It is a crazy time around the world right now with the COVID-19 pandemic! As a digital agency, we have heard a lot of feedback from our clients about the current situation, as well as feeling the effects ourselves, and we are here to help you. One of our main pieces of advice to businesses is not to stop your marketing, but learn how to manage your budget on the right channel instead.

Social media platforms are developing at a fast rate to cater to consumer’s changing desires.

Once just a place to hang out and socialise with friends, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest and more are making it easier than ever for brands to do business on social.

If you’re an ecommerce store looking to get more out of your social media advertising, you no longer need to just boost posts or run an ad that drives traffic to your online store.

Below are some examples of what’s working now to build brand awareness, engage your audience, and make sales for your ecommerce store through social media.

Brand Stories 

After the successful growth of multimedia messaging app SnapChat, many social networks rushed to implement the same kind of functionality to their platforms.

Users moaned it would be redundant when platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even Whatsapp all introduced ‘Stories’ like functionality, but the data doesn’t lie…more people than ever are consuming video content in short clips like this.

TechCrunch reports that Facebook now has more than 500 million daily users of Stories.

That’s a third of their 1.5 billion daily users actively posting or watching video Stories.

The opportunity for business owners:

This offers another way for ecommerce businesses to get the top of users’ feeds and showcase their products. Stories are displayed prominently at the top of users’ feeds and open in a full screen format – unlike most ads on the feed. Regularly updating Stories can increase brand awareness on social media and drive sales of your products.

Facebook Groups

Groups are nothing new on Facebook. But they are an untapped opportunity for most businesses.

Most brands have a Facebook page. But if you leave it at that you’re missing a big opportunity to build a sense of community and better engage your audience online.

Facebook groups aren’t necessarily an avenue for you to make direct sales to consumers. They aren’t about YOU as a brand, but rather a shared interest. That could be bicycle riders, beer drinkers, or even home cooking.

Groups give you a chance to join an existing community and engage with people who share that common interest. And as a business owner or marketing professional they can help you get deep insights into your audience.

The opportunity for business owners:

Find a group that’s a good match for your ecommerce brand and you’ll find an online community of like minded people. That doesn’t mean you should start sending group members offers straight away. But it’s a chance for you to engage with your target customers in a more relaxed setting. If group rules permit, you may even be able post polls and questionnaires to group members and gather valuable insights that could influence your marketing.

Message Automation

When most people think of social media marketing they think of newsfeed ads in platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

But that overlooks a major part of social networking – messaging apps.

According to Kommando Tech, Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp now have more than 2.9 billion users who send a total of 41 million messages every minute.

With usage rates so high, it makes sense that social networks would figure out how to monetise the channel, and allow brands to leverage it for marketing.

That’s where chatbots can be a useful tool for ecommerce business owners.

Chatbots allow you to tailor automated messages for anything from greeting people who engage with your page to following up on abandoned carts if you have a Facebook pixel integrated on your site.

The opportunity for business owners:

 This allows business owners to always appear ‘present’ on messaging platforms, increase customer engagement, and generate new potential customers by nurturing prospects. That’s not to mention the cost-savings. Using an automated chatbot could significantly help reduce customer service costs, and proactively follow up with customers when you’re not around.

Influencer Marketing

Anyone looking to seriously step up their ecommerce sales on social media should consider influencer marketing.

Consumers love to buy things, but they hate being ‘sold’. That’s why influencer marketing can be so effective.

People value and seek out the recommendations of others, especially people they know, like, and trust.

In one study by Nielsen Catalina Solutions, influencer marketing generated as much as 11 times the return on investment than banner ads did.

The opportunity for business owners:

Influencer marketing can quickly build awareness and trust for your brand and products. You don’t need to build an audience from scratch, it’s already there. You’re just establishing a relationship with the influencer that benefits the both of you. If they have followers that match your target audience then an endorsement from them could be a big boost to your social media advertising efforts.

Built in Social Shopping

The growth of social media commerce is making it easier than ever for your customers to purchase your products.

Your fans and followers are already on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

With a seamless process from seeing a post to checking out, social commerce allows users to ‘shop the look’ without ever leaving the platform.

Image heavy platforms like Instagram and Pinterest do this especially well. If a user sees something they like they can check out in a few clicks, without having to be directed to your website.

The opportunity for business owners:

With ‘social shopping’ you’re now able to streamline the buying process for your customers. From the moment they see a product they like, it’s only a matter of clicks and they can be checking out. Enabling an end-to-end user experience like this removes friction from the buying process.

Conclusion

Many business owners know the importance of social media advertising. But they’re still not seeing the full benefits because they’re not using platforms to their fullest potential.

As social media platforms grow and adapt to the changing desires of their customers there will always be new ways to engage your customers online.

Hopefully this post has helped shed some light on the different ways you can use social media advertising right now to drive sales to your ecommerce store.

Speak With A Social Media Advertising Expert At Yes Digital

Here at Yes Digital, we help customise and execute highly targeted social media advertising campaigns for our clients. If you want to see how social media advertising can help you grow your ecommerce business, get in touch for a free no-obligation Strategy Session today.