In simple words e-commerce – this is electronic online commerce, when all transactions, business projects, all processes, and communication with customers take place on social networks or applications.
Nowadays social commerce - this is a very relevant and modern type of trade, which significantly simplifies the buyer's path to obtaining a product or service, and allows sellers to significantly reduce the cost of rent and hired additional employees. And customers do not waste time visiting stores, waiting in line - everything can be ordered in a few minutes on a computer or smartphone.
Why are social networks an ideal platform for sales?
The answer is very obvious, today almost everyone uses social networks, shares photos, reads interesting information or news, and of course makes purchases. Why? sell on social media profitable and convenient?
- It's not as intrusive as regular TV, magazine, or classified ads. There are no annoying phone calls or emails.
- The seller can immediately answer all questions regarding goods or services.
- The standard sales cycle is significantly shortened.
- It's much easier to retain customers.
- Opportunities for lead generation, i.e. people who are really interested in your offers.
And these are not all the advantages, the opportunity to manage your own reputation, create long-term relationships with customers, and in general, if you organize your sales strategy correctly, success will certainly come. And which social networks are best for sales now? The most popular networks for commerce are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest. Each has its own characteristics and nuances. In order to make the right choice, you need to analyze your own target audience, clearly study the market, see where and what is published most, what feedback is received, according to comments, reposts, etc. A psychological portrait of a future client is important, this includes demographic characteristics (gender, age, family status), social (education, interests, income level), geographical (country, city, village) and psychological factors (life values, lifestyle).
How to choose a social commerce platform?
Facebook is aimed at older people and is considered a universal network where you can sell clothes, appliances, various services, advertise restaurants or entertainment venues. This platform is also great for providing financial services, just like LinkedIn.
TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram are incredibly popular among young audiences, visual marketing works great here, a great choice for fashion, style, new startups, innovative solutions. These platforms are for creative and new brands, experiments with viral content.
For example, if you want to sell clothes in large sizes that are suitable for more mature people, or universal comfortable shoes or kitchen utensils, then Facebook is a better fit. And toys for children or clothes for babies will be more popular on TikTok and Instagram, where there are a lot of young mothers. The main thing is to clearly define your target audience.
Step-by-step guide to selling on social media
Before creating your own page on the required platform, you need to carefully consider: how to attract customers through social networks, and for this you need to study your own competitors. This is one of the difficult and time-consuming processes. Find a similar product or service, see what attracts buyers the most, and examples of their dissatisfaction and refusals. At what time are there more reactions to posts and advertising.
When you understand what problems customers are concerned about, what the market doesn't yet have, and what you can surprise them with, it will be much easier to decide on a marketing program.
Preparing for sales and creating engaging content
The first thing to start with is to understand how to build a sales funnel on social media, in simple words, a marketing model that leads a customer to make a purchase. First, we introduce and inform about ourselves, hold attention and interest, arouse the desire to buy, and stimulate it.
You run an ad, for example, 5 thousand people clicked on your Instagram profile selling manicure courses, only 1000 of them subscribed, they read interesting material that is free, after a while there are 300 active subscribers and only 50 of them will buy paid courses. This is how the funnel works. It lets us understand at what stage most of the leads are being filtered out, and what needs to be changed or removed.
Without good content, things won't work. When users visit a page with little information, it's not interesting or no longer relevant, bad photos, and an unclear description, they immediately leave the store.
It is the initial visualization and attractiveness that influences the decision to subscribe or not. Therefore, the content must be useful and relevant.
Beautiful, creative photos or video reviews attract attention, and a detailed and high-quality description indicates that the sale is being handled by an expert.
A potential buyer has pets, and here he came across an advertisement for food, then he goes to the page and sees only the company, its picture and price. Which one is suitable for what, for which breed, useful properties and contraindications, why this particular food, and not another. When there is no such information, there will be no incentive to buy either. In addition to general advertising, you need to place informative articles for your products so that people are interested in looking.
The frequency of content is also important. 30 monotonous posts in a day can start to annoy a person and they will simply unsubscribe, and one in three days will simply not be noticed. Everything should be in moderation and dosed, taking into account the peak time of the network.
If there is a question how to increase sales on social networks, then you simply cannot do without additional advertising and special platform features.
Launching an ad
There are special companies that promote pages on various networks. The two most popular options are targeted advertising and bloggers, and they are all paid. The cost depends on the audience reach and time of use. These methods are considered the most effective for attracting customers. It's simple: your ad appears between friends' stories and posts, according to the preferences that Google tracks. You should start such advertising when your profile is completely ready to work, you have all the necessary information and a good portfolio.
Using integrated shopping features will also increase sales. These are additional products that are purchased together with the main one, holding various promotions (bring a friend and get a discount, two for the price of one, 20 percent off the first purchase).
Don't forget about free advertising methods:
- Add popular thematic hashtags to your posts.
- Specify geometries.
- Create interesting masks.
- Practice mutual PR in stories.
- Specify geometries.
- Launch live broadcasts and carefully explain and show the product.
- Comment on posts in popular accounts.
Using influencers for social commerce
Another cool tool how to create effective social media marketing. An influencer is different from an ordinary blogger, it can be a model, an athlete, a famous chef, who already has a large audience and an excellent reputation. People listen to their opinions and trust them. Also, bloggers with a large number of subscribers who have been running their pages for a long time will assure people that your product is reliable and high-quality. In some cases, after one such advertisement, there may be an influx of 20 or 30 thousand customers at once. Yes, the pleasure is not cheap, and not every famous influencer can agree to your product, but it is very effective advertising. The main thing is that after it you will be able to respond and consult many and accept a large number of orders, otherwise there will be a failure.
According to statistics, the best time to publish advertising posts is from 10 am to 6 pm, and the best days are Monday and Wednesday. At this time, social media users are most active. On weekends, the relevance of advertising decreases, but it also depends on your product and various holidays.
Working with reviews and comments
Interaction with your audience is very important. This way you will not only be able to understand how to analyze sales effectiveness on social media, but also gain a good reputation, they will recommend you to friends and acquaintances.
The better your customer engagement, lively discussions, and quick problem-solving skills, the greater your online reach, recognition, and number of followers. Engaging in social media builds a community and fan base around your business, which in turn drives sales and popularity.
Metrics and results analysis
Without analysis, it is very difficult to understand the current situation in sales and create conditions for their development and increase in the future. what tools to use for social commerce? This is the improvement, development and promotion of products.
Study the reactions to your posts, which ones caused a stir and which ones went unnoticed. Maybe you posted them at the wrong time, and your target audience is simply busy.
Keep track of your advertising, which resource has generated more traffic to your profile, and give preference to them.
Analyze sales in spreadsheets. You can do this manually or integrate your account with a CPM program that will enter everything automatically. This way, you will see when there are the most orders, which advertising works best, and what may be causing a sharp decline in sales.
And social networks themselves are capable of displaying statistical data on views and reach, these indicators also need to be analyzed. You can see who watched and visited, assess the audience, their mood, age and what exactly sparked interest, and what content formats are suitable for different products.
You can promote not only in one direction, but also maintain a profile in different social networks at once. With the right settings, everything from Instagram is immediately duplicated on Facebook, live broadcasts are more suitable for TikTok, where the main information for your profile will contain links to other platforms. And this, in turn, will reduce the cost of SMM promotion.
Selling in social commerce is not easy, but you can achieve great results with hard work and the right marketing strategy. So gather enthusiasm, try, experiment, and persevere towards your dream, and everything will definitely work out.
