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Can social translate into sales? If the brand, product and community all come together, the answer is an overwhelming YES.

In our experience, social media can be a powerful tool in a digital marketing campaign for e-commerce.

 

Advertising Visibility

The go-to application for social e-commerce solutions is paid advertising. Social media platforms collect and store an invaluable quantity of data about your target audience. Employing this data can allow you to target your advertising to only those who want to see it. Optimise click-through and conversion by directing your online advertising.

 

Integrated Shopping

Instagram is a popular platform to boost visibility, either on your own feed or via influencer pages. Focusing on lifestyle imagery, rather than strictly photographs of products, encourages engagement and identification for a user. Yet, Shoppable Instagram is an under-utilised opportunity by many e-commerce businesses.

Beyond building a brand name, Instagram images can be hotspotted with dynamic links to purchase. Using either Instagram or on your website’s own feed, add tag links to images. From there, product pages are just one click away. This feature monetises the vast array of up-to-date content that Instagram provides.



Community Engagement

User-generated content is great for increasing trust and brand loyalty. Social comments on blogs and forums encourage a user to spend longer exploring your site. The longer the session, the more likely a customer is to encounter your range of products or services,

You may also consider growing customer loyalty by offering points for purchases. Referral codes will also get people talking about your brand across social media sites. Your customers will become your promoters, directing traffic to your site.

 

The Protein Works Case Study

CTI Digital were tasked with creating an e-commerce website for a start-up sports nutrition brand, The Protein Works. They wanted to integrate social commerce features as part of the build.

Following the site launch, the first five months saw revenue rise by up to 130%! The brand also reported a 30% increase in new business. This website was designed as a hybrid of the best features from Magento and Drupal. Add social media marketing into the mix and this online business saw impressive results.

The Protein Works harness the real power of social commerce, offering users a place to chat as well as shop. This is an incredibly cost-effective way to grow content, improve SEO and drive conversation on social media.

Once this community is engaged, it’s vital to provide a simple route to purchase, turning conversations into conversions. This is why The Protein Works includes The Locker Room, an online community. There is also a ‘Create Your Own Formula’ section, to give interactive power to the consumer. Blogs from fitness and nutrition experts encourage site traffic prior to purchase, and provide shareable social content. Finally, an incentivised referral programme drives social sales.

The layout of the site ensures a vast amount of information is available, but without cluttering the page. The end result is really sticky content and theproteinworks.com now has an average visit time of more than five minutes and a customer conversion rate exceeding business projections by 67%.

 

 

As more companies are discovering, modern marketing tools don’t come much more powerful than social commerce.

Get in touch with our digital marketing team to find out more about integrating social into your e-commerce strategy.

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