Of the many inventions and discoveries that have changed the way the world functions over the course of time, there are some that have stood out more than the others. Take the invention of modern electricity, for example, or the internet. These inventions haven’t just made life easier, but have become fundamentally integrated in the way we live and function on a daily basis.
Social selling is a smart choice for an ecommerce webshop. But maintaining inventory levels when you’re selling on multiple platforms can be challenging without the right tools. Enter: Social extensions for your WooCommerce Store. Social Extensions for WooCommerce Facebook for WooCommerce Facebook for WooCommerce allows you to sync WooCommerce products to a Facebook store, buy. Thirdly, don’t sell the farm. This last tip from Imran is arguably the most valuable piece of advice for eCommerce store owners hoping to drive free traffic back to their websites. Basically, you want to provide enough details so that you have a robust enough answer (which brings you views and up votes). Social selling is about finding and engaging with prospects (and customers) online. Each time you login to a social media network to identify new prospects, connect with them and provide value by answering questions and sharing relevant content, you are social selling. Think of social selling as a softer sales approach.
E-commerce is a product of the internet that has grown exponentially in the past few years. Selling online is a major market, apparently valued at $29 trillion globally. And believe it or not, that number is expected to rise even further in the years to come. The e-commerce industry is surely taking over the traditional avenues for selling, and there are many reasons for this.
Advantages of e-commerce?
- Larger reach in a shorter time span
- Comparatively less expensive
- Higher rate of response
- Enhanced visibility worldwide
- Greater opportunity for expansion
The largest wing of e-commerce: Social Selling
Social selling is the term given to selling online through social media. There are millions of people actively using social media every day. Social media’s biggest platform today is Instagram, which is home to a billion active accounts. Instagram has massive traffic and thousands of brands all over the world use it to promote their brand and create specific brand campaigns. On a platform like this, the biggest driving forces are followers and engagement numbers. More followers and more engagement equals a higher success rate of social selling.
When a brand is specifically looking to boost these numbers and improve viewership on Instagram, there are special packages being offered by websites like iDigic.net. Whether it’s to improve likes and comments, or simply help a brand’s page have more real accounts as followers, iDigic has a number of options that provide value for money and most definitely increase the ROI.
E-commerce is digital, yes, but that doesn’t mean it requires any less promotion when compared to offline selling. Digital marketing is again a very fast-growing wing of advertisement, and every single brand is keeping a handsome budget aside to facilitate it. Many companies today focus primarily on digital media and marketing, and any other form of promotion is secondary. Can you blame them though?
Social media allows brands access to a massive database, all over the world, and with a potential to completely change the game for them overnight. And while this may not hold true for every single brand, there’s always an open chance. If a brand can strategize and give more importance to social selling, a lot can be achieved, and e-commerce becomes a smooth process.
Strategizing for Social Media
Keeping all the statistics about social media in mind, it’s quite clear that a social media marketing strategy isn’t just a smart option, but also a necessary one. Without proper planning, marketing on social platforms can either get lost at sea or receive backlash, both of which aren’t favorable for any brand’s growth.
Let’s look at 5 important reasons why marketing on social media can be powerful and beneficial:
1. Spend less for more
Employing ad spends on social media isn’t as expensive as many other forms of offline marketing, which is why it doesn’t seem like a stretch while budgeting for social media. Marketers say that even if a big brand decides to spend 50% of their offline ad spends for social media they tend to have better and more effective coverage in comparison. Sponsored ads on both Instagram and Facebook bring a lot of traffic for web pages and websites, and they don’t drill a hole in the marketing budget either.
2. Increase the customer database
Every brand has the potential chance to reach as many as hundreds of new people every day, based on how well they’re targeting their marketing campaigns. Such an opportunity cannot be expected of offline marketing, because physically reaching those many new people is quite cumbersome. A few clicks and swipes and a new customer can be directed to a brand’s desired destination, and that’s why social selling is becoming a quick favorite for most.
3. More opportunity for promotion
Since there are so many innovative ways of marketing on social media, it presents brands with more new ways to increase their brand presence. Creating campaigns on social media is a much quicker process once you have all the nitty-gritty details down to the T. When there’s a new viral trend in the market, it’s fairly convenient for brands to hop on the wagon and join in on the action, and hence also become more relatable and relevant for larger audiences.
4. Best place to network
Social media started off as a great new way for people all over the world to network and communicate. That still holds true as marketers and salespersons use various platforms to maintain one-on-one communication with existing and potential customers. Social selling is, after all, all creating relationships through communicating with people, for the purpose of improving and increasing sales. This way a single idea can turn into a well-known preference. A brand that is talked about in good light can start building on its customer base. This is how brands reach more ears and minds – through effective networking.
5. The future of marketing
Many experts believe that offline marketing might even become obsolete in the decades to come and that social media is going to hold a dominant position as the most powerful marketplace. If this is to be believed, then now is the perfect time for brands to establish their stronghold online. Digital marketing is the vehicle that’s going to effortlessly carry the future of brand marketing in the years to come. Provided brand know how to get the most out of social media platforms. A recent survey shows that by 2020, nearly 150 million accounts on social platforms will belong to brands, businesses, and entrepreneurs who are going to market themselves to people.
