Tips for using Social Media to increase sales

9 Jan 2015 Dominic Comments Off on Tips for using Social Media to increase sales

Social media can be a very powerful effective and cost efficient solution for small retailers or brands to get their brand visible in a very competitive marketplace. You need not spend a lot on expensive recruitment channels and by looking at how you combine offers, deals, discounts with some of your more traditional marketing channels, you can build up your brand online quickly. These are just some basic strategies you could use to get more sales using social media platforms…

Using Hashtag

Capitalise on the hashtag searches made on social media platforms and don’t be afraid to hashtag any campaigns or sales promotions you have using a variety of terms which describe your business or it’s focus. Your audience will get used to the terms you use and will start to use your terms in any hashtag searches they make.

Flash Sale

Flash sales are a great way of creating urgency and exclusivity for your products and offers. You may just want to clear old stock or perhaps you are gearing up for a new season launch – wither way flash sales create a degree of urgency and interest among your audience. Holding regular flash sales will also mean a greater likelihood that your customers will add them to their feeds and share them with friends after all everyone likes a bargain!

Coupon Offers

With the rise of affiliates and greater usage of coupons, the UK consumer is much more savvy and not shy of asking for discounts on products these days. You could be using coupons effectively in you social media strategy by, for example offering discounts for customers who like your Facebook page or following you on Twitter.

Using Pinterest

Pinterest has seen huge growth in recent years particularly with retailers due the visual nature of the medium. If you are a small retailer, you could engage with your audience through Pinterest perhaps by offering a reward for everyone who enters – eg a 10% discount? You could ask followers to pin the one item they like most to one of their boards. Not only do you engage with your audience but you also get reach as other new prospects see your products on their boards.

Free Shipping

Start using your shipping discounts in a better way and make sure you track the results and impact of all offers. Know which discounts work best for your audience – eg percentage off vs flat money off. Make sure your shipping costs are realistic and avoid the temptation to slap on an extra few pounds to make some money – you may make extra on one order but lose 10 orders due to the expensive shipping.

Offer free shipping to those who click on a link from your Facebook or Twitter account. You’ll be tickled with how many new “likes” and followers you can get from this promotion, not to mention the boost in sales.

Giveaways

Set aside some stock for promotional campaigns and give them away as prizes. Use the giveaways as an incentive for more data capture – ie get their email address on the competition sign up page and measure / monitor success rate of every giveaway. You may get approx 200 email addresses for each one and if only 5% of these buy from you that could still be 10 orders for the price of 1 product. In addition make sure that the persons entering have to also like you on Facebook

Mobile

Even today (Jan 2015) I still come across companies who are doing really well but do not have a mobile site. For retailers in 2015 I would expect 50% of your traffic coming from mobile or tablet – and for those with no mobile site, they will be suffering in terms of poor conversion. Any promotions you are doing will in all likelihood be accessed on a phone – so if you do not have a mobile site you could be wasting a lot of time and effort.

Increased exposure

Run a full audit of your site and just how and where your social buttons are promoted. You may find that it isn’t easy for customers to like your pages or that they are missing from other key pages. Do you have links in emails? What about your blog posts?

Add photopgraphs

Adding photos to your postings will help get more exposure and more of your audience are likely to share the link if something visual comes with it.

These are just some basic ideas for you to build your audience and get those all important sales. Social Media can be a very effective channel to help build your brand if it is used correctly. By that I mean that it is not simply regarded as an inconsequential channel – by integrating social media with your other channels you can come up with very impactful campaigns.

Categories: All Posts, Social Media, Trading Tips

Tags: Social Media, Trading Tips