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Increasing brand awareness and getting more sales is a priority for every business organization. This is why companies are always launching marketing campaigns. However, there are other companies that may not be able to afford expensive marketing campaigns.

Social media marketing is a very good option for companies with smaller advertising budgets. You can use social marketing to boost your sales without spending much money. Most social marketing techniques will not cost you any money and can easily give you a lot of exposure to potential customers.

  • What You Should Know About Social Media Marketing
  • How Can Social Media Help Boost Your Sales?
  • How Does Social Media Marketing Impact on Sales?
  • Does Social Media Really Increase Sales?
  • How Can Marketing Increase Sales?
  • How Can Social Media Marketing Boost Sales And Customer Loyalty?
  • How Can Social Media Increase eCommerce Sales?
  • What is The Goal of Social Marketing?
  • How Social Media Marketing Helps Businesses?
  • What Are 4 General Ways to Increase Sales?
  • What Strategies Can be Used to Increase Sales?
  • How Can Social Media Improve Customer Retention?
  • How Social Media Marketing is Done?
  • Why Should Businesses Use Social Selling for eCommerce?
  • Why is Social Media Marketing Important for eCommerce?

What You Should Know About Social Media Marketing

Works For All Types Of Businesses

No matter the size of your company, you can get a lot of benefits from social media marketing. These tools will enable you to reach out to millions of people at very little cost. When you establish a strong presence on social networks, your customers will become closer to you.

Read Also: Top 10 Content Marketing Trends For 2022 – 2025

Your relationship with them will be more personal and they will be encouraged to buy more of your products or use more of your services. Not only can you use social marketing to boost your sales, you can also use it to increase your brand awareness in the marketplace.

How Social Marketing will Increase Sales

With social media tools, you can easily access millions of potential customers. Furthermore, this access is not limited to a particular period of time.

For example, a single tweet can be seen by millions of people and it is always available on the internet for more people to see. Compare this with a television commercial that can only be seen by the people who are watching when it is shown.

Social networks also provide a platform for interaction. You can easily showcase your new products and provide more information about existing ones. People can follow your company on Twitter and also respond to your tweets.

This creates an opportunity for interaction which makes it possible for you to learn more about your customers. This increase in familiarity will help you to have more loyal customers. You can really use social marketing to boost your sales if it is creatively done.

Define Your Audience

To make proper use of social media, you need a good understanding of your potential customers. You have to know what they are interested in and the type of websites they visit online.

You can get relevant information by visiting a number of forums related to your services or products. A clear definition of your prospective customers will make it possible to know the most appropriate social marketing techniques.

Set the right goals

It is important to set the right goals when you want to use social marketing to boost your sales. Your strategy may be to drive traffic to your business website. You might also want to create a feedback forum for your customers.

If you have a retail website, you will want most of the visitors to make purchases. Write down what you want to achieve with your campaign on social networks. This will help you to make the most of this marketing opportunity.

How Can Social Media Help Boost Your Sales?

Social media, when optimized properly, continues to be the biggest way for brands to build social proof, get more customers and make more sales.

For businesses, it’s clear that social media can be a goldmine of leads and conversions, if handled correctly. That’s why many companies have focused their marketing budgets on social media, trying to build a following and cultivate customer loyalty as well as new buyers.

Here are a few tips you can implement to make your social media marketing much more effective in bringing in sales.

1. Focus on your audience

One of the easiest ways to burn a lot of money on social media marketing without achieving much is to attempt to appeal to everyone. What you need to do is to narrow down your audience, create a customer profile and then target your marketing toward that persona’s needs and motivations. It will make your marketing much more effective than if you were taking a more general approach.

You might also need to segment your audience by different parameters to be able to target them more effectively. Essentially, segmentation will allow you to work with multiple customer profiles and tailor your marketing based on their specific characteristics.

2. Pick your platforms and optimize for them

Attempting to maintain an active presence on all the social media platforms available is going to stretch most businesses too much. Whoever is handling your social media will likely be overwhelmed and your efforts across all the platforms will not be effective.

Instead, analyze your buyer persona and decide which platforms are best for engaging your target market. Two or three are good, and you shouldn’t undertake more than that unless you have multiple staff to handle them.

When you’ve selected your content, you will be able to optimize your content for that platform and thus get much more engagement. If you’re focusing on Instagram, for instance, you’ll be able to focus your resources on making quality images, since that’s what gets the most traction on the platform.

