5 Tips to market your ecommerce store on social media

The adoption of social media since the rolling lockdowns over the last couple of years is significant. In fact, over half the world’s population uses social media.

According to a joint report by We Are Social and Hootsuite there are currently 4.55 billion social media users with 1 million new users joining social media every day.

Social media platforms have evolved to become entire worlds and it’s increasingly important for online retailers to fully understand how to leverage the value of social media as a sales channel.

To help online retailers get a head start we have put together a comprehensive outline of the building blocks you will need in place with these 5 tips to ensure you succeed at selling on social.

Here's what you need to know

We’re all looking for connections. Buyers want to connect their passion and interests with your brand’s passion for the products you’re selling. Successful businesses know their niche - their tribe of like-minded people. These are the people ready to hear about what you’re selling. They want to build connections with your products and brand.

To connect with buyers in an authentic way, you need to demonstrate the “I made this for you” moment. That’s the moment when you deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. And, about the right product. It’s an acknowledgement that you know what your tribe of customers wants. It also shows that you’re respecting their time by delivering only what they want.

Social media platforms have in-depth data about their users. That data lets you find, filter, and target your tribe. For example, suppose you’re selling science fiction collectables. In that case, you can find the best-fit customers by targeting users in sci-fi groups or interacting with cutting-edge science articles on Facebook.

Start building your social selling strategy with a clear vision of your ideal customer tribe. Go beyond the age range and geolocation metrics. Who are they? What are their interests? What do they believe in? What are their wants and needs? That last question is especially crucial for selling on social channels. Whether your ideal buyer wants or needs a product will change the conversation.

For fantastic tips about building buyer personas, see How to Design a Buyer Persona for Social Media Networks.

Want or need has an immense impact on the conversation. Wants stem from desire and are a realisation of the gap between what we have and what we could have. Needs stem from requirements.

Buyer needs involve aspects of physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. This range of human needs is explained by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, first established in 1943. It’s a framework that psychologists and marketers still use to this day to gain a deeper understanding of their audience.

This article from Simply Psychology explores the framework in detail.

By uncovering your buyer’s want vs need, you can identify the core problem they’re trying to solve.

It also helps to understand the buying process. Consumers generally go through 5 steps in this process, which are:

• Identify a problem or need
• Research and investigate
• Evaluate alternatives
• Make a purchase decision
• React to the purchase, e.g. satisfaction or doubt.

When you understand buyer problems, the process they go through to solve those problems, and whether they are a want or need, you can plan the right social media content for each step of the buyer journey. You can provide the right information, ideas, and solutions to help your buyer investigate, evaluate, and make the right purchase decision.

You’ll also gain a better idea of the tone, messaging, imagery, and more that align with your ideal customers at each stage. These aspects work together to create more authentic, valuable conversations that help buyers recognise why your products are the best-fit solutions.

You’ll want to connect with your ideal buyers where they are spending their time. But, of course, your target audience won’t be on every social channel, and not all platforms garner the same appeal.

Facebook is the most used social platform with over 2.8 billion users (as per the Most Used Social Media 2021 report), but the platform’s most prominent audience is males between 25-34, with 18.8% of the total global audience. On the other hand, Pinterest has a 71.1% female audience, with  of its users in the 50-64 age range.

Research approaches

The social channels you choose are critical to success. Do ample research before committing to your channels to understand your audience, your competitors, and the right fit to support your business goals. Here are a few types of research to consider:

• Market research: When you’re looking for new customers, your current customers can provide great insights. Use your existing customer base to figure out which social media channels resonate with them. After all, you’ll likely want to bring on more of those same types of customers. You could run a survey, add a “vote for your favourite social channel” to order confirmation emails, or run a competition to gather high-quality data about where your customers spend their time.
• Competitor research: The digital age has made it easier than ever to do competitor research. First, find businesses like yours and see which social channels they promote on their website. Then, check out their social media. Which channels have the most followers, and importantly, which have the most engagement?
• Channel research: It’s essential to keep an eye on social channel growth and popularity. After all, you don’t want to invest time in a channel that’s declining in popularity with your audience. Whether you’re selling B2B or B2C will also influence the right channel for your brand. For example, the most-used channel for B2B marketers is LinkedIn.

B2C marketers, on the other hand, tend to use Instagram and Facebook. See The 15 Biggest Social Media Sites and Apps for more information about social channel trends and changes.

The Rule of 7 is a marketing maxim originating from the 1930’s movie industry. Studio bosses discovered people needed to see a movie advertisement 7 times before being compelled to see it. That number is much higher in the digital age due to the added noise of digital marketing.

Companies are grabbing attention across every imaginable channel. To stand out, you need to make your brand visible - consistently and repetitively.

Brand recognition

Brand recognition is the process of ensuring your target audience can see, recognise and remember your company. When you get brand recognition right, your audience can identify your product, service, and company even when there’s no sign of your company name. Brand recognition goes far beyond securing a memorable business name and website URL. Your logo, colour schemes, tone of voice, packaging, and social media presence all shape this recognition.

Google’s brand awareness is so strong that its name is synonymous with the problem it solves - making information quickly and easily accessible to its customers.

Your brand needs to be instantly recognisable when your audience is scrolling quickly through their social feeds. To build your brand recognition and awareness on social media, create a social media style guide. Such a guide documents the use of your logo, colour palette, iconography, imagery, typography, tone of voice, hashtag use, and more.

Here is an in-depth guide with inspiring examples to get you started - and get that Rule of 7 working faster.

With your social media style guide set out, you can create consistent content that builds strong brand recognition and awareness.

To ensure consistency and an excellent customer experience both on and offline, you can use fulfilment automation software, like Starshipit, to streamline your fulfilment process and deliver a high level of customer service every time.

The platform easily integrates with eCommerce and inventory software to automatically pull through orders (no more cut and paste). You can print shipping labels, manage returns, and automate time-consuming tasks, saving you up to 80% in handling time.

Most important for social commerce, you can send automated post-purchase customer notifications and use branded tracking pages to build loyalty.

Wrap up

To conclude, if you want to succeed at selling on or via social media you need a visual and memorable brand that “speaks” to your online store’s social “tribe” with clear communication from checkout to the moment of delivery. 

To assist online retailers in setting up their social commerce approach we recommend downloading our latest eBook, which gives you all you need to know when starting out selling on social media in an easy-to-follow guide. You will gain insights into key trends, and we give you a breakdown of social platforms along with suggested tools and a framework to develop your social commerce strategy.