How To Set Your eCommerce Social Media Marketing Game Up For Success

Is eCommerce social media marketing game is the toughest one? Do you know that 72.3% of all Americans have social network accounts and actively use social media platforms? Moreover, do you know that out of them, 60% use social media to purchase products?

It goes without saying that if you have an eCommerce business and think that social media isn’t essential to growing your business further, you’re missing out a lot. Social media marketing and eCommerce go hand in hand, and there’s no way around that. So if you’re interested to know how you can set your eCommerce social media marketing strategies up for success, make sure you read on.

Why Is Social Media Marketing Crucial For eCommerce Businesses?

Although social media platforms have started with the intent to let people stay connected with other people, they didn’t remain limited to that. Altogether with the swift increase in the social media user base, people found social media platforms to be fantastic selling points. Starting from individuals to brands, people found a brand new space to display their products, make them reach bigger audiences, and grow their customer base. As eCommerce and these modern-day digital marketing channels have gained ground in the last couple of years, nowadays, it’s hard to imagine any eCommerce business without a solid social media presence.

The direct-to-consumer, or DTC, model boosts the rapid growth of eCommerce businesses that find themselves in direct contact with the final customer. And since establishing contact with the final customer is the key for such a DTC model to thrive without any retail middleman, investing in social media marketing becomes crucial for eCommerce companies. Furthermore, with the global pandemic causing previously unseen disturbances to the retail industry, brick-and-mortar retail sales have taken a significant hit. Shoppers have switched physical stores with their online counterparts, therefore, making social media marketing for eCommerce brands a goldmine waiting to be tapped.

Below, we’ll offer three ways of how you can utilize social media platforms for marketing purposes and set your eCommerce business up for success.

Collaborate With Others

To begin with, you should think about pairing up with a social media influencer your audience adores or another brand from your industry that’s not a direct competitor to your operation to better showcase your products to brand new audiences. Then, think about how this collaboration can benefit your prospective customers and fits in with your brand’s core values.

Nowadays influencer marketing platforms such as Humanz, Grin, and Upfluence, offer business owners features that help them find the right influencer for their brand who will meet their needs. By using these platforms companies can filter not only influencers’ location, age and interest, but also their followers’ gender, location, etc. For small business owners integrating nano influencer marketing into their social media campaign could be a crucial decision as these influencers have high engagement rates and are trusted by their followers. However, working with macro influencers will be a benefit for international brands, as they can reach people from all over the world.

For example, you can invite an influencer to test your products and ask them to share their genuine review with their audience, tag your brand, and use your hashtag to describe the post. Or you can partner up with another company from your industry that caters to similar audiences and put together a high-value giveaway for your combined audiences.

To reach broader audiences and maximize the potential of your collaboration, you can turn to professionals and utilize Instagram promotion services to build a community that will engage with your future content, products, or services. Thanks to their AI-targeting algorithms, they can help you find organic followers that are likely to engage with your content and grow your brand’s followers base.

Use Short-Form Video Content

In order to save your unique personality-filled ideas from getting lost in crowded news feeds, it’s wise to experiment with popular interactive short-form video content formats like Instagram reels, stories, IG live, and TikToks.

With over 500 million users using Instagram Stories each day, the platform continuously adds new sales features to the short-form video content models like Stories and Instagram Live. Other social media platforms noticed this trend, so Facebook introduced Stories in 2020, and Twitter now has Fleets. Furthermore, even LinkedIn jumped on the short-form video content bandwagon and implemented their version of Stories. Add TikTok’s growth to the mix, and it becomes clear that people in 2021 love short-form video content across all demographics.

So how can you use this to engage your audience better and up your social media marketing game? The short answer to this question is—however you please, as the only limit with short-form video formats is your creativity. Not all of your content has to be directly related to sales, as you can use short videos just to entertain your audience and build a stronger relationship with them.

Regularly Showcase Social Proof

Customer reviews and testimonials are a fantastic way to build social proof about your product that, in turn, can help you convert more new customers to your eCommerce business. In effect, 84% of customers are known to trust product reviews and testimonials as much as they would trust a recommendation from a family member or a close friend.

These reviews could be best leveraged through social media marketing as you can regularly post updates about your latest user-generated content. Also, you can invite experts to go live through your social media profiles and tap into their influence and positive association.

Final Thoughts

Regardless of what you’re selling on your eCommerce site, it would help if you had the creative mind to consistently come out with social media content that informs, entertains, and inspires the prospective customers that see it. Never copy other brands and companies that have found success by using a particular social media formula, but promote content that’s uniquely related to your brand in your voice. Hopefully your eCommerce social media marketing game will be successful.