. Enhanced customer experience
When you showcase the real use cases of your products on online platforms it builds upon the trust of the prospective customer, more importantly, if it is a positive review by an actual user. SMM offers unique advantages such as enhanced customer experience that can be leveraged by various tools and techniques.
For instance, Snapchat’s AR advertising uses AR lenses to allow users to try on the products virtually before buying them, creating an immersive experience. With YouTube’s in-stream ads, you get advantages like enhancing the customer shopping experience by allowing users to buy directly from the video content and building brand recall value at the same time.
2. Increased brand awareness
One of the primary advantages of using SMM is improved brand awareness. According to a recent study, 83% of Instagram users found new brands through online media platforms. The visual nature of platforms like Instagram and Pinterest offers ecommerce brands the advantages of showcasing products in an appealing way to attract potential buyers.
With the diverse offerings of online platforms, brands should make their presence stronger by using it to their benefit and get multiple advantages. Content formats differ for every brand, what works for one might not work for another. For some video formats may work well, for some aesthetically appealing static shots take the limelight, or some information about the ongoing offer on the product can be communicated to the target audience.
3. Growing online audience
One cannot ignore the advantages of user interaction on the platforms driving higher engagement and conversion rates. Tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Hootsuite, Facebook Pixel, Google UTM Parameters, etc. help businesses provide analytics on clicks and traffic sources from social networks to the website.
The advantages of integrating user feedback from social media can lead to improved product offerings in eCommerce. These data sources help businesses understand what channel is working for them and what needs to be realigned according to the conversion rate.
4. Improved inbound traffic and SERP rankings
As an instinct reflex whatever is seen on the various online platforms is bound to be searched on the search engine to know more about what it is about. This is where the brands can leverage the power of rich organic content resources to drive new website visitors. Inbound marketing is a great way to drive organic traffic to your website, which enhances your inbound traffic and the rankings on the Google search results pages.
The advantages of simple hooks like how-to guides, videos, UGC content, etc. can aid in increasing the session rate on the website and help the website rankings. For instance when a user lands on your website a dedicated section highlighted “As seen on Instagram” can be created for users to engage with the brand’s website.
Read here: How SEO helps e-commerce businesses?
5. Cost-effective method
Digital networks are cost effective as compared to outdoor ads and you can target your niche audience on the platforms they are most active at. This decreases the cost as you are aware of your target audience and due to effective targeting the conversion rate cost also decreases. For a new business outdoor advertising might prove expensive but with online advertising, it is just a freckle of dust. Businesses realise the advantages of using SMM only when the revenues and sales are high.
6. Increased revenue flows
The digital listening methods help in understanding what your customer is looking for giving you competitive advantages over your rivals. This enables you to target them with the same products thus increasing your chances of conversion. The leisure experience of shopping from the comfort of your home also enables better customer engagement with your brand, strengthening your brand identity.
7. Brand loyalty and equity
Social channels allow the brand to interact with the users directly strengthening the relationships. Brands can gather feedback from their customers through quizzes, giveaways contests, and interactive sessions allowing them to understand their audience better which brings into light yet another set of advantages of social media. Positive experiences shared by the customers reinforce the brand loyalty for the long term and also influence the new potential buyers.
How to create a social media strategy for ecommerce business?
Creating a well-structured strategy requires you to build your social profile, decide on the niche and the goals you are supposed to achieve through online presence, research the target audience, decide on the content buckets you will be producing, etc. Let’s look into the essentials of creating an ecommerce social media strategy.
1. Define objectives, goals, and target audience
To start off, you will need to define the objectives you are aiming to achieve from building your online media presence. Your goals will charter the course of your actions and you will be able to track the performance of them. Try to set achievable goals whose impact can be measured to modify the strategy as required.
The next important step should be to research about the target audience, study the consumer behaviour, analyse the data generated from your audience’s activity on the website, and start formulating a content strategy accordingly. Creating customer personas is a key thing you can do; for instance knowing where is your audience from, what age group they belong to, what’s their interests, their motivation to buy, etc.
2. Choosing the right platform
You need to consider where your audience is active, what is your product offering, does your product requires visual aids to understand how it works, whether it can be supported by visuals to enhance its usage and create new demand, and which platform serves the product visibility better, etc. Every platform has different kinds of content supremacy and should be tapped in the best way to build your brand and product visibility.
For instance, If you are an apparel brand you can focus on developing your Instagram or Pinterest profile keeping the aesthetics and product offerings in mind to enhance your visibility. Here, as you can see Radheys Couture has leveraged social media and enhanced its ecommerce presence. They used video marketing to bring visibility to their products and used reels to showcase their product range.
3. Develop a content strategy
A content strategy depends on your goals and the platforms you choose for ecommerce marketing. The next thing you should be doing is to find the content inspiration and the various formats you will be using to promote your products.
Check for the consumer behaviour on your website, develop aesthetically pleasing and useful content that gives value and prompts the viewer to share it, look into how you can create different angles to product usage and ignite new demand, look for trends and give your own individual outlook rather than just blindly adapting it to your brand, use moment marketing effectively and wisely; all these are some secondary aspects to your content strategy apart from the main goal of driving sales actions.
4. Performance marketing and ad creation
Last but not least, a good online marketing strategy should be supported by a performance marketing strategy. The advantages are many when it comes to using performance marketing for your ecommerce business. Ecommerce relies majorly on online presence and it is important to drive new visitors to the website for a high turnover rate; this can be done by using a mix of both organic and paid media.
Google search and display ads, YouTube in-stream ads, Shopping ads, Video ads, Meta ads, Using UGC content to promote on paid media, etc. are different ways to enhance your paid ad strategy. Adapt your ad copies and creative based on the platform specifications and do thorough audience research before creating targeted ads; you can also try A/B testing to see what works on which platform and what results it is deriving.
Ready to take your Ecommerce business to the next level?
Let’s talk! Spinta Digital is a leading digital marketing agency based out of Chennai and offers end-to-end digital marketing solutions with a 360-degree approach. We don’t just market the brands we create them into powerful entities by creating tailored strategies by integrating SEO, content creation, performance marketing, online media promotions, and brand-building activities.
Reach out to us here.
