Social media networks have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Facebook has recently introduced specific updates that support eCommerce marketing ventures. Start-ups, in particular, find social media marketing to be very intuitive and customizable. You get a space to post more content, interact with your customers and even lure potential leads into successful sales.
The modern-day market is all about aesthetics and stats. You need to have the numbers on your side to create an impact in the industry. And what better platforms to gauge your brand’s reach than on social media? On Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, each like, each follower and each comment count.
Tips & Hacks to Improve the Facebook Marketing Game for your eCommerce Store
Want to create a brand image from scratch? Or shift an existing business on the virtual platform? Don’t worry, and Facebook has you covered. The platform has a host of tools and features designed to help entrepreneurs develop their business page and attract more customers. The interface is simple, comprehensive and clutter-free. All you have to do is register your business, create a business profile, and you are ready to start posting. It is a simple, interactive process that hardly takes a few minutes. Make sure that the URL is clean though, as Facebook might mark it as spam.
However, the real work begins after you have created your profile page. Sustaining and marketing your eCommerce brand on Facebook takes effort and investment. Here are some tips to help you with that.
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1. Build an Effective Audience Base
The first step to brand promotion is knowing your market base. If you are a small-scale venture, then I would suggest you expand locally first. The internet has brought the world closer. However, with the market becoming more globalized and diluted, the distance between the buyer and the seller has widened. This gap is not one of accessibility, but of connection. Very few brands out there make an effort to establish a personal touch with their audience base.
One of the smartest ways to conquer the competition is to create a clean, convincing and credible brand image. Reach out to people, be informal in your approach. Strive to build a loyal audience base of followers who will vouch for your brand. With Facebook ads as your eCommerce marketing strategy, you can grasp the pulse of the demographic and monitor their keyword searches.
2. Respond to Comments
One of the best ways to expand any venture is by establishing a transparent communication link with the public. Always be open and honest with your audience base. It is a consumer’s market, and they have several options to switch over to. In such a scenario, you will have to put in double the effort to ensure that they stay with you.
Read the comments, reviews, posts, and tags by your visitors and clients. Apply filters to your comments sections to keep it clean and abuse-free. You can even collaborate with social media influencers and gain more views. Comments give you a chance to interact with your audience base. It also gives you deeper insights into the industry trends and the demand metrics.
Furthermore, you can even add Facebook share buttons and other social media accounts on your website. This makes your platform more authentic, giving the visitor a chance to check your social media presence.
3. Always Add CTA Buttons
CTA or call to action is a feature that sends out a clear message to the visitor to subscribe or check out your brand in detail. Having a CTA button integrated with your Facebook store increases your sales considerably. It is also an excellent way to filter your traffic and get the emails of those who are genuinely interested in your brand.
CTA buttons or a message is also a friendly, welcoming approach. It puts the visitor at ease and creates a sense of trust. Facebook allows you to customize the CTA button, add headers and even banners to make your store look great. A simple CTA like “shop now” or “visit the store” directs the first-time visitor to your store for faster conversions.
4. Optimize the Profile Page
As a basic step of eCommerce marketing, always create a Facebook profile page for your brand. It is the face of your company. The page where the visitors will be redirected to upon clicking the Facebook icon. The cover photo and profile picture of the brand should be identifiable and unique. You can even add a short description in the About section. Facebook has also come up with reviews and rating system. Here, the visitors get an outlet to share their experiences with the brand. You can highlight the positive reviews on the homepage, giving out a solid first impression.
Optimizing your profile page is not limited to rearranging your content though. You also need to customize the page to fit different device screens and resolutions. Ensure that your Facebook page is compatible with mobile devices. Always be on the lookout for what is trending on social media. The higher your SEO ranking, the better your chances to catch the eye of the Facebook user. Add appropriate tags to the posts. This helps Facebook categorize your ads and filter out a more appropriate use-base to boost your eCommerce marketing strategy.
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5. Post Stories and Updates
The latest feature update that has taken the social media network by storm is the concept of posting stories. Stories on Instagram, WhatsApp, and even Facebook is a quick and effective way to spread the word. If you have content that has a short lifespan and needs to be advertised immediately, then post it as a story. These stories last for 24 hours and then get automatically deleted. You can post images, short videos, boomerang videos, GIFs, text content and more. What’s more, you can even track how many people watched the story. And in case one of the viewers likes what you’ve posted, they can send you a direct message about it.
Another critical aspect of the Facebook story is that you can determine who gets to access it. If you want only a particular audience base to see a specific story, then set the filter to that location. News about special offers, seasonal discounts, contests, and other events can be spread through stories. Ensure that your profile is public, though, as it would make your content accessible to everyone. With private accounts, only those in your friend list would be authorized to see it.
6. Focus on the Visuals
Facebook ads are all about the pictorial appeal. Check the standard text to image proportion in any average post before you design your campaigns. Usually, the text content occupies about 20% of the posts, and the visuals hold the most appeal for the viewer. Don’t forget to add meta tags and text descriptions on each graphics-related post. This would help the search engines identify your brand and improve your SEO ranking. Also, arrange the post in a way that makes it distinguishable from the other posts. This is where whitespace comes into the picture. Keep ample space for adding the logo, brand name and the product details in the ad-campaign. To boost eCommerce marketing further, most developers follow the rule of thirds to keep their Facebook ads clean and clutter-free.
7. Tap into the Analytics
Facebook allows developers to access Google analytics and customer-engagement metrics, as well. This gives the website owner an idea about the reach and performance of their business. Graphs show the number of people who have viewed the Facebook ad posts and videos. It even tells you all about the demographic, time-zone and other visitor details. This means that you can check the time of the day when most of the customer-base is online. Posting your content these periods increase your visibility chances.
The Facebook Open Graphs is a new feature that allows developers access to all the trends and metrics in one place. The Debugger tool is another essential application that removes all unnecessary and obsolete details from your ad campaigns. It keeps your posts updated, engaging and relevant to the current audience base. With so many changes cropping up almost every day, it keeps it difficult for the marketer to keep up. With these tools, you enhance the odds of making successful sales.
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The Bottom Line
Facebook’s recent update has opened new marketing avenues for eCommerce entrepreneurs. The platform is no longer a space to connect with people and post pictures. You can build your brand and generate more traffic for your website via social media.
Facebook also gives you the provision to narrow down your market, concentrate on a local demographic and build your way up from there. This is an excellent feature for start-ups that don’t have the resources or experience to compete with global brands. Developers can also access the market metrics and get valuable insights into customer preferences and changing tastes.
This article is written by Bella Williams. As a technology enthusiast, Bella contributes to open-source projects. She is also a Consultant for topmygrades and part-time academic tutor at expertassignmenthelp and loves to write about students. When she is not helping a student, you can find her enjoying a bar of chocolate, traveling or taking a stroll down the beach. You can also find her on LinkedIn.