Social media tips for e-commerce brands

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Jun 15, 2018 / by
Social media tips for e-commerce brands

Research indicates that global e-commerce sales could reach $4.5 Trillion by 2021. That’s seriously big business. As every e-commerce marketer knows, social media is instrumental in driving sales.

According to an infographic by Shopify, 85% of all e-commerce orders that come from social media are from Facebook. However, other channels such as Instagram and Twitter can be incredibly powerful for driving traffic too. Here are some tips to maximise your e-commerce social media efforts.

Use social media for customer services

78% of customers believe that brands should use social media to answer customer service queries in the future. If you’re not active on social media, how can customers voice their queries? If a customer has a complaint that isn’t answered, this can create a lot of negative publicity for your brand. It’s imperative to continuously check for mentions of your brand and endeavour to solve any problems in a timely manner.

Add value

The wonderful thing about social media is that it allows brands to deliver value at scale. Luxy Hair, a brand selling premium hair extensions, is a case study for growing a business using actionable video content. Instead of self-promoting or paying for advertising like most brands, Luxy Hair started a YouTube channel, delivering an abundance of free hairstyling tutorials.

Influencer marketing can also be powerful. Luxy Hair founder, Alex Ikonn, states:

And our initial biggest win was a YouTuber with about 15,000 subscribers reviewing our product. This did way more for us than any magazines mention.

As a sign of the times, 70% of young YouTube users trust influencers more than conventional celebrities. With resources such as Ifluenz, it’s never been easier to get influencers to promote your products on social media.

Because the brand delivered something that truly helped their target customers, they were rewarded with sales. By thinking of your target customers’ pain points and values, you can then start to think about what social media content will resonate with them. With 300 hours of footage being uploaded to YouTube every minute, it’s easy to see that video content is in demand at the moment.

Whats appUtilise messaging platforms

Messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger are receiving huge engagement at the moment, so it makes sense to target customers where they’re already dwelling. As AI becomes more sophisticated, chatbots are being deployed to answer customer service enquiries and also drive sales. If you’re not marketing to customers on WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook Messenger – you’re missing out!

User generated content (UGC)

Social media is all about building relationships with your audience. By reposting the content that your followers upload, you’re building a community around your brand and creating lifelong fans. Images of your customers using your products are worth their weight in gold on social media.

Badass Beard Care are constantly regramming images of their loyal clients. It doesn’t hurt that men with beards feel a sense of camaraderie and enjoy looking at pictures of other men with beards!

Conclusion

Deploy these tactics and see what works for you. No two e-commerce niches are the same, so it’s hard to know what tactics your audience will resonate with until you try. However, once you start seeing engagement then you can start to calibrate your content in order to make the maximum impact.

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