So, there are a plethora of benefits of social selling in the era we live in today - and we want to maximise them as much as possible. Here's a quick recap on our current situation and ecosystem:
In the past few years, online shopping via pure e-commerce apps was extremely popular, thus the rapid increase of such sites. There are many reasons for this, including convenience, access to more information, and lower prices. However, more recently, the percentage of consumers adopting the use of specific e-commerce apps have declined from 23% to 19%. But don't worry - the reason for this is purely because consumers are beginning to use social media websites for their shopping needs instead! This way, consumers are able to take advantage of all the online shopping benefits as they enjoy the integration into their social dashboards.
Overall:
Source: SuperOffice
While this all sounds great, a problem still exists! And as discussed previously, that problem is of course, the extremely low conversion rate of 2%. Let's go through some tips on how to dramatically increase your conversion rates, and examples of how these have helped some of our clients previously.
DRAW FROM YOUR COMMUNITY
Drawing from your community - what does this mean? Well, essentially it means that businesses should be engaging with their specific demographic in order to truly generate meaningful, creative, content. Compelling content is a major step towards driving and maintaining growth when selling over social media.
This leads us on to the fact that strong content will build stronger, long-term audience relationships. Consumers have proven to engage closely with campaigns that tell authentic stories. Not only will the business benefit from increased credibility, internal ideas and content will dramatically grow a company's influence and spread of audience. Ultimately, consumers tend to respond strongest to, and buy from, companies which give them access to meaningful and valuable content - whether it be in the form of a campaign or a simple blog post.
We've seen this strategy prove to be largely successful with many of our Influencer campaigns. Our New Balance Campaign featured young, trendy, influencers who posted dozens of bright, catchy images. This immediately targeted the perfect demographic - who wanted to see themselves in the advertised styles - and resulted in 60% of pre-sale stock sold in just four days.
CAPITALISE ON INSTAGRAM FEATURES
Instagram is truly changing the game for sellers of fashion and beauty products (other products are starting to become more popular too!). Data from Instagram suggests that 70% of ads, campaigns, and promotions, are generating consumer responses. This means that engaging posts are prompting users to request more information about the product in their quest to purchase.
Instagram has even responded to this data by adding new features such as 'tap to view' tags. All of these efforts are strategies to remove friction from the transition between discovering a product, and making the purchase.
Persollo makes this process even easier by generating a unique link for sellers. We've created a way to seamlessly integrate shopping into any consumer's social media timeline or dashboard - we provide just one click from the purchase page. This technique of allowing both easy access to the purchase button, and making the checkout itself instant, has proven to multiply conversion rates by three.
By making the purchase seamless and accessible, our non-profit Hunger Project Campaign was super successful, with our sales target being hit within 8 days. Consumers were able to view Instagram posts, read their descriptions, and make purchases fuelled on emotion and compassion.
CAPTURE IMPULSE BUYERS
This leads us on to the next strategy. More than 50% of social media users follow pages, influencers, and groups in order to inspire their next purchases. Research has found that these 'social shoppers' use social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat daily in order to view products - but find purchasing directly very difficult. Our instant checkout tends to specifically target impulse buyers, as it makes the 'look, read, buy' process very simple.
A recent study has shown that an Instagram post will interest 68% of Millennials into researching the product, and 54% will actually make the decision to purchase. Combining the last two points, generating creative content that compels consumers and utilising the correct Instagram features is perfect for capturing impulse buyers.
This was evident during our UGGS Australia campaign. By using relevant, trendy, Influencers, we were able to increase their sales by 150%. Beyond this, we were able to unlock two new markets for that brand, as they were able to discover new leads through Instagram.
DON'T WAIT
A hot tip is that, while Instagram and other social networks are constantly updating their apps to provide better services, you shouldn't wait for the infrastructure to be built before managing your social selling. There are heaps of third parties that provide great services to streamline the transition between browsing online, and making the purchase.
We've been really happy with our results this year, especially with a 3x increase in sales for our clients over December.
Happy Holidays!
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