If there’s one goal that small and large businesses share, it’s to have impressive numbers when it comes to sales. While online channels make it easier for businesses to hit these numbers, having the best social media marketing strategies are still crucial in making it possible. With brands doing everything they can to stand out, dabbling with social media marketing will not suffice. There is competition around and thus you can’t afford to risk losing sales to your opponents due to a poor online sales strategy.
You need to have the best social media marketing strategies to maintain a good online presence, and to hit your target. That’s exactly what we have in store for you, so read on.
1. Identify Your Audience
Yes, it’s already 2020 and we’re still talking about the importance of knowing who your audience is. A huge chunk of social media marketing is knowing who you’re talking to, so your words don’t fall on deaf ears. Understanding how your customers behave will make it easier for you to come up with an online sales strategy that will appeal to them. When customers feel understood by businesses, there’s a high chance that the conversation will end with a sale. You need to think – how you can be your audience’s favorite? Think about how you can bring the highest concentration of your audience and move forward.
2. Invest in the Right Platforms
There are so many things to do on social platforms in order to get social media success. If you are just a startup and need quick exposure we suggest using Ad strategies, maybe with a small budget initially, and then boost up when you start getting sales. The rates for ad placements vary on different social media platforms, which is why it’s also important to know where your audience usually spend most of their time on. This way, you’ll know where to spend your digital advertising funds on and what format to use for content marketing. Whether it is quality videos, exceptional digital images, or comprehensive blog entries, the important thing is you are visible to your exact target audience.
3. Boost Ad Clicks through Ad Extensions
Bing and Google Adwords both have ad extensions – a feature that can boost your click-through rate. Ad extensions provide customers with more information about your business, like mobile numbers or links to a specific page on the website.
Capitalizing on ad extensions can make your ads more visible, thus giving you more clicks and improving your ROI. To get some really good click-through rate, you can also opt for creating landing pages exactly according to the search engine guidelines. Once you do this, you will see how fast you are getting results.
4. Create Superb Content
Ranking high on the list of best social media marketing strategies is uploading high-quality content on a regular basis. Content attracts customers and keeps their attention, so you need to see to it that they’ll remember what you’re trying to sell them. With all businesses jumping into the wagon of content marketing you need to cut through the noise and make sure your business stands out. You can do this by uploading content that’s engaging, understandable, easy to optimize, and has lots of visuals. To make your social media strategy stronger specifically for an eCommerce store, you should focus on visual content – for example, a product demonstration video, promote useful offers or create infographics visualizing how your products are better than the others.
5. Introduce Your Company’s Backstage Crew
You can tell if a company has its heart in the right place by the way they treat their employees. You can forge powerful relationships with your customers if you get some members of your backstage crew to speak to them. This shows them that you care about your employees just as much as you care about boosting your online sales. When customers see that you’re not just about making money, they’ll make an effort to spread the word about your business.
6. Gently Nudge Your Customers to Take Action Immediately
Customers delay buying anything when they feel that they have all the time in the world. This often leads to a loss of sales, which makes it difficult for business owners to reach their goals. You can solve this by offering limited-edition products or letting your customers know that the special offer expires soon. When customers feel a sense of urgency, they tend to shop faster and swipe their cards to avail of the perks. The faster you get them to click on the purchase button, the sooner you’ll hit your sales target.
7. Be Transparent About Customer Feedback
People put a premium on honesty and for this reason, you need to be transparent about what customers have to say about your business. While it puts you in a vulnerable position since you also open the space for unsatisfied customers, you also allow people to hear from those who have good things to say about your products and services. These testimonials make it easier for your target audience to trust you, which can eventually lead to an increase in online sales.
8. A Seamless Checkout Process
If you don’t want your customers to abandon their carts, then you should eliminate all unimportant steps in the checkout process. In the same way that you want to make it easy for them to navigate around your website, settling payments for products they want to purchase should also be a breeze. Get rid of fields that don’t have any value on the forms they need to fill out. Avoid putting time-outs so customers don’t need to start over when processing their payment. Make them feel good about buying from you so they won’t think twice about purchasing items from you again in the future.
9. Offer All Possible Payment Options
Part of having a seamless checkout process is offering all payment options possible. Accepting business cards does not cut it these days. You need to accommodate other options as well, like Google Wallet payments, WePay, Stripe, ApplePay, PayPal, or bank transfers. Increasing your online sales means optimizing your website to accommodate a variety of payment options. Remember, the goal is to make it easy for your customers to pay for their purchases.
10. Keep the Conversation Going
For most businesses, the conversation ends once they get their customer’s money. This is bad news if you intend to retain your customers (who, by the way, are crucial in keeping the numbers of your online sales up). Show your customers that you’re not just after their money by sending them an email to ask about how the experience was for them and their feedback on the product. You gain their respect, trust, and loyalty when you show them that their opinion matters.
Conclusion
The only way to keep your customers intact is by creating content they genuinely find interesting and feel connected with. It is important that you reach out to them on a personal level. After all increasing online sales have a lot to do with giving customers amazing shopping experience and quality service.
The small adjustments could mean the world to these customers. Remember, it only takes one satisfied customer to keep your online volume up.