How to Drive More Ecommerce Sales from Social Media

Intro

Social media is huge. For online marketers, it is becoming as common of an activity as SEO and Adwords.

But I still speak with ecommerce retailers every week who don’t know how to properly use social media to drive new sales. Some don’t even think it’s really possible, as they’ve never been able to do it. And a lot of them just have Facebook Pages because they think they’re “supposed” to, but have completely neglected them because they don’t understand them.

So for all of you who are skeptical: Yes, social media can drive ecommerce sales (and quite easily). You just need to know the right way to do it. And I’m here to show it to you.

1. Turn Fans into Sales-Ready Leads

By combining valuable content with a regular posting schedule, and a few Promoted Posts sprinkled in, you can build a relationship with your followers to transform them into potential customers.

Increase Facebook engagement by going cuddly. Push your personality. Focus on family-oriented posts, traditional values, food, recipes, present ideas, snowmen, holiday-related humor (in-law jokes, burnt ham, etc.) Get creative.

Engage with your fans with holiday-related questions, like the favorite present, favorite holiday memory, or biggest holiday blunder. Ask people to share their experiences, and respond when something they’ve said makes you laugh, cry, or stand up and cheer. People value human interaction more during the holiday season than they do at any other time of year.

Tip: You can steal your competitors’ best working ideas by using Buzzsumo’s Facebook Analyzer. It scans any Facebook Page and shows you the most popular content from their feed. Here’s the list of most successful Etsy’s posts on Facebook, sorted by engagement:

2. Invest in Facebook Ads

Optimized landing pages. Facebook ads. Contests. If you’re an ecommerce site focused on large purchases that take some thinking about, it doesn’t matter which you use to turn followers into leads, you absolutely need to be focusing on lead generation this holiday season.

I recommend using Facebook Ads to drive traffic to a lead-generating landing page. Whether these ads are focused around a discounted product, an email-gated piece of content (like an ebook or guide), or a contest is up to you. Be sure your ad images are appealing by using reds, greens, and oranges. Avoid too much blue, black, or white (as these colors are associated with cold and clean and we’re going for warm and cozy).

Target your lead-generating Facebook Ads at people with similar interests to existing Fans, or with a lookalike audience similar to your existing customer list. Spending some time to target intelligently will skyrocket your Facebook Ads’ click-through-rates, and generate more qualified, genuinely interested leads than otherwise.

After running Facebook ads for a few months, re-target your existing customers to start generating repeat purchases.

Repeat customers are incredibly important for growing an ecommerce store. But how do you drive your old customers to buy again? You can email them, but generally, only 20% of people open email newsletters. Instead, you can target your past customers using Facebook Ads Tools to make sure your marketing messaging is seen by every one of them to drive repeat sales.

3. Use Pinterest to Drive Ecommerce Sales

Optimizing Pins

Pinterest gives you 500 characters to describe each of your uploaded pins. I’d suggest you keep with the visual appeal of Pinterest and try to get your word descriptions to about half of the maximum space allowed. Some studies have suggested that pins with character counts of 200-300 get the most repins.

While you want to be concise and deliberate with keywords when writing blurbs, you want to strike a balance, and always have your consumer in mind. You are marketing your products and brand, after all, so use language that’s relatable and relevant to your content.

Don’t neglect the chance to include your keywords and don’t overuse them. Companies that pump their descriptions with “keyword, keyword, keyword” are seen as spam by search engines like Google. Focus on writing to connect with both your consumer, and search results. Tools like Text Optimizer make it easier to create optimized social media descriptions and captions with the help of AI:

Utilizing Product Rich Pins

Rich Pins enable you to include a lot more details about your pins, and this information is automatically updated. For example, Rich Pins feature updates, prices, product availability, ingredients in a recipe, and even movie reviews. It also makes the pins more mobile-friendly.

