Scott Allan, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing at Rakuten LinkShare explains how online retailers can use social media to increase sales as well as engage and communicate with shoppers
A few weeks ago I moderated a panel discussion with three online retailers in various stages of maturity. One was an established business with multiple brands, another was in the business of flash sales and one was a start-up. When I brought up the topic of social marketing and online shopping I heard a collective sigh from all three panellists.
All strongly believed it was important and yet they all expressed frustration in definitively tying social marketing to sales. A quick poll of the audience agreed.
It’s no surprise. In a recent IBM survey of chief marketing officers, 68% said they were unprepared for social marketing. So short of a clear, direct way to measure sales from social marketing initiatives, what can retailers do today to prepare for achieving that objective in the near future?
There is no easy answer, but you can however, structure your social marketing initiatives in ways that will pay off in the future.
1. Start with engagement
If you are not engaging with your customers in various social channels, start now. Consumers spend a significant about of their free time on social networking sites and if you are not there to engage them you can bet your competitors will be.
With so many social channels to choose from, it can be easy to be overwhelmed and few retailers have the resources to have an effective strategy for each.
Consider the personality of your brand, your creative assets and set engagement goals that are achievable. It’s better to execute one or two channels well than to try to tackle all channels half-heartedly. Don’t be afraid of negative comments and make sure the engagement is two-way.
2. Develop a content strategy
As you think about your content strategy, keep in mind that your goal should be to entertain, educate, and inspire. Shoppers don’t want a continuous hard-sell. Find the right balance and tone that fits with your brand. Create content that encourages engagement and interaction, as well as product reviews and personalisation.
Tie your content strategy to select goals such as increasing website traffic from a certain demographic. Consider TopShop and their effort to allow Facebook users to customise clothes and accessories from their latest catwalk collection during London Fashion Week. This is both entertaining, fun and no doubt the designers will be listening and watching how consumers respond.
3. Enhance customer service
Look for opportunities to highlight customer service wins. Happy customers can turn into advocates for your brand. Make it easy for customers to share their customer service experience and make sure to address and respond to each customer service inquiry individually as canned responses can inspire negative feedback.
Have a consistent approach with a path for escalating unresolved customer service issues. Being highly responsive one week and non-responsive the next will leave your customers frustrated and will damage your social marketing efforts.
4. Measurement: cause and effect
When you have set up your social channels and your content strategy has been developed, start to measure the impact of your efforts. Followers, likes, re-tweets, comments, reviews and posts are all worthy of measuring. The key is to watch trends over time. Are your brand loyalists most active during a certain time of year?
Do particular types of content inspire more “likes” than others? Does some content or activity correlate with a loss in followers? Starting to understand the answers to these questions will help inform your content strategy and social marketing calendar, leading to an understanding of what is truly influencing revenue.
5. Don’t recreate the wheel – create partnerships
The great thing about social marketing and e-commerce at this point in time is the sheer number of people trying to solve this complicated puzzle. Consider your affiliate marketing channel as a key source of knowledge and innovation around social marketing, not just a way to propagate a coupon offer.
Publishers today are building entire websites and business models based on social shopping. Fantasy Shopper for example, is a social shopping game where players discover and share the latest fashion from real-world online and offline retailers.
Another is Shopcade; a social shopping application within Facebook that allows individuals to promote the products they like to their social circle. Many publishers in the affiliate channel, such as the ones mentioned above, are likely to have more followers (hundreds of thousands) than any one brand.
Work with your affiliates on your social marketing initiatives and you may find a ready channel with extensive reach for your message.
So get started. Dive into the social marketing waters now and put your strategy in place before the Christmas shopping season starts in earnest. There’s no better time to get to know your customers and to learn what social marketing tactics inspire them to click the ‘add to basket’ button.
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