Social Media Tactics to Help Drive Traffic to Your Ecommerce Site

Ahh social media. It’s your best friend and your worst enemy. I’ll admit I had a few years where I refused to be a part of it, but it slowly crept into my life aPhoto-1nd before you know it I was checking my Facebook page at least 5 times a day! But I wasn’t checking in for the latest gossip about The Bachelorette, or stalking my ex boyfriend’s pages. No, I was actually using Facebook and other social media outlets for news and information. Today, more then ever, people are using social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more to promote their businesses, and I knew that’s what I had to do to be successful and reach the right people.

So marketing on social media must be a piece of cake right? Wrong. Attracting consumers to your site through social media is easier said than done. To be successful in the world of social media, you need more than just tactics…you need a well thought out marketing strategy.

 

Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you begin the adventure into the wild world of social media.

What Am I Trying to Accomplish?

Start thinking about the various goals you are setting for yourself and be specific! How many followers are you striving to reach? How many conversions do you want? Traffic? Audience Growth? It all matters and ironing out a concrete goal plan is key to making this all work.

What Do Your Customers Want?

You may think you know what they want, but it is amazing the insight you will get when you just ask! Using social media is a great way to ask customers on a personal level; “Hey what is it you like about us?” “What can we do to make things easier?” The feedback here is priceless information to better your business.

What’s my ROI?

Ok, so if you aren’t getting a return on your investment then you are doing something wrong. Or maybe you had some reach but its not what you expected. That’s ok. Try another campaign, change up your strategy, audience, creative…it’s all about the results and the more you experiment the better your financial results will be.

It’s All About the Dataanalytic

Customer behaviour such as where your social media traffic is coming from and which types of content receive the most views is crucial in leveraging data. You can discover best practices this way, and if one thing doesn’t work, try new factors the next time and don’t forget to reference your history often. Some social mediums have a dashboard with this information similar to Google Analytics. Get the Google Analytics Dashboard Extension for Magento Here!

Sharing is Caring

Most people don’t visit social media sites with the intent of shopping. I know I don’t, yet somehow I wind up joining seminars, buying books, and linked out to Amazon on nearly every visit! This type of marketing is about building relationships first and actual sales are second. Establishing trust is the best way to engage with your target customer. Statistics reveal that people will typically interact with 5 pieces of content before even making a purchase.

So once your plan is in place, its time to start using some tactics to make the most of your social media presence, promotions, and marketing.

Social Media Tactics

Paid Advertising

Paid options can help to dramatically increase your sales. You can push people to website for specials, social page for likes, even sign people up for a newsletter. You don’t have to have a large budget either, its more about your message, demographics overall campaign.

#Hashtags

In the beginning I was confused on what this # sign even was. What they do is help your content become easily discovered and expand the reach of your posts. They are great for interaction but make sure to avoid over using them, and stick to just one or two per post or else you might be labeled as a #hashtagaddict.

Reviews

Let’s face it, when booking a hotel, or choosing a restaurant or new purchase, we all look to reviews from other people! The same goes on social media, so take your success stories and brag a little.photo-2

Feeds and Buttons

Make sure to promote your social pages on all that you do. Buttons are a great way to share on your website, and feeds like twitter are another fun way to engage with people in the social world on your site.

No Sales Pitches

Sales pitches are a great way to lose customers. We aren’t selling encyclopedias door to door here! A better method is to share content in your posts, stories, news, tips and tricks or anything that engages the consumer. I use the word engage a lot because that’s the key to all of this.

Images

Nothing draws the eye more than a compelling product image. This gives your customers a chance to share with others and repost. Using platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are perfect for this. You can also encourage people to post images of your product in use! I had my friends all share photos of my clothing line and I got more comments and likes then I have ever had. Boom!

Relationships

No not Tinder that’s a different blog for a different day! You can build relationships many ways in social media especially by being attentive to messages and comments and making sure to respond to everyone. It may seem time consuming but will make a difference in a sale. Another fun way to interact is by joining similar interest groups. You can keep up on the industry, check competition and chat with like minds.

Keywords

Using high-conversion keywords in your posts can increase their visibility and you can then reach people beyond your followers. Just do some keyword research to find the terms consumers are searching to find content related to your industry, business, and products/services, and integrate them into your posts.

