It's by far the biggest challenge of running an online business. Getting enough traffic to your website. Every marketing tactic, and marketing channel really boils down to one singular objective. Getting more traffic through the site. The more traffic there is, the more potential sales there are. The more traffic there is, the better the data you'll have to use when optimizing your pages. You could say it's the number one more important metric for your online store.
Here are 5 simple social media hacks to spice up your ecommerce marketing:
1. Timing is everything
Like many things in life, once you get your social media presence up and running, the different between just being there, and making social media a real money maker is timing. The folks over at Buffer have put together quite a lot of research from their user base about the when's and why's of social media to really squeeze the most value out of every tweet, post and share.
Would you believe that Facebook engagement has been shown to be 32% higher on weekends? If you think about it, that makes sense when we're not at work, surfing on the couch and browsing social media is an almost perfect downtime activity.
Similarly, on Twitter, the research showed that the best times to tweet were at noon and 6pm. Again, peak times when people are online presumably to escape the work they're focused on for a few minutes.
Don't forget to take time zones into consideration as well. Is you audience on the east coast? The west coast? Europe? Or all of the above. An easy way to make sure you've got your bases covered is to automate your tweets to go out at multiple times during the day to make sure you've got your bases covered.
Remember, when it comes to hacking your social media presence, timing is everything!
2. Email is still the lifeblood of all business
While not quite as sexy and glamorous nowadays as Facebook and Twitter, email is still the predominant way we communicate (or socialize if you will) online.
That's especially true for businesses. Email communication with customers, for most, is still the lifeblood of online businesses today. Much like your social media activities though, there are some secrets to great email marketing.
We're all getting more emails than ever, newsletters, coupon, referrals from friends. The fine folks at MarketingProfs went ahead and complied some research for us to keep top of mind to make sure we're getting the most our of every "send".
One great tip is to have your emails correspond to some type of customer driven trigger.
- Triggered messages such as emails sent after abandoned shopping carts and welcome emails had a 2.5x higher average open rate than regular email campaigns (38.9% vs. 15.1%).
- Triggered email messages also had a 2x higher average unique click rate compared with general campaigns (3.4% vs. 1.7%).
3. Don't rest on your laurels, test, test, test
When it comes to social media, the half-life of a tweet or a great idea is very short. People online and particularly in social media are perpetual in a "What have you done for me lately" type of mindset.
Don't believe me? Check out how quickly the front page of a site like Reddit changes. Every once in a while you may think of the next ice-bucket challenge which takes on a life of its' own. But even then, that viral campaign is starting to peter out. Heck, when is the last time you saw a Harlem Shake video. Thought so.
That's why one of the must do hacks for social media marketing is to constantly be testing. Ad platforms like the ones used by Twitter and Facebook thankfully make this reasonably easy. As an advertiser you want o constantly be varying your ad copy, headlines and most importantly your images.
4. Send the right message on the right platform
Social media doesn't just mean Facebook. Or Twitter for that matter. These days there are niche social networks for almost anything. The biggest mistake you can make when it comes to social media marketing is assuming that one size fits all, or your audience is everywhere and anywhere at the same time.
Take the time to research where exactly your best customers might be. With sites like Facebook and Google Plus this is pretty easy. Take a look through discussion forums and pages or groups associated with your market, or even your competitors. Can you hear crickets? Or is the community engaged in lively chatter, with lots of questions and even more advice? That's what you're looking for. Not just eyeballs, but engagement.
Depending on what you're selling that might mean your ideal audience is in fact on Facebook, or maybe they just like to Tweet, or maybe they are most active in a specific sub-Reddit. Once you find them, that's where you want to be as well. Become part of the community. Comment, ask questions, give advice. And if you find you've got a good reputation, try running some paid ads to support your organic outreach efforts.
5. You get what you pay for
Organic outreach efforts, search engine optimization (SEO), social community building, blogging, it all sounds good in a blog post, and it sounds like a path to easy money. It's not, it takes a huge amount of time, and worse it takes even longer to see the fruits of all that labor.
Save yourself some heartburn and give yourself a bit of a head start (or a traffic safety net) depending on how you think of it, with paid ads to compliment all your organic efforts. While paid ads cost money, given time and some experience you can really ramp up their effectiveness while whittling down their cost
We posted a great article on how to get the most bang for your buck with Facebook paid ads here.
So there you have a few simple tips that can help you squeeze just a bit more performance out of the social media marketing you're doing for your online store. Until next time!