Social media marketing for online shops
In addition to the classic online marketing channels such as traffic via search engines and affiliate programmes, social media networks can also be valuable suppliers of high-quality traffic to your own website. In this blog post, we show you how the social media strategy harmonises with the overall online marketing strategy and ensures that additional traffic comes to your own site and converts to customers in your own shop.
The SMM strategy in e-commerce
A Facebook page, a Twitter account, or the company’s own Google Plus page can be quickly created for your own shop and provided with graphic elements. But the biggest task in this context is the maintenance of accounts with relevant content that supports the building of an audience. On Facebook, for example, the algorithm means that our postings are very closely tied to high-quality content since we do not achieve any organic reach with our pure advertisements. Facebook attaches great importance to the quality of the user-specific feed and, with its algorithm, makes online shop operators assume that social media activities do not calculate and are more likely to be viewed as a cost centre in their own company.
But what is wrong with this strategy? On the one hand, social media marketing measures cannot be seen as performance marketing. So it is not a channel to achieve short-term success, as is possible with SEA and the affiliate programmes. But in the long term, social media marketing is a significantly cheaper alternative than the more expensive performance campaigns via affiliate networks or Adwords campaigns.
Thus, social media marketing does not fall under performance marketing but gives you the opportunity to interact with your customers and bind them to the branding of your online shop in the long term.
So you can use social media marketing very well for CRM measures and get already convinced customers to recommend your shop to their circles.
As a rule, such a strategy does not take effect in a few weeks but is a measure that should be set up in parallel with performance marketing measures and contribute to making your own online shop even more successful in the future. There is no direct feedback on increasing sales in the initial phases of social media activities, which means that these marketing measures must be seen as investments. As a sensible investment in customer loyalty and the expansion of recommendation marketing. If you offer the customer a unique shopping experience, they will also be happy to share it with their friends.
Social media advertising: the hybrid among the OM measures
With the IPO, the monetization of the social media platforms has now also begun, which opens up great potential for e-commerce. Because paid content increases your reach significantly, you can also use tracking snippets to win over former shop visitors on social media channels for your own offer. In this way, social media marketing also gets a performance component, which also transports your branding via the ads and contributes to a growing audience.
You can design the ads according to the goals for social media marketing, which will help you achieve the goals much faster. With the correct use of social media advertising, your own social media channel in e-commerce can also result in direct sales and, at the same time, convey your own branding.
In summary, social media marketing is an important sub-discipline of online marketing and, if done correctly, can result in direct sales. It is important that you manage the fine line between monetization and entertainment without giving the user the feeling that their own channel is bothering them with advertising. A good knowledge of the target group and working with personas enables you to precisely control the advertising messages under the guise of entertainment. This target group knowledge distinguishes good shops from bad online shops in connection with the social media strategy.
The Golden Grail: Viral Content
The supreme discipline in social media marketing is the creation of viral content. Viral content is content that is loaded with emotional value and helps this content spread on the Internet more or less by itself.
Media such as video content, infographics, or even interactive content, which convinces and impresses with its refreshing novelty, also come into play with viral content.
There are various motivations for the user to share your content:
– Your contribution is absolutely amusing.
– Your contribution is incredible. (high level of information; no everyday knowledge)
– Your contribution is highly emotional.
– Your contribution makes the user stop and think about it.
– Your contribution makes the user smile.
– Your contribution is dramatologically charged and entertaining.
– Your contribution is provocative (Warning: Shitstorm).
Creating viral content isn’t an everyday way to grab attention. A good feeling for the target group and the right handling of media, as well as a groundbreaking idea, are the right spices for successful viral marketing. One looks in vain for a general recipe at this point.
Conclusion: social media in e-commerce
Social media marketing in e-commerce is a sub-discipline of online marketing for online shops that does not pay off at first glance. Rather, it is an instrument for customer loyalty and the expansion of recommendation marketing. The social media channels also do not have a direct influence on search engine rankings, but they can provide fast, solvent traffic for your own shop and, with targeted advertising campaigns, can also lead to transactions in the shop. The use of SMA (Social Media advertising) and the creation of entertaining content (viral marketing) should be included as a priority in the specific objective when establishing a social media strategy for your online shop.
