You may think that being a successful e-commerce shop owner is as easy building a website, adding some products to your shop, and posting some blog content for people to read. But the truth is, while it’s easy to launch an e-commerce shop, becoming truly successful is not. In fact, e-commerce shops are known to have an 80% failure rate beyond their first years.
But you don’t have to be one of those statistics if you don’t want to.
If you plan your goals, concentrate on content marketing and providing a high-quality product or service, and establish yourself as an authority, you can see the sales you want. Better yet, if you work to build a strong social media presence, you can boost conversions and sales in your online shop and reach your goals faster than you ever imagined.
That’s why today we’re going to look at how to drive conversions in your e-commerce shop using social media.
Capitalize on Customer Reviews
You may already be displaying satisfied customer testimonials and reviews on your website since 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a review from a friend. But have you ever thought about capitalizing on positive reviews and using them on your social media accounts as social proof?
If you use an email marketing service like MailChimp, gathering reviews and testimonials from existing customers is easy. After someone purchases from your online shop, automate an email campaign to send asking them for a review. Just don’t forget to get permission from them to use their testimonials.
If you’re looking for more ways to make money with social media, capitalize on email marketing, or get into affiliate marketing, check out this eBook selection.
Despite what the statistics say about e-commerce shops, there are plenty of ways for you to make money from home. You just have to know which resources to look into and how to make the best of what you have.
Use Your Best Blog Content
Content marketing plays a major role in how successful an online business is, regardless of size or industry. After all, people don’t claim that “content is king” for no reason. If you really want to drive traffic back to your e-commerce shop and boost conversions, put that blog content to use on your social media accounts. Add a social media post every time a new piece of content is published on your site and invite people to check it out. Once people click on your link and arrive at your site, they’ll read the content that interested them and hopefully convert.
This is especially true if your content adds value to your site visitors’ lives. After all, content marketing is all about promoting your brand and getting people to take action. By informing, educating, and even entertaining your site visitors, you instill trust in your brand and have an opportunity to convince people to make a purchase.
Create an Incentive
Another great way to use social media to drive sales is to use your current customer base or those that are part of your affiliate marketing program to make sales for you. For example, offer discounts to your shop, coupons to use on monthly subscriptions, or even cash and prizes to those that convince family and friends to purchase from you. You can even run a contest on your site and promote it on your social media accounts to encourage people to come to your site, see what you have to offer and sign up for your contest.
An easy way to create a contest on your website is to use a tool like WPForms. Using the pre-made contest entry template, you can create a contest form and embed it on any post or page on your site for people to see. Even better, you can set entry limits or limit the number of time the contest runs on your website, so you don’t become overwhelmed with entries. This also creates a sense of urgency and gets more people to participate.
Go Visual
Tweets with images receive 150% more tweets than those without. Blog content with images are shared more often on social media. Facebook posts with images get more user engagement.
Are you noticing a trend?
People are visual by nature. They are more likely to read content broken up with imagery and scan infographics with important information displayed in a visually appealing way. They love to look up images in Google’s image search. Plus, they are more likely to share their favorite stuff with those they know (exposing your brand to a broader audience) when there are images involved.
And of course, people are always willing to check out video content. If you can integrate visuals into your social media posts, not only will you see your followers and likes increase, you’ll see more traffic coming to your site, and an increase in conversions.
For help with creating one-of-a-kind imagery for your online business, especially when it comes to social media posts, check out Canva. Canva is a free online tool that comes with pre-designed templates designed to work specifically on social media, among other platforms. From there, you can customize the image’s font, text, images, and even color schemes to match your brand.
Focus on Headlines
Just like your e-commerce shop’s blog content and landing pages, your social media posts should have captivating headlines that get people to want to click and visit your site.
Here are some best practices to follow when it comes to crafting social media message headlines:
- Use Numbers. Posts with numbers have significantly higher clickthrough rates than any other type of post. This is above informational, how-to, traditional, and question headlines. Want 20% more clickthroughs when using numbers? Make your numbers odd.
- Be Precise. Headlines with between 5-9 words tend to do the best. After all, people are scrolling through tons of social media messages all at once. They aren’t there to read in-depth content or headlines.
- Negative or Positive? It may surprise you to find that negative headlines in social media seem to do better than positive ones, but they do. For instance, use language such as “Never” or “Worst,” rather than “Always,” “Best,” or “Most.”
If you need help with improving your headlines, take advantage of CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer. It scores your headlines, gives you previews, and can help guide you to the perfect headline that will capture people’s attention and get them to click through to your website.
Final Thoughts
And there you have it! You now have some effective and simple ways to leverage the power of social media to get yourself more conversions in your e-commerce shop.
Sure, running an online business can be tough, especially with so much competition out there vying for your same customer base. But if you take advantage of social media and work hard to establish yourself as a reputable brand, people will be more likely to give you a try and even become loyal, long-term customers.
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