The most important type of Rich Pin for ecommerce retailers is the Product Pin. It includes price, availability, and retailer information on the pin. Clicking it links Pinners directly to the product page in your ecommerce store.

To get Rich Product Pins, you need to add a set of meta tags to each product page in your ecommerce store so that Pinterest can import the product information into Pinterest.

This may sound like a lot of work at first, but you may already have the required code integrated into your site. Pinterest supports both Open Graph and Schema.org - both are also used by Google to generate rich snippets. Notifications are even sent to Pinners when Product Pins have added a drop in price!

Lifestyle Boards

The purpose of a lifestyle board is to create a place where people can see how to use your products in the activities, tasks, decor, etc. that fill their lives. It can also be used to introduce people to new activities and things that fit into their lifestyle that they haven’t discovered yet.

For example, if you sell outdoor equipment, create boards dedicated to certain activities that your products can be used for. Show pins of hikers climbing mountains or kayakers on rapids using your products. This makes it easy for people to think about how they can use your products and creates a desire within them to buy.

Problem-Solving Boards

A problem-solving board is similar to a lifestyle board. But instead of creating a desire to use a product in their life, it encourages your target audience to get your product to solve a problem they’re having.

For example, if you sell baby products, think of the issues that occur when raising a child, such as trying to get your baby to fall asleep, how to remedy certain medical issues, etc. Think about the problems that your products specifically solve, and create boards that show parents how to use your products to solve those problems.

Call-To-Action Pins for Opt-In Landing Pages

This is my favorite way to drive new customers. A call-to-action (CTA) Pin entices Pinners with an exclusive offer, coupon, or piece of content that they need to leave Pinterest to access.

This is the ultimate goal of Pinterest of course (to get Pinners to leave and go to your website). But it’s a much easier step to get a person to take than directly purchasing a product, as they are doing it in return for something free.

While this obviously doesn’t result in a direct sale, it generates an email sales lead for you, let’s say you have a nail polish board with a CTA pin to download an exclusive video on how to do your nails in a certain style. You can then follow up with a series of emails to that person on different styles they may be interested in, and the products you sell that can be used to create it. There are also quite a few phone apps allowing you to create CTAs that do not require a click (like a phone number to call). These are usually effective for platforms like Instagram and TikTok which don’t offer too many opportunities to add a clickable link.

Additionally, Pinterest Web Analytics is a powerful, free tool that allows you to see how people are pinning and creating boards using your products on Pinterest. It allows you to find out what people see as the primary benefits of your products, which products are most popular at a specific time of year, and also which other products your customers find complementary to each other.

Key Takeaways:

• Social media is not just a platform for socializing; it's a powerful tool for driving ecommerce sales when utilized correctly.
• Bridging the gap: Many ecommerce retailers have not yet realized the potential of social media, often due to a lack of knowledge or misconceptions about its effectiveness.
• Actionable social media strategies tailored for ecommerce:
• Nurturing Campaigns: Convert fans into sales-ready leads using valuable content and strategic posting on platforms like Facebook.
• Custom audience Facebook ads: Harness the power of Facebook's ad tools to retarget and re-engage past customers.
• Pinterest web analytics: Utilize this free tool to gather insights about how your products are being received and shared on Pinterest.
• Email automation campaigns: A series of well-crafted emails can nurture leads, building a relationship that eventually leads to conversions.
• Facebook contests and promotions: Engage and capture leads effectively using contests, which can offer tremendous ROI with minimal effort.

Social media is an invaluable tool for online marketers in today's digital age. However, the ever-changing landscape of social media can be intimidating for business owners, especially for ecommerce retailers as they don’t know how to harness its potential.

Contrary to the skepticism of some, social media is not just about maintaining a presence; it offers tangible strategies that can drive sales and foster growth for businesses. I hope this article was able to motivate you to start or change your social media strategy to start seeing tangible results!

By embracing these strategies, ecommerce retailers can not only drive sales but also foster lasting relationships with their audience, ensuring sustained growth and success.