Using social media to drive traffic to your e-commerce site

Are you investing in social commerce? Or just participating in social media? This post looks at helping you to drive traffic to your e-commerce site from the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat by creating campaigns to see ROI on your activities.

Do you get traffic and leads from your social media activities?

Following on from Sian’s post looking at why you should target social media in an SEO campaign, we now look at how to use social media to get people to your site. Driving traffic from your social media accounts can seem daunting, especially if you’re new to social media marketing or your brand doesn’t have a big presence on social media. However we can help guide you on how to create amazing content and campaigns that spark conversation and encourage people to share and ultimately drive traffic to your e-commerce site.

Let’s look at the platforms:

Over the years Facebook has evolved to become a fantastic resource for marketers, brands and businesses, to drive traffic and create leads. So much more than just getting page or post likes and followers, you are able to create targeted marketing campaigns on the platform, push products, create competitions and build brand awareness. To get started you need to create a business page, not a profile or group page:

• Local Business or Place
• Company, Organisation or Institution
• Brand or Product

Once you have created a company page, added engaging images and strong content, you then want to set up this account in Facebook Business Manager to access the business–related assets, separate from your personal newsfeed and account.

Facebook posts

There are a number of different theories on how much you should post on your Facebook page, some a few times a day or every day, to a couple of times a week. One thing that many social media marketers agree on though is consistency, not only on when and how often you post but also what you’re posting, keeping to brand guidelines and tone of voice.

Facebook posts can also be promoted. You can target specific demographics, your target market or potential customer bases, those who would identify with your posts. You don’t want to promote every post you put up, just those which will be directing traffic to your site: the home page, a product or your blog.

Facebook adverts

If you’re regularly publishing content to your Facebook page, building brand loyalty and awareness, and using clear calls to action to your site, you should see an increase in traffic from people who actively follow your page. To generate traffic via Facebook from people who don’t follow you, you can use Facebook ads. These display as large clickable images in the news feeds of users’ accounts. You can optimise your adverts to target the right demographic for your products, drawing customers directly to your site with exclusive content, offers and new products.

When targeting users, you need to make sure you use data you have from your customer base to target location, age, gender and interests. To ensure traffic to your site from Facebook adverts converts you need to optimise your landing pages, make it easy for users to purchase, and make sure your links take them to what is advertised rather than just to your homepage.

Twitter was developed so users could share short messages to their followers. You can also share messages to people who don’t follow you buy using hashtags. Twitter users can post, share and interact on the site, with many people now using the service as a source of news from around the world as it happens.

Twitter is a relevant social media channel for business to consumer communication. Twitter, like Facebook, is always developing new ways to utilise the platform for brands and businesses, offering promoted tweets and advert opportunities. Although you may feel your Tweets get lost in the noise, there are ways to ensure they catch people’s eyes whether they are existing followers of your business or potential new ones.

Like Facebook, you should create a Twitter account for your business or brands. Unlike Facebook you create the business account as you would a personal account, but filling in business and brand details instead.

Twitter Promoted Tweets and Adverts

You can promote your Tweets to target a wider group of users or potential new customers or to spark engagement from your existing followers. When promoted Tweets appear in timelines, they are clearly labelled as Promoted and can appear in any user’s timeline, not just your followers. Users can also retweet, reply, like and interact with promoted Tweets.

With Twitter ads you have a few more options available to use, still being able to have users interact, like and share your promotion and you can either:

• Promote a tweet, like above.
• Promote your account.
• Or be promoted to feature in trends.

Twitter Cards

You can use Twitter cards to share photos, videos and media experiences on Tweets, designed to drive traffic to your website. Visual posts on Twitter see higher levels of interaction and are more likely to generate traffic to your site. There are different cards to fit your needs:

• A Summary Card which shares a title, short description, and an image thumbnail.
• A Summary Card with Large Image shares similar to the above, but with a larger featured image.
• An App Card shares a card with a direct download to a mobile app.
• A Player Card will share a video/audio/media file as well as details.

