A Guest Post by
Nisha Sandhu
If you have an e-commerce business, many of the consumers who visit your website, regardless of the demographics, are participating in social media networks and sharing information on the internet. This means that the possibilities for marketing your products and services online are virtually endless, and there is a vast array of social networking channels for you to leverage, including YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
With e-commerce, the most important factor in marketing via social media is selecting the best channels to reach potential customers. You can discover where your target audience likes to congregate by doing the following:
- Polling those who visit your website or asking them to complete a formal survey to learn more about them.
- Using Trackur, Social Mention or a similar free tool to get the information you need.
- Leveraging relevant user information, which can be easily done with Facebook.
- Studying the job postings, back links, keyword rankings and special announcements regularly to determine what they are doing in regard to e-commerce.
You should also conduct a âcompetitive auditâ of your most serious competitors. Include the social networking sites where they participate, study the content they use, the number of hits they receive on every site, and the methods they employ to promote their products, services and special events on social networking sites.
In order to grow your business regardless of the social channels you use, attract consumers by offering them something they will never find anywhere else, such as promoting a contest. This should drive more traffic to your website and add to the number of your Facebook fans as well, if that applies in your case. You should also consider offering some incentive to those who follow you via social media, such as a discount coupon or free shipping, provide advance notice of a new product that will soon be available, or invite your customers to learn more âabout us.â
- Along with that, you might want to take the following steps as part of your online marketing strategy:
- Share interesting news stories or messages that you gather from external sources.
- Add a blog to your website and send the content to your e-commerce marketing accounts.
- Ask for feedback from those who visit your website.
- Include relevant videos and pictures to create interest in your company.
- Make it easy for customers to buy the products you highlight by adding a link to the order page.
These are just a few ways to connect with customers where they already are.
Have you tried others?
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Nisha Sandhu is an Editor at merchantaccountforum.com, where she researches and writes online business advice for new and growing businesses.
Thank you, Nisha!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