Consistancy

Posting content on a regular basis is critical to improve customer engagement and drive more traffic to your eCommerce website. Frequency can vary based on your market, but consistency is key to show your audience that you’re interested in constantly sharing valuable content. To make this process easier and save time, use a marketing automation tool such as Around.io so you can schedule posts in advance.

Blog It

blog-it-2If you have a great blog (like this one),you will certainly want to share it with your online social groups. Again, a great way to keep things relevant and allow your followers to share and stay in the know with all you are doing.

Keep it Simple!

No one likes information overload. Keeping it short and sweet you’re your updates attract more engagement on social media than longer posts. If you can tease with engaging headline, your followers are more apt to read it and then share the content if its brief and compelling.

As you can see, there are tons of ways to drive more traffic to your site using social media. I once thought it was a simple process, but it is much more complex but can be so much fun too with the right mindset. Good luck and try not to get distracted by the Farmville or Candy Crush invites!

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Drive Magento Marketing Strategy by Adding in Cost Data to Each Item

Magento includes a large library of attributes you can enable within your store. One field that many stores fail to unlock is Cost of Goods Sold. In Magento, Cost of Goods Sold is called “Cost” and it lives in the Prices section of each of your products.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is the amount of money spent on raw materials to create product, or the amount of money used to purchase a product from a wholesaler. COGS is important because it helps stores calculate Gross Margin by product.

Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold = Gross Margin

Gross Margin (also called Gross Profit) is an important driver of store strategy and should be well understood for each product. Gross-MarginBecause Gross Margin represents cash available after paying a supplier, it’s good to use as a primary consideration when managing marketing expenses. Products that have high Gross Margins, such as electronics, are better suited for pricier marketing campaigns, while low Gross Margin items may be a better fit for scalable marketing such as email campaigns.

In some cases, increasing marketing spend on low-margin items may actually make sense. By combining sales volume with Gross Margin data, you may learn that a low-Gross Margin item is generating a healthy amount of cash thanks to a large number of orders. For instance, selling one bracelet may generate six dollars of Gross Margin, but selling 500 bracelets may generate $3,000 of Gross Margin. While it may seem intuitive that you would spend more cash to market high sales-volume products, knowing the exact Gross Margin for an item will help you understand how much of a product’s Gross Margin can comfortably be allocated to marketing. It will also help you track the return on your advertising spend by product. Keep in mind, marketing is just one of many operating expenses. You’ll want to consider other expenses as well when you budget for advertising spend.

Tips for Using Gross Margin to Dictate Strategy

  • Place items that have a healthy Gross Margin and that convert well in the prime real-estate positions of your store.
  • Bundle low-margin items with high-margin items to justify the time and effort spent on merchandising and shipping costs. Or where appropriate, only sell your low-margin products in packs of three or five.
  • Raise advertising spend for items that generate high amounts of Gross Profit, but be sure to analyze the effects of increased spend on sales volume to understand the return on this spend.
  • Negotiate with your vendors to reduce Cost of Goods Sold. Consider switching out expensive materials for options that don’t compromise quality.

Ready to get started? Here are the steps for enabling Cost attributes to appear on each product:

Step 1: Log in to your account and go to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attributes.

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Step 2: Under Attribute Label search for ‘Cost’ and click on the row.

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Step 3: Scroll down to Apply To and change the setting to be ‘All Product Types.’

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Step 4: Save your work and go to Catalog > Manage Products.

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Step 5: Click on a product and go into the Prices tab. Enter the Cost for each product and save your work.

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All done! I hope that helps with your Cost Attributes and Gross Margin calculations. Anything that can give you a better idea of exactly how you’re making money is a step in the right direction. Until next time!

Sheryl Davis is a digital marketer at Glew, an E-Commerce analytics software provider, where she focuses on helping online stores understand and act on their data. Each week she publishes practical strategies for ways to rock E-Commerce.


Abandoned-Cart-Email

Abandoned Cart Extension Overview

Extendware’s Magento Abandoned Cart Email extension allows you to capture additional sales by emailing customers who have abandoned their shopping cart without making a purchase. You can send an unlimited number of follow-up emails to the potential customer and even attach an automatically generated coupon to the follow-up email in order to incentivize a new purchase. This extension pays for itself within just a few orders.