The photo sharing site has adapted drastically over the last couple of years, after it was bought by Facebook. Following the social media network, Instagram has become a strong tool for marketing and driving traffic to your site.

There are a number of things you can do before you look at paid advertising.

Use your bio link effectively: Instagram doesn’t have a link option unless set up as an advert, so your main way to direct traffic to your site is with the link in the bio. You don’t have to link just to your home page, you can link to product or category pages, even blog posts.

Create appealing images, many users follow a similar theme with everything they post, either as a company, brand or individual. You want to create images which are eye catching and well produced. Additionally when you post an image, it’s important to use the right hashtags, to ensure more people than just your followers see your image and use hashtags relevant to the image or target audience.

Adverts

Instagram has the option to create different types of adverts:

• Photo adverts
• Video adverts
• Carousel adverts
• Stories adverts

Adverts come with a “learn more” or “shop now” call to action option underneath the image, directing viewers to product or informational pages. These adverts can be created in the Instagram app or through Facebook Adverts Manager Account, however you need to first add your account through Facebook. Like Facebook you can target different audiences and set up different budget spends.

Stories

Similar to Snapchat, Instagram Stories allows users to share short videos or images which last 24hrs from their account, to their followers. Instagram Stories is a great option to produce exclusive or behind the scene content for your followers. You can use existing images or video, capture or record your own and edit the stories from you app. Instagram Stories, as mentioned above, also has a paid advertising feature.

Influencers

Influencer marketing on Instagram is hugely popular, looking at users who have thousands of followers and a lot of people interacting on their images. Brands and business can work with these influencers and harness their followers to drive traffic and grow their own following on social media. Working with influential Instagram users can be useful for new product launches, exclusives, behind the scenes and even competitions. When working with influencers on Instagram, all their content used to promote your business, brand or product does have to be marked as: #Ad or #Promotional.

As one of the fastest growing social media networks, Snapchat may not be something you have considered for your business or brand. And while it may not be suitable for every business to be on, it’s a great option for those looking to drive traffic to their site or products if your target audience is on this network. Snapchat has 100 million active users and their demographic is a lot younger than Facebook. 71% of Snapchat’s users fall into the 18 to 34 age range.

Facebook offered to buy Snapchat, but they turned them down. Cue a couple of years later and the Facebook acquisition of Instagram. It now has a new story feature, very similar to Snapchat’s main feature. The premise of short last images or videos might not seem optimal for brands to use for marketing, however as time has gone on Snapchat has adapted to make their social network work well for brands or businesses.

Stories

Add personalisation to your brand using the stories feature: it’s a great tool for behind the scenes action, exclusives and offering your target audience an insight into your brand. Also you don’t need a big budget to produce content for Snapchat. You can also use it to share special offers, promotions and discounts, as well as sneak peeks of new products or services. Using Snapchat Ads you can add call to action from the bottom of stories that can be used to direct traffic to your site or install an app.

Geofilters

One thing that made SnapChat stand out from the crowd was its Geofilters, which originally started out for places, such as towns and cities has now been expanded for brands and business to use. You can set up:

• On-demand – Set up your own geofilter in a location of your choice. When Snappers are there they will see your filter.
• Event – Holding an event, associate your brand with the event so Snapchatters can add it to their Snaps when there.
• Shared spaces – Add your brand to high-traffic social spaces so users can add your filter to their Snaps when there.
• Chain – Set Geofilters in your retail locations, so shoppers and Snappers can share with their friends.
• National – You can create a national campaign to generate interest and awareness for new product launches or events.

And finally…

The most important part of any marketing activity is to review the goals and KPIs set at the start to see if you firstly achieved your goals and secondly that the social media platforms performed optimally. It’s important to do this during and after every campaign in an effort to better understand social media marketing strategies and avoid targeting areas that don’t bring in the traffic or convert as sales.

If you’re unsure where to start with profile images, updates and video specifications then why not download our handy Social Media Cheat Sheet.