How Social Media Can Increase Online Sales

Are you curious about how to increase your online sales through social media? On average, a person spends approximately 116 minutes browsing on social media each day, give or take. The number, in itself, already presents any online seller a great opportunity to reach out to more than 2 billion users who use social media. Major platforms including Instagram and Facebook have already launched social commerce, which may also be attributed to the perpetual increase of social media usage.

In this post, we will be talking about the ways on how social media helps to increase online sales. While relying on Best Reviews Guide is likely to urge consumers to buy from online sellers, it is social media that increases a brand’s following; therefore, an increase in sales. Keep reading if you want to learn more.

How to Increase Sales via Social Media

In a 2018 consumer insights survey conducted by PWC, a global audit and assurance company, about 37% of online consumers rely on social media for purchase inspirations. It is then followed by retailer websites, chosen by 34% of the respondents. From this data alone, it can be determined that social media has proved to be one of the most influential platforms consumers find reliable. For starters, you may refer to this guide prepared by Mashable, which teaches you how to build your brand using social media. Now, let’s talk about the ways on how to increase your sales with social media.

Influencer marketing

In recent years, brands have dramatically diverted their attention to marketing via influencers. The reason is that consumers have become tired of traditional marketing, resulting in them seeking opinions from trustworthy people before they make the purchase. With this, investing in influencer marketing makes a lot of sense if you want to increase your online sales. As these influencers already have an ardent following, the consumers are then subjected to make their buying decisions solely based on the influencer’s opinions.

Creating valuable content

When considering making an online purchase, it is the content that plays a vital role. Buyers are likely to trust and support brands that publish valuable content regularly. One of the best strategies that make an online brand stand out from the rest is through video marketing. While a product demo or a close-up would normally do, some online sellers go out of their way to provide their customers and audiences with added value.

Remarketing to retain buyers

Even when you drive a great amount of traffic to your website, were you able to convert them into customers that actually pay? This is a very common problem all online brands are facing right now. Online marketers, as well as store owners, need to understand that it would take multiple site visits to be able to have a visitor that trusts what you sell. A way to encourage brand recall is the remarketing technique, which effectively reminds your buyers about your brand.

Most e-commerce stores utilize this technique by showing customers the products they left in their carts. These techniques are likely to bring in more income, especially when combined with effective social media marketing.

Instagram shopping

In the earlier sections, we have discussed everything about social commerce. Now, let’s try to integrate this knowledge into a strategy. Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly active users, making it one of the biggest social media platforms right now. Recently, Instagram has launched its Shopping feature, allowing online brands to exhibit their products via posts and stories. In addition, such products can also be found through the search and explore tabs.

You should also be informed that for this feature to work, you must be selling physical products. To add, it would be best if your profile is set as ‘business’ and your account is linked to a Facebook page. Lastly, Instagram may also be a bit strict about your business’s location. So, make sure that you adhere to that.

Launching a Facebook store

After Instagram, let’s discuss how launching a Facebook store can make a significant increase in your online sales. Facebook, which currently has more than 2.32 billion active users, allows an online brand to sell its products without requiring the users to leave the platform. All the customers need to do is to shop via the Shop section on your brand’s page.

Encouraging user-produced content

It is perfectly normal for a consumer to find online product reviews reliable, especially when they don’t know anything about the brand and the product it sells. As a consumer, you may also refer to the brand’s Facebook page for the reviews and ratings. You may also find Twitter helpful, as it allows you to read what people have been tweeting about their products. Therefore, user-generated content could be a lot valuable to both the seller and the buyer.

As an online seller, you may encourage your visitors and buyers to leave product reviews, as well as rate your products, which may be a great marketing strategy to gain more following and to build a reputable and trustworthy brand. You may also ask your customers to post videos or photos on their profiles, in which we recommend that they use an official hashtag.

For instance, Apple has encouraged its users to share their captured photos and videos from their iPhones using a hashtag like #shotoniphone. Now, there are more than 7 million posts that use the said hashtag. With this, Apple has succeeded in tapping the community while incurring very minimal costs.

Conclusion

Every now and then, social media gets a bad review for being an unreliable medium for effective marketing. However, you may get out of the rut if you try to incorporate these techniques into your strategy. It would also be beneficial for you if you figure out which platform works the best for you and then, concentrate on it. It is inevitable that social commerce would get a little more refined in the coming years, so it’s best that you use this thinking to your advantage. Lastly, all you need to do is to decrease the friction that might discourage the user from making the purchase.