The social media platforms have influenced people so much that today, even the babies who haven’t yet learned to crawl are having a Facebook account (Obviously, managed by someone else). Yes, we mean it! Now, if a baby’s profile can get thousands of followers knowing the fact that it is not “literally” them, let us tell you, you as an ecommerce owner can easily pump up your followers on these social media platforms. Even though social media platforms are incredibly popular, many ecommerce businesses have still not tapped into exploring their potentials. Then some have not utilized the complete potential of social media platforms. If you have not explored the extensive benefits of social media platforms for your ecommerce platform, do know that you are leaving back your precious customers, revenue, and sales, on the table. Gladly, you still have time! Whether you are a full-grown ecommerce giant or a startup business, social media platforms is a great way to grow your business. In this article, we will be talking about the best social media for ecommerce business for you to develop your business, create brand awareness, and boost your revenue much effortlessly.
What are the social media platforms that are qualified for ecommerce?
Connecting and interacting with your customers through social media platforms is a great way to build long-lasting relationships and motivate potential customers to invest in your products or services. Studies have found that approximately 3.2 billion people from all over the world are using social media platforms. Confining your marketing efforts on some selectively picked social media platforms can surely help you in yielding higher ROI (Return on Investment). Ecommerce businesses have lots of doors open to various social media platforms. However, it is the right pick that is needed for a successful ecommerce business. Here are a few prominent social media platforms that could be the best for ecommerce businesses:
There must be no questions asked in stating Facebook as the global social media platform with the highest utility. The absolute number of Facebook audience is itself sufficient to drive potential customers to your ecommerce business. Although Facebook is not a platform offering core shopping experience to its users, it is indeed a great medium for targeted advertisements. Due to this very reason, it is one of the most preferred social media platforms for many ecommerce businesses from all over the world.
From Facebook, you can avail a wide range of customer data including gender, age, interests, location, likes, and dislikes. Any ecommerce retailer can customize the set of audience to find innumerable potential customers. Moreover, retargeting the existing traffic of your ecommerce website from Facebook, using Facebook, is another great way to expand your customer base. You can also consider using existing customer data to find out newer customers with similar choices for wider penetration into the targeted audience. Facebook is undoubtedly one of the most used Point of Sales (POS) on social media for customer acquisition by many brands, including the ecommerce giants.
After Facebook, Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, is the most commonly used social media platform for ecommerce sales, or at least for acquiring the right customers. Instagram opens doors for innovative ecommerce marketers with its extensive visualization features letting the users tag businesses to promote products or services that are relevant to the post. Instagram is equipped with some highly advanced features that can greatly aid ecommerce businesses. With over 104.7 million users, it is assuredly the right platform for ecommerce marketing to find the right audience and motivate them to visit the website to purchase their goods and services.
Instagram becomes the preferred mode of social media marketing for ecommerce businesses with two of its extensive features viz. Instagram Shopping or Shopping on Instagram and Instagram Checkout. The former feature aids ecommerce businesses in creating an engaging storefront to allow Instagram followers to browse their products and services in a single click. The ecommerce businesses can market their products and services through their posts as well as stories and create clickable tags that allow interested visitors to go through the product description page for further information regarding it. Instagram Shopping is a great tool for ecommerce businesses to create their brand image amongst the highly engaged Instagram users. The latter one (Instagram Checkout), was launched in 2019 and is still in its beta phase. However, it is worth a mention with a promise to provide a seamless shopping experience without the need to leave the Instagram platform to complete an order.
It is another great social media platform for ecommerce businesses with over 800 million users. Moreover, research shows that about 52% of the Twitter users have convincingly purchased products after seeing them on Twitter and more than 81% admit that Twitter plays a major role in the buying decisions, more than that of television advertisements. Twitter lets ecommerce sellers share information regarding their products and services as well as link them to the product pages. It is learnt to be one of the best ways to start interacting with Twitter users and grab their attention. Additionally, the majority of the users now directly tweet to an ecommerce company stating any issues faced or voicing their experiences with the same. This makes Twitter the best place for providing quality customer services.
Answering people’s queries upright in a professional way helps in building trust with your potential customers. It simply depicts that you care for your customers. It helps in building your ecommerce business reputation on social media platforms, establish long-lasting customer relationships, and provide a comfortable space for your potential customers to purchase. Another benefit of Twitter is that it lets you create ad campaigns and target audience based on their interests shown in their tweets. Therefore, if you are looking forward to expanding your ecommerce business through paid marketing, Twitter is indeed a great pick.
Although not one of the most preferred social media platforms for ecommerce businesses, it is certainly amongst the best platforms for all kinds of ecommerce businesses. Pinterest is renowned for its creative product-oriented posts and is well-aligned with the customer journey map. It has about 250 users every month. Although fewer users than the rest of the social media platforms, studies have proven that more than 93% of the visitors are using the platform to plan for their purchases. One of the best features offered by Pinterest is the rich pins that provide the users with links, product recommendations, and references for various categories of designs and products. You can target your audience, especially women, using Pinterest, efficiently.
These were a few most preferred and the best of social media platforms for ecommerce businesses. Choosing the best depends on the type of ecommerce business, the business niche, and your business interests. Our favourite of all these is Facebook. The reason is, it has the highest number of visitors every day as mentioned earlier. What can be better than getting the chance to target more number of customers at one go?
Key tactics to use social media platforms for ecommerce business
In order to get the best utility of social media platforms for ecommerce, it is essential to make a strategic plan to earn visibility, sales, and traffic. Below are a few key tactics to use social media platforms for ecommerce business:
- Establish the goals that you need to meet in your ecommerce business including the traffic to be generated, the number of social media followers, the rate of user engagement, and the conversions.
- Provide value to your customers through your posts by posting content that is relevant, useful, and the need of the hour for your targeted customers.
- Optimize your posts using specific customer-oriented keywords to get more visibility.
- Include more of images and videos to grab the customers’ attention to your brand.
- Create blogs to inspire, educate, entertain, and finally, convert your targeted audience into your long-term customers.
- Showcase social proof to earn online sales by displaying user-generated content to let your target audience know how others love your brand.
- Engage your followers and connect with them by being social and interactive through social posts where your target audience is spending their time.
- Use hashtags to enhance your organic visibility.
Conclusion
Choosing the best social media platform for your ecommerce business can do wonders to your brand. However, if not managed well, it can be adverse as well. Make the utmost use of social media in the right way as mentioned above to gain the best results with enhanced sales, newer customers, and wider brand recognition.