On Twitter, conversely, making highly informative threads will likely see more engagement and get the word out about your brand more. 

3. Create and share content

Content marketing is not just a buzzword. It actually works and the effects are visible on social media too. Publish content that’s short and entertaining or informative and you can be sure you’ll get some social media engagement.

Over time, you’ll have some content (whether it’s text posts, photos, infographics etc.) that’ll go viral and bring tons of traffic to your website. Be sure to work with content creation professionals to be sure your website is up to par.

Putting your content out there is the first step to building a formidable brand, and one easy hack is to tweak your content strategy continually, so it’s aligned with topical issues.

By creating quality content and using interesting captions for Instagram, Twitter and other platforms, you’ll be able to plug into trends and get your content in front of many more people, such as what brands like Vape4Ever achieved by providing timely information on marijuana laws at a time when there’s a lot of confusion and public discourse about them.

4. Promote user-generated content

People trust their friends more than they trust a company, no matter how loyal they are to the brand. You can take advantage of that by encouraging people to post content on social media that validates and promotes your products or services.

One popular instance of this was the “Share a Coke with…” Coca-Cola campaign where users posted pictures of themselves with their soda bottles. You don’t have to start at that level either; with creative marketing or a small giveaway, you can incentivize people to post positive info about your product or service.

For a travel service, for example, getting customers to write about their trips in a way that’s authentic and fun will provide solid social proof and encourage FOMO among your target audience, thus increasing the likelihood of conversion drastically. 

5. Provide stellar customer service

Positive reviews are great, but many of your customers will also likely reach out via social media when they’ve had unsatisfactory experiences with your products or services. The solution is to be ready to engage with them and find fixes for their issues in a timely manner.

Give opportunities for feedback, resolve any concerns they have and encourage them to share their thoughts with their network. 

Over time, that will boost your customer loyalty, encourage referrals and the influx of new customers and also help to build a positive reputation on social media. As your followership grows and validates your products or services, your social proof will increase and more people will be attracted to your brand, thereby boosting sales and your bottom line.

How Does Social Media Marketing Impact on Sales?

Social media, as we all know, connects people and can help businesses get more information about their customers. It enables entrepreneurs to find out how their business is perceived by their customers, including what their customers think of their competitors, allowing them to make the necessary changes in their products or services and to initiate conversations to cultivate a prospect or sales lead.

Here are a few ideas on how social media can be used to make new sales and generate increasing returns.

1. Choose the right social media platform Social media is comprised of different platforms, and when choosing the right social media platform for their business, entrepreneurs should start by learning the preferences of their client base. Social media can be used inteligently only if the business is active on the same online platform as its customers.

It is a waste of time to engage on one social media platforms if your clients are spending the majority of their time on another. One of the best social media platforms is Facebook, specially for B2C businesses, as it provides the opportunity to publish ads.

It can be used with other platforms, such as Pinterest and Instagram, as well. You can engage with new customers, take orders from them and keep them informed about your new offers and initiatives.

2. Connect with your prospects Once you have chosen the right platform, you need to join it by creating a profile or a page that should be made in the name of the business. After that, you can connect with your prospects by following them, sending them a friend request, and so on.

The question that arises here is, how are you going to identify the prospects? This is where SEO techniques might come in handy. You can use keywords to search for the individuals who are active in or talking about your industry. It is advisable not to approach them with sales pitches immediately, but to first find out their needs and pain points.

3. Build relationships and engage in conversations Suitable for both customers and businesses, social media allows them to build long-lasting relationships. Entrepreneurs should know that it is going to take time before they fetch desired results. Building long-lasting relationships is only possible when you invest time to research, create and share engaging content.

It’s not a good idea just to send to your customers a message with a pitch and a link to your website -they will be uninterested- but try to point out to some problems of theirs that your product or service can solve.

These are three simple steps which can make your social media presence felt, while increasing sales of your businesses as well. It is also important to mention that you should aim to treat your potential customers with respect while adding value to their lives with your products or services.

Does Social Media Really Increase Sales?

With social media marketing, the goal is usually to convert people there on the spot. You’ll see that this differs from social selling, which is focused more on lead generation and nurturing. Here are some figures that will interest you.

