Sales funnel over social media is truly fickle as it requires constant innovation and unprecedented marketing acumen. Be it refurbishing the existing sales hierarchy or encouraging a greater number of visitors to turn into customers, selling stuff over social media isn’t as straightforward as it seems— courtesy the cut-throat competition.
In this post, we will be talking about certain adjustments which need to be made to any existing sales strategy and the results can be seen— almost instantaneously. The idea here is to optimize the social-commerce setup for staying ahead of the 8-ball.
Let’s get the ball rolling by talking about 5 ideas to drive in massive sales, via social platforms:
#1. Identify the Potential Platforms
Unlike e-commerce, social commerce involves identifying individuals based on their activity levels. Marketers need to identify the social platforms with maximum conversion rates. Based on the social links, social marketers need to discover the efficacy of each platform— targeting customer conversion.
Next step would be to initiate an audit which tells the concerned organization about the competitors, services, products, brand and the industry in general. One way of identifying the engagement would be to monitor conversations across the social platforms. Social media tools do come in handy when it comes to engaging existing and even potential customers.
You, as a budding marketer, need to monitor social interactions even if the company hasn’t been tagged, officially. Following this should be continued engagement with the customers and visitors. You must continue tracking growth over select platforms along with audience engagement. A month-long platform analysis is usually recommended.
Certain marketers goof up things by concentrating on myriad social platforms, simultaneously. This minimizes the overall impact as priority platforms are compromised. Zero in on two to three social channels for personalized engagement.
#2. Keep Things Simple
Overcomplicating sales can eventually kill the customer-oriented approach— completely. When selling is your main objective, it is advisable to opt for simplicity over glamor. Stay away from multiple clicks and on-page searches as these can infuriate the visitor who might make a quick buy if things were easier.
The sales funnel must be clubbed with a straightforward approach— simplifying customer navigation via social channels. Pages need to be optimized as you don’t want prospective customers to click on the social link and end up encountering a dead page.
Next, comes the direction of your social copy and the one-link one-page approach is what makes a good case. Apart from that, a strong Call to Action is necessary for any desired format. Site redirections need to be limited as these increase link errors.
#3. Optimize the Website for Mobile Users
In comes the much-anticipated mobile presence and we can’t stop talking about it. 2017 is going to be a big year for mobile optimization and marketers must keep the same in mind. The number of mobile users has quadrupled over the last few years and the shopping experience over these gadgets need to be simplified— to a larger extent.
It all starts by assessing the performance of your mobile-centric website on the given gadget. The most important criterion has to be the page speed. We would recommend marketers using PageSpeed Tools for understanding how the website is faring over mobiles and desktops.
Once the situation has been assessed, it’s time to incorporate efficient optimization techniques. Some of the best ideas would be to include more images, lesser HTML clutter, minimized JavaScript and CSS and lastly, amplified visual content.
Take the first impression into account as a mobile visitor won’t be coming back if the site layout and page speed disappointed him or her— at the very first instance.
#4. Guide Visitors using CTAs
Understanding mobile optimization is of paramount importance if marketers are looking to amplify and leverage the social sales funnel. Apart from page speed, marketers need to work on Call to Actions— mainly for guiding customers over the website.
If you have closely used Instagram or Pinterest, you would know that most purchasing decisions are taken over these channels. Moreover, Facebook is one select social platform which offers marketers to choose between 11 Call to Actions.
Instagram also offers a wide selection of CTAs— 8 to be exact. Therefore, if you are willing to concentrate on mobile optimization, platform-centric CTAs need to do most of the work.
#5. Attend to Customer Reviews
Believe it or not, Social media is the best possible tool for cementing brand loyalty. However, 2017 for Google is all about RankBrain which is an AI centric algorithm for gauging ranking shifts. RankBrain is based on engagement metrics and this is where customer reviews come in handy.
In 2017, the better part of ranking shifts will depend on customer engagement over websites and forums. This is the primary reason why we are upbeat for customer reviews— mainly the legitimate ones. A review need not be good and even a saddening one has to be encouraged and incorporated into the website.
Let’s start by being proactive about customer reviews. We can track product conversations about the brand and then redirect customers to post reviews on the website. Be it negative or positive, any review works well, provided it is genuine.
Another aspect of social commerce is to pull customers to the website for posting reviews. Once the conversation stream is gauged, marketers need to offer incentives to the customers for posting genuine reviews. Seemingly, some newly established mobile app development companies are offering cash back or free customer interactive sessions in return for a genuine review.
Lastly, marketers should respond to and monitor every single review which can help turn any negative feedback into the constructive step. Even if you can’t offer financial perks for reviews, recognizing people for their remarks is a big enough motivation.
Bottom Line
As mentioned, the social sales funnel isn’t a permanent entity and to be on top, marketers need to innovate. It is, therefore, important to measure success, emanating out of every social channel and then select the most yielding one for your needs.
Another important factor which determines social penetration is audience demographics, which can actually determine the popularity of any business for a particular region.
If you have already given a lot of thought to e-commerce, social commerce in 2017 might just change the same. The social team must be proactive and respond personally to every social message or remark. While these 5 techniques are expected to work wonderfully, certain add-ons like responsiveness and vigilance can also take your social sales strategy— a long way ahead.
