By Japs Buidon
According to We Are Social, of the 7.21 billion total world population, 3.01 billion are active Internet users. More than that, these figures are constantly growing due to the more affordable mobile devices and data connections worldwide. Is this enough reason to make your e-commerce site enter the social media bandwagon?
Although capitalizing in social media marketing campaigns cannot directly affect online sales, it can effectively drive your e-commerce sales up. Social media plays a significant role in generating leads and sales in your online store. In fact, orders generated from social media increased by 202% over 2014, majority of which are from Facebook.
More than the figures and statistics, here are concrete reasons why going social is a must for your e-commerce success.
Social media can improve the awareness and exposure of your brand.
With the growing number of active social media users, more and more people can be reached through different social media channels such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. In fact, on Facebook alone, there are 1.49 billion active users all over the world. Imagine the opportunity to reach that huge audience. What more when you leverage other popular social media networks as well?
How can you sell a product if people don’t know about it? Posting relevant social media content on different social networks can attract the online audience to get to know your brand and eventually make a purchase. Once you get to tap the interest of the digital audience, your posts can become viral, including your product. At present, high-end brands, like Nike, are using Instagram and Pinterest for branding purposes.
Social media can attract people to consider your products or services.
Nowadays, people get attracted to buy different products or avail different services that they see on social media posts. According to Business Insider, Facebook, the most dominant social commerce platform accounts for 50% of referrals and 64% total social revenue. Likewise, Pinterest is also being considered as one of the major social commerce channels despite its small user base as it drives 16% of total social revenue.
Social media encourages interaction with customers.
Innovative buttons such as “like” and “share” on Facebook, “retweet” and “like” on Twitter, “pin” on Pinterest and comment boxes on other social media networks can effectively facilitate interactions and conversations. More than that, creating different social media accounts for your e-commerce website can make it easier for your followers and potential customers to find you and know more about your brand.
Social media can greatly help your customer service and support staff.
One thing that consumers look for in brick-and-mortar or online shops is remarkable customer service. If customers experience this great service with you, they may even refer you to others, which eventually expands your market and reach. However, at times, due to the huge volume of calls from them, your customer service staff can’t address them all. And missed calls are big no-no’s to any business. Missed calls equal missed sales.
By creating profiles on different social media channels, your followers, and potential consumers can easily leave you a message, inquiry, or comment. Customers who want an immediate feedback can easily access you through your social media accounts. For example, popular brands such as Nike, Amazon, Tesco, and Xbox use Twitter to broaden their customer service efforts by resolving consumer issues right on through tweets.
Social media can establish the validity and legitimacy of your brand.
Most likely, potential customers will browse through different e-commerce sites and view an online store’s social media accounts before purchasing a product. Consumers tend to buy something they could trust or buy from a company that’s proven trustworthy. For first-time buyers, the trustworthiness of an e-commerce site is a great factor. Your social media profiles are proofs that your business is real and patronized by real people.
Through different social media channels, you can showcase customer reviews, feedbacks, ratings for returning customers and first-time buyers. Seeing these posts and information can help build the level of trust most consumers need before purchasing an item or service from your e-commerce site. There are other tools such as live social conversations for customers to help better establish your online store’s trust quotient.
Social media can easily be accessed through mobile or smartphones.
According to Unified Social, people spend more time on social media sites when they are on their mobile devices than when they’re on their desktops. Additionally, users tend to share social media content twice more using mobile devices than when they are on a desktop computer. In fact, in most countries, consumers use their mobile devices as their main access to different social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest.
E-commerce marketing strategies now include mobile users and social media to reach more and more potential consumers because of their impressive ability to generate leads and sales. According to Statista, the worldwide social media revenue amounted to $16.9 billion and still growing. Utilize the majority of the mobile users by creating engaging and mobile-friendly posts on your social media networks.
More than joining the trend, going social for your e-commerce site’s maximum success potential is worth a leap of faith. When implemented right, social media e-commerce marketing can boost your sales and your brand more than you could have ever imagined. So what are you waiting for? Go social today!