In Conclusion
Social selling is the future! There’s really no doubting the potential of social selling and why it makes such a positive impact on e-commerce. Communication that happens digitally reaches far and wide in a matter of minutes, and it’s the ultimate boon for brands that want to reach more people. Whether it will completely take over the marketing scene is yet to be determined but, at the rate that digital media is growing, we might as well prepare for the new wave heading our way!
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Did you know adding a video on your loading page can actually boost your conversion by 86%? Well, that’s the real impact of visual marketing which we are going to discuss in this article.
We understand that not every eCommerce can opt for the videos. Not just because you have cheaper alternatives, but there are also some better options that can help you to increase your eCommerce sales.
But before jump-start, let us see some more interesting statistics that will convince you to go for visual marketing campaigns to drive eCommerce sales that you never expected.
- It has been seen that using visual marketing increases recall by 65%, hence an increase in returning customers and building a brand.
- Visual content is shared more than any other form of content on the internet, hence giving you better reach
- If you wish to make your audience take action, use visual marketing as it has resulted in an increase of follow-up by 323%.
The Above stats from Jeff bullas, shows how important it can be for you to use visuals in order to drive eCommerce sales to your store.
But what all are the options with you? Well here are the 7 types of visual marketing that you can actually start using to drive eCommerce sales.
Types of Visual Marketing to Drive Ecommerce Sales
The very first and easy visual that you can use to drive eCommerce sales is the image itself. But there are some things that must be taken care of.
- There should not be any visual flaws such as glare, scratches, dust spots, etc.
- The color of the product should be identical to the actual product that the customer would be receiving.
- Make sure there is consistency in every product image that you are posting, in order to make it easy to compare and look professional.
You can always outsource product photo editing to the experts in order to get the best results. In addition to this, you can even add graphics to an image to show the working and functionality of the image.
Infographic has a better success rate of 41.5%. These are long graphical forms of visual marketing that you can use to show the features. Firstly, they are very easy to understand as the data in the infographics are depicted as direct and visually appealing.
If you want to see various ideas and inspiration of the infographics, you can start by looking at Visually and Pinterest.
Moreover, if you want to start creating infographics but have none to very less graphical knowledge, you can start creating infographics in tools like Canva, Adobe Spark, or Visme.
In addition to creating infographics or sharing simple and high-quality images, you can even go for the 360 images. This is among the new eCommerce trends where users can actually see each and every angle of the product from 360 degrees.
As you might have guessed, customers will interact more hence would have a higher chance of purchasing the product hence it will drive eCommerce sales. We highly recommend you reading Amazing Tips for affordable 360° product photography.
We have already discussed the impact of video in the introduction and there is no denying that the videos have a real and effective impact. But if you are just starting out your eCommerce and can’t actually produce a video there are simple hacks for you.
- Record the video of your product from your phone itself, in “How to use” format. A decent smartphone with a good camera will work for you. Later you can edit professionally for making the most out of it.
- If you can find a video of the product on youtube, you can even embed it on your site. Do not somehow download and use it, rather just copy the embedded code.
How To Use Social Selling To Drive Ecommerce Business
- In case both the above points are not applicable, go to stock video sites such as Pexels, Pixabay, or mixkit to find the most relatable video for your eCommerce. Obviously, you may not get the exact video of your product. Hence look for the videos that are most relatable to your products.
We also have a detailed article regarding eCommerce product videos, which will help you learn all the thick and thins of following visual marketing to increase your eCommerce sales.
Using social media for your visual marketing campaign to drive eCommerce sales is a very powerful method for you. Especially if you are just starting out and aren’t getting SEO ranking, social media can be a great tool for you to build your brand.
Moreover, with new features like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram store, social media platforms are turning out to be a profitable investment for many budding eCommerce.
In addition, social media is a great way to interact with your audience and know their reaction towards your products without any intermediate. You can also use social media for user-generated content which can be really impactful in bringing new customers and increasing eCommerce sales.
In addition to the images and 360-degree images, there is another great medium of visual marketing which is Gifs. These are small motion images on the loop which repeat themselves again and again.
How To Use Social Selling To Drive Ecommerce Website
In the trending eCommerce world, entrepreneurs are using Gifs to showcase their products in a more trendy way.
AR or Augmented Reality is still a trend that has some time to catch up, but some of the big players like IKEA and Nike are already using it. And well most certainly this is where the future of visual marketing is headed with all the pace.
Certainly, if your financial support, investing in a good AR solution shall be a good investment for your eCommerce.
How To Use Social Selling To Drive Ecommerce Websites
There is no denying that as we move ahead in time, new and new visual marketing types and techniques will be introduced. But in order to actually drive eCommerce sales you need to put the likes and of your customer on anything else.
Before investing, ask yourself, how would this method help the customer to know more about the product. If the answer is positive in the favour of the customer, it will be a good investment.
Rather if you wish to start today Video, gifs, and 360 images will be the most appropriate format of visual marketing according to us. But you can give a try to each and every type of visual marketing mentioned above and see which works best for you.
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How To Use Social Selling To Drive Ecommerce Marketing
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