  • 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.
  • Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.
  • 66% of marketers that spend at least 6 hours on social media per week have gotten more leads.
  • 70% of business-to-consumer marketers have gotten their customers through Facebook.
  • Instagram earns roughly $4 billion in mobile ad revenue per year.
  • Retargeting ads can be used on Facebook to target 98% of non-returning users and turn them into customers.
  • In 2015, social networks earned an estimated $8.3 billion from advertising.

You can see that social media marketing is effective. And, it just keeps growing. If you aren’t using social media marketing yet, you need to get on board.

How Can Marketing Increase Sales?

Marketing is a definite way that helps to boost sales. Through marketing, the products and services, which are unique and of high quality mainly capture the attention of customers and in the process, make them esteemed consumers. The customers are the only options that can help you boost the sales. Marketing can also involve rewarding of the customers.

The promotions and marketing give the customers a great deal of existence of the products or services in the market. In some instances, discounts give the customers the ability to try your products. The promotion can give way to attract more customers and at the same time maximize the number of existing users. In some instances, you can offer free samples.

How Can Social Media Marketing Boost Sales And Customer Loyalty?

Social media was an obvious choice from the get go. Spending an ever-increasing amount of time locked away and trained on fluorescent screens, people yearn for connections and search for ways to interact and “socialize”. If they can do so without ever leaving their homes or even their desks, social media is the answer.

Brands, marketers, and advertisers have been slugging it out on social media for more than a few years now. Studies have been conducted to predict patterns between social media activity and buyer behavior.

The results were nothing that most seasoned marketing people didn’t know, but there was a significant twist. Most managers know that customers exhibit more brand loyalty to brands they naturally liked.

Traditionally, this meant brands should display the same values as they did. Then again, in the age of social media, consumers’ perception of brands has changed. Now, they develop an affinity for a certain brand by determining if it “listens” to them.

After carefully formulating and scheduling your messages, comes the important part—engaging. This is the part that you will be most judged for, which ultimately builds customer loyalty.

The most crucial thing is to respond to inquiries, complaints, and comments in a timely manner. Some teams manage to reply within an hour while some companies may take days to get back to a customer. Guess which one is perceived to be more helpful? The former.

Each reply, even if it is a holding reply to buy time to find the right solution to a customer’s problem, should be written with tact and care. The tone should be friendly but professional, and should always reflect how important your customers are to you. When a customer feels that a brand genuinely cares, a positive experience is created.

The capability of social media to connect brands and consumers has its difficulties. But when it’s all told, it is a powerful tool for building relationships with people you might have never even had a chance to meet.

Social media also can provide valuable feedback and an avenue for action, unlike any other media channel. More than anything, it gives brands a chance of winning customer loyalty through interaction, no spend or sale necessary.

How Can Social Media Increase eCommerce Sales?

Ecommerce social media is the practice of using social media to market an ecommerce store. Ecommerce stores can use social media to build brand awareness, attract online followers, and generate online sales. Companies can also use social media to get their brand, profile, and products shared online.

1. Expand your online reach

Considering 71% of adults with Internet access use social media, almost every business can benefit from marketing on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This is especially true for ecommerce retailers.

2. Reach your target audience where they spend the most time

Optimizing your site for search engines and running PPC campaigns allows you reach users while they’re actively searching for specific products, but with social media, you can also reach them on their favorite places online.

3. Engage your target audience in a casual way

Social media platforms also offer a much less formal way of communicating with potential customers than any other advertising channel, making it easy to engage in two-way conversations with users who are interested in learning more about your products.

4. Help your brand get shared online

Given the nature of social media, it allows your current customers to share your brand with their family and friends — an ideal situation for any online retailer.

What is The Goal of Social Marketing?

The goal of social marketing is always to change or maintain how people behave – not what they think or how aware they are about an issue. If your goal is only to increase awareness or knowledge, or change attitudes, you are not doing social marketing.

Combining ideas from commercial marketing and the social sciences, social marketing is a proven tool for influencing behaviour in a sustainable and cost-effective way.

It helps you to decide:

  • Which people to work with
  • What behaviour to influence
  • How to go about it
  • How to measure it

Social marketing is not the same as social media marketing.

How Social Media Marketing Helps Businesses?

Social media allows marketers to connect and engage potential customers where they are at: LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and even some of the younger platforms like TikTok. With a strong social media strategy and the ability to create engaging content, marketers can engage their audience.

Social media will continue to be an important strategy, and companies can always find ways to advance their approach.

