Leverage your social! Funneling traffic to your eCommerce stores…

Are you on social platforms? Probably. Is your eCommerce business? Maybe not. Read on to learn how can you use social traffic to your advantage and linking into your eCommerce platforms to help increase your sales.

We’re going to talk about the top platforms in the EU, most of which will probably not come as a surprise to you, and how to funnel build a following and then funnel it towards Amazon, eBay, OnBuy, and external website stores helping in growing your business.

So, let’s start off by talking about the top three platforms here in Europe. And those are Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Now, these platforms have millions of active users a day. So that’s millions of customers that you need to be, and more importantly can be, reaching. These platforms are what you need to be connecting with your customers on and this is where you need to be building your brand so that you can funnel your following to your eCommerce stores.

Now, Instagram is great for sharing those aesthetically pleasing relatable lifestyle-type images, short videos of your products in action, and customer reviews. One of the main features that we like to use on Instagram is product tagging. So, you can tag your products on each individual post, which then can then link straight to your Amazon store or straight to your product listing page.

YouTube is for your longer tutorial-type videos, showcasing your products. And it’s the main way YouTube can really help you is with influencers, so influencers who are reviewing your products. And which obviously is great if it’s coming from somebody else and not just you. And although you can’t tag your products on YouTube videos, you can add links to your products in the description. So, don’t be put off by the fact that there’s no product tagging because YouTube is definitely taking a big step. It’s becoming a type of search engine a bit like Google, where customers are searching for products via YouTube to find real-life reviews and experiences from people who have already purchased your products. So definitely don’t want that one out.

Now Facebook is great for sharing blog posts about your product, slightly longer videos than Instagram but nowhere near as long as YouTube and also customer reviews. One of the main features of Facebook is the Facebook Shop. And this is where you can list individual products which again will link straight to your Amazon store. And these can be displayed at the top of your Facebook Business Page. So as soon as someone clicks on your Facebook business page, they can be met with your products, which is really handy.

There are various other platforms that might be relevant to your business, namely Snapchat and TikTok. But whatever platform you end up using, social media provides you with that ability to consistently drip feed information and images of your products to your audience and gives you that way to have conversations and develop connections with your ideal customers, which is obviously going to result in increased brand trust and higher sales, which is what we’re aiming for.

So, to drive traffic from social to eCommerce platforms, you’re going to need to create awareness about your brand. So, brand awareness is just what sets your company apart from others that offer a similar product with brand awareness and you really want to be making an impact on your potential customers. You want them to understand what you offer and how your brand differs from competitors. You are going to want to generate interest and give them something to remember you by, so think what makes your product different? Is it the quality, a unique feature that no other brand has, you want to be showing your followers your unique selling point and really taking advantage of that, you’re going to want to address your customers pain points.

So, addressing the pain points your customers might be facing and showing how your product can fix those pain points, which is ultimately going to drive a decision to buy your product. You also want to give your customers a clear call to action. So, by tagging your products on your social media pages, linking your Amazon store at the top of your page that’s easily accessible. And you could even start sharing an Amazon discount code with your social media followers to give them an incentive to buy your products.

So, if you want to go down the route of introducing ads and discount codes, via your social media, I will really advise creating unique discount codes for each platform that you’re using. So that you can track which platform made your followers convert, because then you know where those people are coming from, and you know what to target most.

And finally, one of the most important things is to be consistent. You want to be sticking to a regular upload schedule. I would say to start with aim to post once a day and then working up to twice a day. If you’re just need to be consistent with it, you need to keep getting in front of those people and keep warming that audience up. Don’t let them go cold.

Hopefully, that’s been really useful to you and you can go away with some more knowledge on EU specific Social platforms, some information on their usage, pros/cons and best practice. To be able to promote your e-commerce stores and brands, increasing traffic and conversions!