How to Use Social Media for eCommerce
Social media for ecommerce is simply the process of selling products (whether digital or physical) on social media platforms.
When you have an ecommerce business, its success heavily relies on having a good social media marketing strategy for ecommerce.
Ideally, you want to use multiple marketing channels. If your social media marketing strategy for ecommerce has a tight budget, you might want to market your business organically.
Organic marketing though can take time, this is why it’s best to invest in a paid social media marketing strategy for ecommerce too. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram allow you to reach thousands of people through their paid advertising network and therefore easily sell on Facebook and sell on Instagram your products.
When using social media for ecommerce, the wide range of audiences you can target within minutes are a fantastic opportunity to ensure you spend your budget wisely and your ads are only shown to people who are most likely to follow your call to action.
Another social media strategy for ecommerce is to pay social media influencers.
What this means is, if you are lucky enough to get your brand endorsed by social media influencers, you can very quickly start to sell on Facebook or sell on Instagram.
When using social media for ecommerce, instead of waiting for online influencers to find you, you can actually start looking for them and offer a deal for them to endorse you.
In order to identify online influencers for your Facebook ecommerce and Instagram ecommerce strategy, you can start by performing a simple Google search.
Once on the blog, make sure it is being updated regularly and that the content is aligned with the values of your brand. If the blog is being updated regularly, that means it’s still active.
If so, explore the person’s social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. Should their audience size, video views and engagement rate be much higher than the average audience size of social media users in your industry, you could consider partnering with them to endorse your products as part of your Facebook ecommerce and Instagram ecommerce strategy.
Next, make an offer in writing if you prefer. You can draw up an offer outlining the partnership, what is expected from both parties, the deliverables, how payment will work and how long the campaign will run for so you can more easily sell on Facebook or sell on Instagram your products.
Whatever your request is, make sure it is clear. A mistake people make when reaching out to influencers is remaining vague by making statements such as “we should work together”.
Instead, be specific about what you have in mind for your Facebook ecommerce and Instagram ecommerce strategy and make sure your request is a win-win.
Another social media strategy for ecommerce is displaying your website URL on as many places as you can.
You can first add your website url in your banner. Your Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin banners are the prime real estate of your social media accounts and therefore help you sell on Facebook and sell on Instagram.
Facebook also allows you to have a call to action tab below the banner of your Facebook page, so make sure you customize this tab so it redirects to your ecommerce store which will help you further to sell on Facebook.
Another social media strategy for ecommerce is to leverage the power of word-of-mouth from your existing customers. Get in touch with your existing customers incentivizing them to publish a review on your Facebook page about the products they’ve purchased, or posting pictures of them using the products they’ve purchased from your ecommerce store. This will help spread the word about your ecommerce store as their friends will be able to see their post.