Even though B2B companies seek to sell products to other businesses, B2B marketing is still built on human relationships. Social media has long been used to help grow these relationships, but its importance accelerated last year.

Without in-person events, B2B marketers needed an outlet to connect with prospects and partners. And they found they could do this most effectively via social platforms.

By using social media, B2B leaders:

1. Build Brand Awareness

Across different platforms, companies can tell their story, why they provide the services they offer, and keep audiences updated with customer and employee stories.

If B2B leaders are able to leverage the voice of their employees, they can extend their brand reach even further. Every employee has a personal network, and each network has potentially hundreds of contacts. In turn, each of those contacts is connected to hundreds of other people.

2. Generate Leads

Create meaningful conversations and engagement within their target industry by posting videos, news, data, and interesting trends. Not only do you build credibility with potential customers, but these strategies can result in gaining leads.

3. Nurture Leads

Social selling enables sales professionals to build relationships with leads. By leveraging their thought leadership pieces, social proofing and other content, they can help potential customers solve problems. In turn, this allows your sales team to build trust and credibility.

4. Implement Social Listening

Listen to customers and what people are saying about their company. This gives you a chance to get candid feedback about how others view your brand. It opens a window into improving the weaker areas of your business while reinforcing aspects that already resonate with people.

5. Connect Social Posts to Opportunities

Use Social Marketing To Boost Your Sales

With the right enterprise solution, leaders can drive customer posts to their CRM to understand customers more fully.

6. Measure Marketing Efforts

Social media platforms and management tools enable you to track key performance metrics (KPIs). You can even assign a monetary value to organic social media engagement. Earned media value (EMV) offers an idea of how much organic social engagement and reach would have cost if you paid in ads.

7. Build Brand Authenticity

Engaging on social media gives brands the opportunity to build trust with potential customers, partners and talent/employees. This is especially true if other people are promoting your brand or products/services to other people. People are almost three times as likely to trust advice or recommendations from family and friends than official brand channels.

8. Drive Thought Leadership

Social media is a great way to learn about the problems and interests of people. In turn, being on social gives brands an opportunity to drive thought leadership by solving problems. Create how-to guides, webinars and other content to help people and, in response, people could trust your brand as their source for guidance.

9. Grow Your Audience

Use Social Marketing To Boost Your Sales

In 2021, 4.48 billion people were using social media. Not only does social give you a window into the largest addressable market online, but it shows you what actual people talk about or like. Once you learn how to solve this market’s problems with thought leadership content, you can build an audience that believes in your brand and products and services.

10. Build a Community

With planning and engagement, you can build an active community around your brand on social. You can leverage employees and customers alike to generate immediate Likes and Shares for your content so that it reaches new audiences.

11. Generate Unique Content at Scale

Social media communities can also be an excellent source of original and thoughtful content. User-generated content (UGC) and employee-generated content (EGC) can speak to brands in authentic ways, but they keep your content publishing pipeline flush with lots of fresh options.

What Are 4 General Ways to Increase Sales?

Closing a sale helps attain business growth and success. That is why many entrepreneurs wonder what tactics and strategies they can use. While there may be differences depending on the company’s situation and needs, there are also common techniques that can apply to any business.

So, where should you start? Knowing what the four general ways to increase sales are can help you get started.

1. Discuss ways to increase sales. Everyone involved in the creation and implementation of sales strategies should first be aware of what it means. While sales are often seen as synonymous with revenues, these two are different. Generally, sales refer to the number of units of products a company sells. On the other hand, revenue refers to the money generated through sales. It is also known as profit. Once the concepts are clear, the sales team can start planning strategies to address the business’s needs. The company should also discuss whether it would opt for outsourced sales or depend on an internal team.

Here are some other essential factors to consider:

  • Getting more clients – Bringing more customers can lead to higher sales. Thus, allowing the company to earn more.
  • Increasing the average transaction size – Having customers is important. But, getting these customers to purchase more is one of the most effective ways to increase sales. The more items a client purchases, the more money the company earns.
  • Encouraging more transactions – Repeat customers are beneficial for businesses. Think of ways to increase the frequency of transactions of each customer. If the average customer purchases once a month, consider applying strategies that could make them patronize the business more frequently. For instance, if they end up coming back every week, the company will have more sales and revenue.
  • Reviewing Prices – Check the pricing strategies of the company. It would also help if you research your competition. Are they charging less or more for similar products or services? What is the advantage of your offerings compared to theirs? Using this information, consider increasing or lowering your prices. Make sure they are aligned with the company’s goals. Each one has its advantages. So, it is essential to discuss the pros and cons of each one. For instance, lowering prices can increase sales as people are more likely to get attracted to products or services if they know they can save money. Meanwhile, higher prices can increase revenue. However, it does not necessarily increase sales.

