Making the most of Facebook for your ecommerce store

Facebook is the largest and most popular social network on the planet. With over a billion users, it is a vast market for your business to take advantage of, to engage with your audience and increase your sales numbers. Facebook allows you to measure success through advanced analytics. It provides a wide range of data to accurately target demographics, plan your engagement and give your customers the right type of content and contact. Scheduling features make it simple to set up on-going updates in advance, freeing up the day-to-day monitoring to focus on ad hoc posts and time relevant content.

Many ways to connect with your audience

Share content

Facebook isn’t designed for the hard sell. It is for connecting and building a community. It is essentially a digital noticeboard, but used correctly can create an audience of engaged users, who will become a part of your marketing campaign. This is achieved through sharing your content, which is in turned shared by your Facebook community among their friends, who will take it further than what a traditional strategy could achieve.

Advertise

Facebook advertising is a great way to grow the number of “likes” your page has and drive more traffic to your website. The campaigns can start for as little as USD1 per day, with a range of targeting parameters available to help reach the ideal demographic. The greater your budget, the further your reach and the bigger the impact you can make across the network.

Throw an event

More efficient than a leaflet drop, you can create an open event on your Facebook page to promote a product launch or other opportunity to engage with your audience. Your event can be a physical gathering or a virtual one. It is an effective method to grow your network, with your customers promoting the event amongst their friends.

Be generous

Everyone loves a freebie. Enticing people back with the promise of exclusive offers for Facebook users is a useful tactic to increase both traffic and sales. Incentivising referrals will expand the network you have at your disposal, creating and ever widening the audience for your brand.

How to generate greater engagement

Link posts to drive website visits

Posting from your site to your Facebook page can draw users from your profile and drive traffic to your eCommerce store. Facebook naturally includes an image and the first few sentences of a website or blog post, so ensure your opening words are strong to increase the CTR.

Provide exclusive access to your brand

Social media allows businesses to be a little less formal and a little more off the cuff. The speed at which it operates makes it ideal for spontaneous engagement. Whether than means a series of behind the scenes photographs to showcase your business’s culture, or a video explaining how everything works, letting customers a little further in will increase the sense of involvement they feel.

Be up-to-date and timely

Social media is a constantly moving torrent of information. It encompasses the latest fashion, art, culture and news, giving your business hundreds of opportunities to grow its brand. The companies that succeed are the ones that manage to find engaging ways to leverage the latest trends and get noticed. Anything you post needs to be completely up-to-date and relevant. Traditional marketing requires content to be checked, refined and tested, ensuring its accuracy and effectiveness. Social media trends have a very short shelf-life and even referring something a couple of days old can make your business look embarrassingly out of touch.

More than simply a social network

Facebook Commerce is also a great way to add to your business’s omni-channel retail system. It allows users to make purchases direct from your Facebook page, eliminating the need to be directed to your website. This feature further streamlines the process and makes it simpler to increase revenue, while at the same time focussing on engagement and community building.

Part of a complete marketing solution

The digital world is vast and complex and there is no one perfect way to make the most of your customer engagement. Using Facebook is but one avenue for attracting customers and driving website traffic. All social media networks work best when used to complement each other and help other strategies, such as blogging and print media. Competition has never been fiercer across every market segment, which means the companies that manage to create thriving communities of engaged users who will advocate for the brand, are the ones that will succeed.

Neto is the only Australian retail management platform that provides a complete solution for ecommerce, point of sale, inventory, and fulfilment. Our integrated back-end technology enables exceptional and consistent customer experiences via any channel, be it in-store, online or through a marketplace. We automate repetitive tasks and integrate with multiple sales channels to manage orders and shipments. 

We also help you connect with your customers through inbuilt social media sharing and a wide range of add-on integrations to digital marketing platforms, complete with inbuilt analytics to help you track your campaign success. And if you’re ready to take your ecommerce marketing to the next level, start by learning more about the power of segmentation and targeting.

The right ecommerce platform is cruical. Download our free guide on Choosing your Ecommerce platform.