In 2024, social media marketing is one of the leading tools to increase brand revenue. About 55% of shoppers like to shop directly from social media. However, as a business owner, how can you make it easy for consumers to go from just social media scrollers to shoppers?
Sell Products or Services on Social Media Platforms
Social media is the new place to discover new trends and interests. When businesses decide to advertise their products on a social media platform, potential customers can move directly from the discovery of a product to a purchase within the same breath. This creates a smooth shopping experience where the checkout process is streamlined. Examples of social networks that support commerce tools include Facebook Shop, Instagram Shopping, Pinterest Product Pins, and TikTok Shop. Follow 63% of business leaders and adopt social commerce features.
Implement Conversational Commerce
Have you ever tried talking to a business on Instagram, Facebook, or even Twitter, and it feels like you could be chatting with a real person? Conversational commerce combines the idea of messaging and shopping, where customers use chat or voice assistance to make purchases. This kind of commerce can be seen through messages about promotional codes or discounts in Facebook Messenger or Instagram DM and customer service through chatbots. Pay attention to the language you use, as it’s important that customers can understand what you’re saying about your product and service and feel supported during their shopping journey.
Determine Highest Converting Social Content and Build Upon It
Depending on your business, what kind of social content has the best customer engagement? Posts with static images? 15-second videos? 60-second videos? Text-based posts? All of the above? Focus specifically on content owned by your business that explains your products or services, promotions, and links to your website. When you’re implementing links to your website, make sure that you are also including UTM parameters that help identify where traffic is coming from.
Go Beyond the Traditional Metrics
Once you’ve implemented new social strategies, it’s important to measure and analyze their impact and how they translate to sales and revenue.
Throughout a shopper’s experience, track awareness metrics through the following KPIs:
- Impressions (amount of times content is displayed),
- Social engagement rate (how much your audience interacts with your social content)
- Followers and community growth (number of social followers and advocates)
It is also essential to track consideration metrics through the following KPIs:
- Visits (web users who visit your website)
- Site traffic (the sum of all traffic to your website),
- Lead generation (earning the interest of potential customers to increase future sales)
- Time on site (amount of time site visitors spend on your web pages per session)
Once you have gone through and analyzed these metrics, the next step is to look at purchasing through the following KPIs:
- Revenue (income from sales)
- Transactions (number of sales made)
- Conversion rate (the ratio of site visits to conversions),
- Average order value (the average amount of each transaction from purchases made on your site)
While social media is essential, it’s fundamental to your business to find strategies that will convert traffic into revenue.