2. Have clear goals. Every plan should have a goal. It would determine the strategies to employ, as well as the direction of the company. Define what success is for the company. What type of results does it want to see? For instance, a common goal for start-ups is to achieve profitability. Once the company survives that phase, the next goal is to increase sales and revenues to achieve growth. After outlining clear objectives and identifying what drives sales, the company can focus on planned activities to help achieve the said goals.

3. Plan for a powerful marketing campaign. To increase sales, it is crucial to have an effective strategy. One aspect to focus on is marketing. The concept can be a bit overwhelming for some. After all, it covers a wide variety of activities – from pre-launch to post-introduction of campaigns. Knowing the four major dimensions can help you understand marketing better so that you can start implementing ways to increase sales.

  • Product Development – While a winning idea for a service or product is necessary, it is more important to develop it into something that will sell. That means the company or its sales team should conduct market research. What is appealing to your target audience? What makes the product or service beneficial for them? Why do consumers buy products or get services similar to what you have to offer? Collect all relevant information and use them to add or remove certain features to the product or service to make it more useful, affordable, and appealing.
  • Setting the Prices – After figuring out what the target market wants and needs, the next step is to determine how it will make a profit in selling the product or offering the service. Consider manufacturing costs for products. Then, think about the overhead costs to sell the products or services and run the business. Use all pieces of information to find out the break-even point. That will determine how to set prices.It is also important to note potential sales volumes considering various price levels. This way, the company can figure out the price that will help it generate its desired revenue.
  • Distribution Options – When selling products or services, a company needs to consider its resources and base its brand strategy decisions. There are various distribution options available. The company can sell its products through a retail store. It can also opt to allow direct sales through an online shop. Another option is to hire outsourced sales service providers.
  • Promotion – A significant part of a marketing plan is the promotion. What elements and tools should the company use? There are various options available, such as traditional advertising through print and broadcast, sponsorships, endorsements, events, social media campaigns, and in-store activities. Consider hosting contests and offering rebates or coupons. Depending on the marketing budget, the company can plan how much it will spend on advertising, public relations, and promotions.

4.Develop strong relationships with new and existing clients. Relationships are essential in business. One way of increasing sales is to attract new clients. However, it is also necessary to ensure that current customers will continue choosing your products or services. Having a comprehensive resource center will help give customers access to various products or services.

Good customer service that can address concerns and complaints promptly will also be advantageous for the company. Making customers feel heard and appreciated can convince them to continue purchasing from your company, boosting sales and revenue.

What Strategies Can be Used to Increase Sales?

Using the eight established methods listed below, your business will be able to promote itself more efficiently to a wider audience, define goals which address targets for sales, profit and revenue in conjunction with each other, and ensure that your team is constantly working towards yours goals of bigger and better business growth.

1. Make sure your prices promote an increase in profit margin 

Pricing products effectively is no longer a vague form of art; competition and demand have made it a form of science as well. As markets continue to become more dynamic, your pricing strategy should reflect this by being flexible and agile.

Your pricing strategy is the foundation with which you base your revenue and profit margins on, so if you haven’t created a strategy which is proven by data to promote profit, it is the first aspect of your business you should focus your attention to.

The data you need to begin improving and adapting your pricing strategy can seem endless, but keeping track of the information you need does not have to be a time-consuming task. With the help of advanced pricing software such as the platform we provide, perfecting your pricing strategy can be as easy as just a few clicks and can save you several hours of tedious labor.

Additionally, by utilizing our platform, you can be well prepared for the future effect of any decisions you make regarding price changes and will always be aware of how exactly each pricing decision you make is impacting your strategy, or whether they are in-line with your objectives.

Bringing your pricing strategy out of the dark ages of manual, in-house monitoring and into the data-driven future is therefore a promising way to increase your sales and revenue, and is also one of the easiest positive changes you can integrate into your company.

