The first thing in the morning that most of the people do these days is to check their Instagram or Facebook Feed. Social media is probably the best ‘communicator’ in this world where everyone seems to be a busy bee. You can now share memories, posts and pictures with your long-distance friends within a few seconds only on social media. No wonder, there are almost 3.2 billion social media users in 2019, which is almost 42% of the entire population. Social media is also one of the best platforms to increase your sales if you use the right social media marketing strategies.
75% of people tend to buy a product after they see it on their social media feeds. The high chances are that 57% of people choose to buy from a brand they follow on social media. Also, social media marketing has over 100% leads-closing rate as compared to any other form of outbound marketing. Thus, social media not only takes care of the popularity and branding but also promises huge returns. Let’s see how you can use a successful marketing strategy on social media to increase sales for your online brand.
Tip #1. Communicate with social media influencers
Traditional and social media marketing are different from one another. The latter consists of uncountable opportunities to boost your sales. Influencer marketing is one of them. All you have to do is get in touch with the social media influencers and request them to promote your brand. Ask them to feature your videos or photos strategically and let your target audience know about it. You can also tell the influencers to give an honest review about your services or products.
According to a study conducted by Twitter and Annalect, nearly 40% of Twitter users were compelled to make a purchase after they see an influencer’s tweet. Studies have also shown that influencer marketing has the potential to deliver ROI as high as 600% for your online brand. Take the example of Daniel Wellington, a wristwatch maker in this case. He could sell one million watches within 3 years only because of the influencers.
Say you have an online business named ‘AllEssaywriter’ and you want your target audience to know about the discount codes that you offer. Just ask your influencers to say something in his/her next video ‘According to Allessaywriter, they have some fantastic discount codes for the students. If I were you, I would have grabbed this opportunity right now.’
Tip #2. Be exactly where your audience is
Social media is one of the most profitable platforms for sales or ROI. But, you also need to be careful while choosing the right platform for your purpose. For example, you just can’t choose Instagram to target your B2B customers, right? Why don’t you check out your demographic report and see which social media platform most of your target audience spends time on? Yes, you can choose to be anywhere, but that can be a little time-consuming. Thus, it is better if you spend time on the perfect platform rather than wasting time on other less important platforms.
LinkedIn and Facebook can be good options if you want to target B2B audience. It is because both the platforms consist of a massive user-base. You can also use Keyhole, which is an excellent tool to discover where your target audience is the most active. All you have to do is get hold of a popular hashtag and then conduct a search using this tool.
Let’s say you own an online clothing brand. You can’t market your brand on LinkedIn since that’s not where the fashionistas would go to look for clothes. You can choose Pinterest or Instagram for that. Post the pictures along with brief product description to draw the attention of your target audience. Choose your social media platform wisely.
Tip #3. Make your loyal customers the brand advocates
It’s okay if you don’t want to rely on a social media influencer to promote your products or services. You can still promote your products using real people: your existing customers. Turn your active customers into brand advocates by asking them to promote your products in exchange for discounts or freebies. Promise them impressive cashback offers, so that more and more people are interested in becoming your brand advocate.
Use the keyword or hashtag related to your brand and look at the social media profiles that come up in the list. These are the people who are already talking about your brand online. Choose one profile and see how many followers he/she has. It is always better if that person has more than 1000 followers on Instagram. Find the content posted by that person about your brand and gift him/her some good offers.
Say you want to market MVMT Watches on Instagram. Thus, type #mvmtwatches in the search bar and check out the appealing posts made by your customers. Choose anyone, gift them a new watch and request them to post some new products. You can even ask suggestions from your customers to make them feel valued and convince them to market your product. It’s as simple as that!
Tip #4. Try out user-generated content
As per an Olapic study, 70% of people in the United States are most likely to buy a product after they see a positive image related to that product posted by other consumers. Reviews usually ease the anxiety that people have before buying a product online. It is quite normal that your first-time customer would find it difficult to trust a product that he/she is not familiar with. However, if they find positive reviews coming from other customers, it will be easier for them to make a decision.
Reviews are the experiences or opinions from consumers that tell a lot about the quality of your product or services. Thus, you can motivate your customers to create contents on social media, thereby promoting your product. Later, you can share these user-generated pictures and let everyone know how trustworthy your brand is. In my opinion, it is one of the easiest methods to increase loyalty with your existing customers.
Do you want credibility in your brand when your potential customers visit your social media profile? Try this tip and see how it works. Consider the example of ASOS in this case. They have an ongoing campaign in which they request their customers to share their photos wearing ASOS products on social media platforms. ASOS even dedicated a separate webpage to these user-generated photos.
Tip #5. Focus on social media advertising
As I mentioned earlier, social media consists of millions of users. It isn’t easy to reach to everyone, no matter how interactive you are with your target audience. You need to invest a little bit to make sure your marketing efforts are fruitful. It is only through stringent social media advertisement that most of your target audience will notice your brand online. Social media advertising is absolutely necessary if you want to produce maximum results from social media marketing strategies.
You can either promote your contents or create relevant ads on your social media platform. This ensures that you will enjoy higher online visibility among your targeted audience. More visibility means more chances of driving sales from social media. Each social media platform encompasses unique advertising criteria. Instagram, for example, lets you advertise your products via Stories, on Feed, or you can just add the ‘Shop Now’ button in the product’s image that you share.
YOOX, the online luxury fashion retailer, experienced a 6-point increase in brand awareness after their product advertisement on Instagram Stories. Similarly, LoveBook, a gift book publisher, could raise brand awareness and enhance conversions to a great extent. In fact, they got almost 57% increase in their sales through sponsored posts and InMail.
Wrapping Up
Social media platforms are great when it comes to catching up with your friends or connecting with people. However, you can even use these platforms to increase awareness about your brand. Implement the tips as mentioned above and notice a sharp change in the sales of your online business. Good Luck!
About the Author!
Ricky Hardy is a part-time social media marketer in a reputed firm in Australia. He also writes trusted essay reviews about different writing services at TopAssignmentReviews. Ricky likes to spend time with her daughters in her free time.
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It is really great how the first buyers of a brand can be the advocates of its reputation and can recommend it to other people without the participation of the brand itself. Social media gives so much space for development and promotion. And it really brings your company closer to your customers.