Seven Ways To Use Social Media For Building A Successful Online Dropshipping Business
Social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram have gained massive momentum in recent years. Because of their wide reach and strong networking potential, these channels are not only used to build social connections, but they can also help in the process of digital advertising and marketing. Today, billions of people use social networking channels to stay connected. That lends a great opportunity for your online dropshipping store to reach a large number of people within seconds of posting an ad. If you look around, you’ll see plenty of brands using a mix of organic and paid ad strategies to promote and market their brand on prominent social media channels. The good thing is you don’t have to be a social media marketer or a pro to promote your brand on social media platforms. In this article, we’ll highlight seven ways to use social media for building a successful online dropshipping business. So without any further delay, let’s get started. What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing, as its name suggests, revolves around the use of prominent social media platforms to market a specific product or a service. The process involves running social media advertisements, sharing relevant content, engaging your target audience, and analyzing your results. Importance Of Social Media Marketing For Your Online Dropshipping Business
According to a survey conducted by Statista, social media marketing has helped businesses achieve up to 59% and 78% of improved sales and traffic goals. Many businesses today (both online and offline) are now switching from traditional marketing approaches to social media marketing practices to increase engagement and sales. So if you haven’t included SMM strategies into your marketing framework yet, we suggest you do it now to skyrocket your dropshipping sales and conversions. Social Media Marketing – Benefits You Can Connect With Your Audience On A Personal Level Having a strong social media presence enables your business to connect with your audience on a personal level. You can interact with your target customers, share your success stories and even failures to let them know how you build up your business. This way your audience would be able to better connect with your brand. You Can Cost-Effectively Market Your Products And Services Unlike other marketing mediums, social media marketing is a cost-effective way to market your products. You don’t have to use different paid ad tools either. All you need to do is to create a business page on different social media platforms, and you can stay connected with your customers by just being consistent in posting valuable and relevant content. Build A Customized Audience Social media marketing channels have made it easier for online dropshipping store owners to get data on customer’s activities. By setting up a business page on these platforms, you can easily keep yourself updated with the recent metrics (clicks/purchases). With this information at hand, you can better target those customers who are more interested in your products and services. Follow Your Customer’s Activities And Buying Behaviors Social media allows marketers to keep an eye on their target audience’s likes, dislikes, and buying preferences. This enables you to focus on more personalized marketing approaches. For instance, you can create content that is more personalized and relatable to your target audience. Increase Brand Awareness And ROI Creating brand awareness is a critical step that enables your online business to better engage with people who’re already aware of your product range and services. Once people start recognizing your brand, they’ll be more interested in purchasing your products and services.
By doing so will help you create a loyal customer base that trusts your business because of quality products. At this point, you must have a clear understanding of why it’s important for your online business to benefit from the best social media marketing practices. Here is the list of seven ‘tried-and-tested’ social media marketing strategies that, if done right, can do wonders for your online business: 1. Build Authority Using Content The blog on your website is a digital asset that not only facilitates the process of search engine optimization (SEO) but also serves as a source where you can announce your new products, deals, and discounts. Linking your blog with social media posts will improve the customer journey and helps build trust. You can even partner with other social media influencers and bloggers to increase engagement and boost conversions. Another important thing is to link all of your social media accounts to your website. Keep all of your social media profiles updated. You can add links to your social media profiles from other platforms as well. For example, you can embed links of your social media profiles under your YouTube videos to help viewers approach directly to your social media pages or website. 2. Offer Discounts & Giveaway Campaigns Another effective way to improve social media engagement is to introduce discounts and give away campaigns. Lenskart is one of the biggest examples that has gained massive success in their promotional social media campaigns. They offered a free coupon worth Rs.150 on any new subscription. There are many ways you can use these promotional campaigns to your advantage. Apart from discount deals and promotional offers, you can also create polls or survey forms to build engagement. 3. Invest In Social Media Ads According to research, more than 89% of digital marketers use Facebook to run their marketing campaigns. Here, it’s crucial that you focus on those social media platforms whose audience resonates with your target customer base. Your chosen platform must be able to increase engagement and your capacity to communicate well with your audience. Luckily, all prominent social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, offer a wide range of advertising options.
