If you have an online shop, the question of how to improve your online sales is never far from your thoughts. As well as working out how to reach your target audience, strengthen your USP and improve your sales funnel, there’s the problem of cart abandonment. World shopping cart abandonment rates for retailers in March 2020 were 88.05% .
If your cart abandonment could be improved by even 5% it could make a big difference to your sales. Social media is an invaluable tool for online retailers. Below we’ve included our tips on how to use it to help improve your online sales.
Plan Your Social Media Content
Your brand is probably already using social media, but are you planning your content? Make sure you are using social media to raise awareness of your brand and products. Don’t just taking the hard sell approach.
Plan your posts carefully, particularly in the lead up to key seasonal sales periods. Highlight your popular products: mention their key features, benefits and endorsements. To avoid disappointment don’t forget to keep your customers well informed across all of your social media platforms regarding the last postage days for last minute orders.
To find out more, check out our social media content ideas for businesses here.
Build Trust on Social Media
As well as raising awareness of your brand and products, use social media to build trust. If you want people to hand over credit card information on your website, your brand must feel authentic and trustworthy. People will often head over to social media to see what people are saying about your brand before buying. Make sure your social media accounts are linked to your website. You also need to build in a strategy for customer engagement and loyalty. Peer to peer reviews are becoming the main source of brand advocacy, so ensure you are doing everything you can to encourage good reviews and feedback. This will help to build trust with your target market.
Optimise Social Media Advertising
Social Media advertising is a great way to reach beyond your existing audience and increase web visitors and sales. You can do detailed targeting on both Twitter and Facebook/Instagram. For example, narrowing down your audience by location, age, interests and job titles. If you already run ad campaigns it is worth reviewing the setup of your Ad campaigns to avoid wasting money. Optimise your settings to pay by Ad clicks rather than Ad views and ensure the set-up matches your target audience. Location targeting should be set up correctly to concentrate your efforts where your products sell best, particularly if you have a limited budget.
Use Remarketing to Bring Back Potential Customers
To reach out to people who visited your site and left before completing a target activity (e.g. completing a purchase or filling out a contact form), it’s possible to target them using remarketing ads. These are image based ads which can be set up on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. They work by appearing to customers who have visited your website as they browse the web. Since you only pay each time someone clicks on your ad they’re a great way to remind people of your business whilst they are still in the decision making process. Facebook also has a big advantage over Google when it comes to remarketing, since there is no minimum audience required before your ads kick in.
For High-Level Targeting Try Dynamic Ads
Even more targeted than remarketing are dynamic ads. If someone abandons their cart mid sale whilst logged into Facebook, it’s possible to target them with an ad showing the exact product they were looking at, reminding them to finish their purchase. You can even offer a discount code or free shipping to tempt them back. This is a highly effective way of increasing conversion rates and bringing back customers. Maybe they left your site to compare product shipping times or prices with another provider and then forgot who you were!
Promote Flash Sales
If you have a glut of products at the end of a season or line, a flash sale is a great way to shift them quickly. Social media is the ideal way to quickly share your sale. Create a Facebook offer and share using audience targeting. Base this on location and interests or behaviours (e.g. people who have interacted with your Facebook page recently).
We hope you found these tips on how to use social media to improve your online sales helpful. We specialise in helping online retailers increase their revenue, so get in touch to find out how we can help.