2. Have clear, well-defined goals

If the previous point had you wondering what objectives you even had in the first place, now would be a good time to consider them in detail. The first step is defining your goals. Some might laugh at this prospect; surely, all businesses aim to promote growth, to increase their sales, and increase their revenue.

But these three targets are not one in the same. For example, increasing your sales does not always lead to an increase in revenue. And promoting growth may require investments which do not initially result in a revenue increase, either.

Knowing where you want to go in the first place is the best way to figure out how to get there. You could have the best tools available to you in the world, but without you and your teams working towards clearly defined targets, you may find your goals harder to accomplish. The key here is to be as specific as possible.

Set targets for individual product teams that are in accordance with more general objectives. If your main goal is profit increase, then you may want to see certain KVIs increase their profit margin by 5% within 2 or 3 months, for example. Without this structure, your business may struggle to come to conclusions about which actions to take in order to improve.

3. Communicate more with your customers

Customers appreciate being heard, and are surprisingly willing to converse with the retailers they buy from. Whether it be in the form of surveys, reviews or even referrals to others, customers want to communicate their thoughts about their shopping experience. For the retailer, this has several advantages.

Not only could customers direct you to more potential buyers in a more genuine manner than general marketing, they can also pinpoint flaws within your system that are hard to notice from any perspective but theirs. By opening multiple avenues of communication with your customers, you are essentially getting free press and free consultation to improve your business with.

So long as your company is receptive to the feedback you receive, you will be able to make changes to your business that ensure a positive customer experience. The result will be an increase in traffic and sales, and therefore a likely increase in revenue as well.

4. Create more incentive

Everyone loves to celebrate. Whether it be important holidays like Christmas or more personal reasons like a birthday, giving your customers incentive to shop will give you a surge in sales. The retail industry as a whole has created events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday to promote sales and encourage consumers to shop.

Many companies have gotten even more creative with this idea and have created their own holidays complete with promotions, discounts, and special offers that draw customers in and encourage them to buy multiple items at a time.

Your business can stand to benefit from personalizing offers to create more incentive to buy, like recording the birthdays of shoppers with loyalty memberships and offering customized discounts accordingly.

In a more general sense, you could also create your own holidays surrounding your brand in order to bring in new customers and keep loyal customers coming. Many consumers are simply looking for a reason to buy more, and if you manage to find a creative reason to give it to them, you will see a spike in sales accordingly.

5. Bundle and upsell your products to raise revenue

Tying into the latter point, another great way to create incentive to buy is by bundling and upselling your products. Bundling may seem rather cut and dry, but you would be surprised by the many ways you can get creative with bundling products.

It does not have to be as simple as bundling flower seeds with soil; you can easily bundle his and her products together for potential gift ideas, or find inspiration by looking through your sales data to find otherwise overlooked relationships between the purchasing of certain products and create an offer for them in conjunction.

Upselling is another great way to increase your sales and revenue. Sometimes customers know what they’re looking for, but aren’t yet aware of any better options. This is particularly true for electronics, for example.

By displaying clearly a more expensive and advanced product compared to what they are searching for, you are likely to get eager customers hoping to improve their purchases and willing to pay the higher price. Both bundling and upselling are a fantastic way to both promote some of your products and also encourage shoppers to spend more while browsing your store.

6. Lookout for new distribution channels & opportunities

Your business may have a tried and true marketing strategy with successful channels to utilize. But what if you are missing out on other distribution channels and simply do not realize it? Auditing your marketing strategy is a great way to find new opportunities and audiences to market to, and improve your figures in the process. The best part?

Finding new channels often requires little to no change to your current marketing strategy; you still keep your existing channels and the methods with which you sell via these channels. Regular auditing is the only extra step needed to find potentially lucrative new distribution channels for your business.

7. Focus on your brand

Your brand is a vital tool which shapes how your products are perceived. A good or bad brand image and greatly impact the prices that you can sell your products at. Customers are caring more about a brand’s character than ever before, and are willing to pay higher prices for a more trustworthy retailer.

There are several ways to protect and improve your brand image. Many retailers invest in sustainability and other environmentally conscious efforts regarding their products, or donate to charities. How you market your products also plays a role in how your brand is perceived; customers are getting smarter and react poorly to non-genuine marketing tactics.

Simply put, if you stay smart with how you talk to your customer base and invest a little extra to provide more ethically produced products, your customers will reward you with their loyalty, and you will likely see these investments pay off in the form of increased sales and revenue.

