Social media channels have become very important to retail brands. Individuals these days are on social media channels throughout the day. For retail companies, it is critical to have proper activity on social media. The activity must be for visitors engaging, enjoyable, informative, and with call to actions using hard to resist incentives.
Social media is important for business. Many purchase products or hire services based on reviews and recommendations. Consumers these days make decisions often based on vendor reviews. Reviews were started by third party websites such as Yelp, but these days it is much more comprehensive. Consumers leave reviews on multiple platforms such as Google+, social media channels, brand websites, and so on.
To increase retail sales with social media, brands must first foster a community and grow it. Then, this community can be introduced to specials, deals, discounts, and other incentives. Social media platforms are also becoming shopping channels. Facebook already has stores available and many brands are taking advantage of it. Omni-channel sales is the way brands sell products now. It means, brands offer their products for sale on multiple platforms. Products may be available on social media, amazon, brand’s site, eBay, third party retail stores, etc.
Social media without proper activity does not work. Key social media accounts should be created, customized, and then managed. This includes lots of activity posted frequently on the social media channels. This content must be relevant to the community the retail brand is creating. The content should be hash-tagged and keyword oriented. The content furthermore should be diverse to not be boring. In other words, consumer oriented and entertaining, informative, and value added.
It takes time to grow a following organically. With recent changes to some of these social media platforms, it makes it more difficult without paid advertising. Paid advertising is a good way to quickly grow a social media following. To increase retail sales with social media, paid advertising can be beneficial on social media channels. Spending money on gaining likes and increasing the audience is a better strategy than spending the money on product ads. This only works when the audience is already in place.
The content frequently published on all social media channels should be diverse in nature not to bore the audience. Topics must be relevant to the retail brand, but can also be trending topics, humor, informative information, resource rich content, and so on. This is critical to creating the proper audience and community for the brand. It is best to cure content not just geared towards what is important for the brand but more what the consumer will find useful, helpful, informative, and what they are looking for.
When done correctly, the social media channels become a frequent stop for the audience and potential future customers of a brand.
Brands that wish to increase retail sales can always work with retail website design experts or through marketing consulting services to learn more about opportunities. Then, proper action can be taken to make the improvements.