For example, you can use the dynamic product advertisement feature available on Facebook and Instagram to promote your products to visitors who have already shown interest in your products and services. 4. Conduct Social Media Audits And Track Your Campaigns Next on our list is a social media audit. The process involves a careful examination of your social media marketing strategies so that you can pinpoint those areas that are not performing well. With a social media audit, you can easily track metrics and measure engagement and popularity. Fortunately, you can find many social media audit templates for your brand. Also, the process isn’t as intimidating as it may appear when you think about it. Since your social media marketing goals are specific to your brand, you have to ensure they’re in line with your current progress. With popular data analysis and reporting tools, you can track your profile metrics and performance. 5. Leverage The Power Of Analytics Many social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, have built-in analytics tools that enable you to track your progress on a regular basis. With these tools, you can easily monitor your customer’s buying preferences, attribution, and other relevant factors. The idea is to identify the sources that are contributing the most to the conversion process. These tools also make it easier for marketers and online store owners to make the right decision based on past data and metrics. 6. A/B Testing Another important yet often neglected aspect is to create social media posts that are coherent with your overall branding. A/B testing, also known as split testing, is an effective way in which you show two variants of the same page to two different segments of website visitors. In addition, you can also conduct keyword research to find out the low, medium, and high ranking keywords that you can use within your content to optimize conversions. Last but not least, you can leverage hashtags to attract more visitors. 7. Implement Retargeting Strategies Another proven way to use social media for building a profitable e-commerce store is by implementing the right retargeting strategies. By focusing on these strategies, you can retarget those customers who are already familiar with your brand, products, and services. Choosing The Right Social Media Marketing Channel
Facebook With over 2-billion users, Facebook is one of the most popular social marketing channels. If done right, Facebook marketing is extremely effective and result-driven. With Facebook marketing, you can target and retarget custom audiences. Whether you have a clothing store online or you sell stationery, you can use Facebook to market your products and build engagement. Apart from that, you can also create your storefront using Facebook shopping. Here, it is crucial to understand that having lots of followers isn’t enough to become successful. Instead, you must focus on building a loyal customer base that also brings in conversions for your store. Since everything you create on Facebook is shareable, your followers can share your posts on their profiles within seconds. Make sure you keep your focus on creating user-generated content (UGC) instead of buying fake followers. Also, ensure you keep connected with those who regularly comment on your posts. You can also benefit from Facebook live videos to stream interviews, product tutorials, and Q/A sessions. Instagram Instagram is currently ranked as the top sixth social media website. According to research, approximately 55% of users aged 18 to 24 use this platform multiple times a day. Similar to Facebook, Instagram also offers a wide range of features to its users. Also, you can set up Instagram shopping to provide your customers with a seamless buying experience. Instagram ads are native, meaning you can scroll them through your feed as you see them. These ads are easy to set up and run. Also, you can include links directly to your ads and can also benefit from story ads to draw customer’s attention.
As far as increasing followers on this platform are concerned, it all revolves around attracting users through engaging and value-driven content. When you follow other people, they’ll follow back. So you can follow people who’re working in the same niche as yours to gain more followers on your Instagram page. Apart from that, you can also use hashtags to increase followers. Just ensure you add specific and targeted hashtags instead of generic ones. The time you post your content can also make a huge difference. Research suggests that lunchtime and after-work hours are the best time to post content on Instagram. Similarly, Wednesday gets the highest level of engagement than any other day of the week. Twitter Twitter is another powerful social media channel that currently has over 330 million active users. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, that relies on long posts and videos, Twitter focuses on short and tothe-point text-based posts. But the good thing is that you can integrate videos and also hire an influencer to market your brand on Twitter. Plus, you can also use promoted tweets to promote your products. These ads are the same as ordinary tweets except for the fact that they include a small ‘promoted’ tag to signify their status. Twitter’s algorithm works more or less similar to Instagram. To increase engagement, you have to better engage with your audience, use specific hashtags, and optimize your profile. One of the best ways to improve engagement on your Twitter account is by using more and more relevant and high-definition images. Pinterest With more than 300 million active users, Pinterest is another emerging platform that offers a plethora of benefits to dropshipping store owners. There are many types of pins that you can use to promote your products. Besides using standard ‘promoted pins’, you can also leverage buyable pins to allow your customers to buy directly from the post instead of checking in the website. Here it is important to understand that the user base of Pinterest is very different from other available social media platforms. Since Pinterest revolves around visual elements, you have to ensure you use bright and relevant images to market your products. It’s also important to use the right mix of keywords and hashtags to make your posts and videos more visible on Pinterest. In addition to these basic social media channels, you can also benefit from Tiktok and Snapchat to build engagement.