How Can Social Media Improve Customer Retention?

Customers have multiple options at their disposal. Besides, the competition for customers is fierce these days than ever. The good thing about social media is that it allows you to build strong connections with your customers.

Note that your best customers will buy products and come back again to buy some more. This means more revenue to your business and stronger relationships with customers.

But how do you keep customers from leaving? What are the best customer retention strategies?

It’s no doubt that you are using social media to engage with your customers. Learning some social media customer retention strategies is, therefore, important for you if you want to acquire and retain buyers.

Customer retention is the process of engaging existing customers to continue doing business with you and stop switching to your competitor. Customer retention and acquisition are two distinctive processes though because, with the former, you’ve already done business with them while with the later; you are still new to each other.

Implementing proper customer retention strategies can help you build solid relationships with customers who can also become your brand ambassadors.

Have you ever wondered why many US companies spend more than $2 billion each year on loyalty programs?

This is because customer retention is more profitable.

And to help you understand this better, here are the actual benefits of retaining customers.

Retention is cheaper than acquisition

Yes, it’s as simple as that: Retaining existing customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.

Existing customers are more profitable

Loyal customers buy 90% more regularly and are likely to spend 60% more per purchase. Existing customers are also helpful when it comes to promoting your brand by word of mouth.

It’s important to note that even though loyal customers are more profitable, raising prices too high can chess them away.

Loyal customers provide more feedback

Customer feedback is essential for the success of any business. Feedback helps you come up with ways to improve your business better.

Customers who can give feedback are likely to do business with you repeatedly. A study suggests that customers who have raised their concerns and seen it resolved are 84% less likely to reduce their spending.

Retained customers will forgive you than new ones

Loyal customers are more likely to forgive you in case of a misdeed than new ones. However, you must avoid using this as an advantage.

As you can see, although you should always work on acquiring new customers, you should also not ignore your existing ones.

How Social Media Marketing is Done?

Social media has changed the way we function as a society, including the way we connect with one another. As platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram took off, businesses also took notice. They began to use these sites to further their interests through social media marketing. That’s because these sites are able to change consumer behavior.

Social media websites allow marketers to employ a broad range of tactics and strategies to promote content and have people engage with it. Many social networks allow users to provide detailed geographical, demographic, and personal information, which enables marketers to tailor their messages to what is most likely to resonate with users.

According to Buffer, there are five key pillars of social media marketing:

  • Strategy: This step involves determining goals, the social media channels to be used, and the type of content that will be shared.
  • Planning and Publishing: Businesses should draft plans of what their content will look like (i.e. will there be videos? Photos? How much script?) and decide when it will be put out on the platform.
  • Listening and Engagement: Monitoring what users, customers, and others are saying about the posts, brands, and any other business assets. This may require the adoption of a social media engagement tool.
  • Analytics and Reporting: Part of being on social media is knowing how far posts are going, so reports of engagement and reach are very important
  • Advertising: Purchasing ads on social media is a great way to promote and further develop a brand.

Because audiences can be better segmented than more traditional marketing channels, companies can ensure they focus their resources on the audience that they want to target using social media marketing. Some of the metrics used to measure the success of social media marketing (which is also known as digital marketing and e-marketing) include:

  • Website reports, such as Google Analytics
  • Return on investment (ROI)
  • Customer response rates or the number of times customers post about a company
  • A campaign’s reach and/or virality or how much customers share content

Why Should Businesses Use Social Selling for eCommerce?

If you’re still not sold (see what we did there?) on social selling, here are 4 reasons why you should give it a try.

1. Social selling works

Don’t just take our word for it. According to LinkedIn Sales Solutions’ internal data:

  • Businesses that are leaders in the social selling space create 45% more sales opportunities than brands with a low social selling index.
  • Businesses that prioritize social selling are 51% more likely to reach their sales quotas.
  • 78% of businesses that use social selling outsell businesses that don’t use social media.

2. Social selling helps your sales team build real relationships

A recent Forbes article states: “87% of business event professionals have canceled events because of the pandemic, and 66% postponed events.”

Networking and relationship-building have shifted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic — and now is the perfect time to prioritize social selling.

Social selling creates opportunities to connect with new potential customers on social media, where they’re already active and engaging in conversations. Using social listening tools allows your sales reps to go a step further and identify leads who are already talking about your business, your competitors or your industry.

That means you can reach out to an audience who already have an interest in what you’re offering and authentically connect with them, offering useful information when the time is right. Authenticity builds trust — and that, in turn, can become customer loyalty.

3. Your customers (and prospects) are already engaged in social buying

In the last six months of 2020, 25% of Americans ages 18 to 34 made a purchase via social media. India, the UK, Australia and New Zealand all saw approximately a third of people ages 18 to 34 make a purchase via social media in that same timeframe.

percentage of people by country who made a purchase via social media

Considering the sheer volume of people currently using social media, the potential for brands to make social sales is huge:

  • 4.2 billion people worldwide are active on social media.
  • Social media platforms gained 490 million users in 2020 alone.
  • That’s a 13.2% increase — 2019 saw a growth rate of 7.2%.
digital around the world mobile, internet and social media use

Plus, a lot of those users are using social platforms for brand research. Simply speaking, these users are getting ready to buy.

use of social media for brand research

4. Your top competitors are already social selling

Using social selling means staying competitive. Other brands are active on social media interacting with potential customers on popular social platforms. According to data from Statista: “In 2020, an estimated 25% of e-commerce enterprises worldwide were planning to sell their goods on social media.”

Now, consider the numbers:

  • 200 million Instagram users visit a profile at least once a day and 81% of Instagram users are researching products and services on the platform.
  • 18.3% of American Facebook users made a purchase via Facebook in 2020.
US adults who have made a purchase via select social media platforms
  • 70% of YouTube users have bought a brand’s product after seeing it on YouTube.
  • 96% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic marketing. Facebook is the next most popular platform, used by 82% of B2B content marketers.

Why is Social Media Marketing Important for eCommerce?

The growth of social media in today’s day and age is astonishing to say the least. According to Hubspot, social media use in the United States has increased 356% in the last seven years.

Nielsen reported that nearly 70% of adults who partake in social media buy products or services digitally. Along with individuals, businesses have also hopped on the social media bandwagon, proving that customers can be obtained using these outlets as well.

As of 2012, 52% of businesses had acquired a customer via Facebook and 44% had acquired a customer via Twitter (Hubspot). With the rapid growth of social media, these percentages will only increase.

Alright, enough with the statistics.  While it seems as though social media is going to be around for a while, some companies are still unsure if social media is the right fit. This is why it’s crucial to identify achievable goals and objectives when implementing these outlets. In the world of e-commerce, a company’s primary goals for using social media typically are:

  1. To obtain and nurture leads
  2. To increase sales
  3. Increase brand’s digital presence, stay relevant

Unfortunately, integrating social media into a marketing campaign does not always directly increase sales. Then why use it? Well, there are a multitude of reasons. Being present on social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, increases brand reputation and awareness as well as provides ways to directly communicate with consumers.

Having a conversation with the customer is the best way to gain feedback and ideas regarding their wants and needs. Through comments, tweets, or “Likes”, a consumer can directly engage with the brand, generating a sense of loyalty (creating repeat customers!).

The positive word of mouth created through these social outlets is also incredibly important. The majority of Americans state that reviews from family or friends affect their own decisions to use a product or service.

Bottomline

Once social media platforms are developed and running smoothly, it may be beneficial to place Share buttons for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+, Pinterest, etc. directly onto the website for consumers to broadcast to their own followers.

Read Also: Customer Experience Trends 2022

Not only does this encourage direct engagement, but it’s also free advertising with minimal effort. It’s a win-win! Providing promotions or exclusive offers that can only be claimed via a specific social media outlet is another great way to gain a strong following, as well as increase traffic to the website.

It is important that you monitor your social media on a daily basis. This will allow you to answer any questions fairly quickly in order to assure the consumer they are not being neglected. Also, it provides opportunity to clear up any misconceptions or negative feedback before potential consumers see it.

Social media is also a great portal in which display ads, or “online billboards”, can be placed. More and more ecommerce companies are utilizing remarketing in order to direct potential customers back to their site. Have you ever been on Facebook and seen the multitude of different ads running down the side of the page? It’s no coincidence that some of your favorite sites are advertised there. That’s remarketing!

If you’re still not convinced social media is right for you, here’s one last statistic… Socialnomics states that the number of Americans who follow brands via social media platforms have more than doubled in the last two years.

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