How much social media marketing do you put into your ecommerce website?

[shoptechmedia]

Good morning TB friends!!

I know we are living in a social media driven ecommerce world! And the power that social media holds on the decision making and buying acumen of the Millenials is just staggering.

I am just curious to know how much realty do you put into social media?

Edited September 30, 2019 by shoptechmedia
wrong spelling

[wakabayashi]

To be honest: almost nothing. 

We have facebook pages for our stores. There was a time we also worked with facebook ads to get page likes. But this plattforms are changing alogrithms always to their benefits. Facebook Pages are dead. Even when your customer like your FB page, they won't see most of your FB post. For us it's just a waste of time an money. We focus to bring the people directly to our website and give them everything they need.

Ofc there are other niches (glamour, clothes and so on), where Social media is more interesting. If you have serious influencer, I would maybe try to work with them.

[shoptechmedia]

3 minutes ago, wakabayashi said:

 We focus to bring the people directly to our website and give them everything they need.

Meaning, search engine traffic? Social media traffic?

[wakabayashi]

Well we do a lot of content marketing. So we get traffic by:

• Search Engines Organic
• Google Ads (Google Shopping works good for us)
• E-Mail clicks
• Even some direct visits (either they know our website or our content was linked somewhere).

 

Btw if sombody has examples of good working social media marketing (from small shops), I would like to learn from them 🙂

[shoptechmedia]

10 minutes ago, wakabayashi said:

Well we do a lot of content marketing. So we get traffic by:

• Search Engines Organic
• Google Ads (Google Shopping works good for us)
• E-Mail clicks
• Even some direct visits (either they know our website or our content was linked somewhere).

recently, I read a report.. that social media marketing along with content marketing and search engine tops all venues for effective marketing strategy.. maybe the kind of product /niche influences how the different marketing avenues respond.. as you mentioned re: "...glamour, clothes, so on"...

[wakabayashi]

1 hour ago, shoptechmedia said:

recently, I read a report.. that social media marketing along with content marketing and search engine tops all venues for effective marketing strategy.. maybe the kind of product /niche influences how the different marketing avenues respond.. as you mentioned re: "...glamour, clothes, so on"...

Yeah I agree on that! In our case content marketing just seems to work better. But if you can combine them, you surely get the most benefit from it. But as a small shop it's really hard to handle this all. 

[dynambee]

6 hours ago, wakabayashi said:

There was a time we also worked with facebook ads to get page likes. But this plattforms are changing alogrithms always to their benefits.

I have never used Facebook ads so I don't have any first hand experience with advertising on the platform.

That said, is it not possible to create Facebook ads that link directly back to your website and not to a Facebook page?

If it is possible to advertise a website then carefully using very targeted Facebook ads for a webstore might be effective. The key is the targeting though, really have to know exactly who you want to target or your ad budget can get burned through super-fast with no results.

[wakabayashi]

5 hours ago, dynambee said:

That said, is it not possible to create Facebook ads that link directly back to your website and not to a Facebook page?

Yeah this is possible. I tried it a bit. But it didn't convert well for us. Ok I am also no expert in social media and their ads system... But with Google Ads it's working quite good. 

[shoptechmedia]

7 hours ago, wakabayashi said:

Yeah this is possible. I tried it a bit. But it didn't convert well for us. Ok I am also no expert in social media and their ads system... But with Google Ads it's working quite good. 

I run a few facebook ads, and I have the same results as you.. we didn't convert well enough to merit the expenses.. but some really did well with it..

[wakabayashi]

Well I also have to say, that I personly hate ads. And I believe most people do. And there is a big difference between ads on youtube/facebook compared to google. When you are on google. You search something. So you really looking for something out. If my ad solves your problem, why not? But ads on facebook, youtube, news articles are just disturbing the viewer. Nobody is asking for them.

That's just my personal view on things. I believe there are really sucessful stories on social media. But the idea, that every shop will make good revenue by using facebook ads, is a myth in my opinion. I consider, to hire a pro in the future, who manages this field for a few months for me. Only this can give me the final conclusion. 

[shoptechmedia]

9 minutes ago, wakabayashi said:

Well I also have to say, that I personly hate ads. And I believe most people do. And there is a big difference between ads on youtube/facebook compared to google. When you are on google. You search something. So you really looking for something out. If my ad solves your problem, why not? But ads on facebook, youtube, news articles are just disturbing the viewer. Nobody is asking for them.

That's just my personal view on things. I believe there are really sucessful stories on social media. But the idea, that every shop will make good revenue by using facebook ads, is a myth in my opinion. I consider, to hire a pro in the future, who manages this field for a few months for me. Only this can give me the final conclusion. 

YOu are not along in this and certainly not wrong.. I too hate ads especially youtube ads..

[Gotabor]

Social media really depends on what you are selling and whom you are targeting. The stores I manage are focused on B2B targeting a specific profession. Facebook and Twitter alike aren't bringing us any traffic. We tried facebook ads for the first time in july on a popular accessory that is often bought by both companies and employees. Turns out that it brought us a lot of sales on a 10$ product and it was one of our most profitable marketing campaign of the year. But we had the offer, the timing and we knew the target very well.

From what I've seen, being active on facebook is more worthy if you have a physical shop and your e-commerce shop is a complement to it. Or if you are very popular and focusing on B2C like Zalando, Displate and many more. 
 

If you sell artistics / design products, you might want to create an Instagram account. I'm not very fond of social networks that are focusing on appearence and images, but in this case, they are definitely more relevant than Facebook and Twitter.

If you are focused on selling technical products (car parts, computer parts, a tech product which require a specific setup process...) then maybe you should focus more on making youtube videos. It take a lot of time (or cost a lot if you have to hire someone). But you can integrate them in your product pages with a 30$ module. By making a tutorial on how to install the product properly, you bring something to the table that your competitors don't. And it's also reassuring for the customer. And if you make enough videos you may even gain a few subscriber on youtube (not that it's very useful though).

Lastly sometime shops have a card appearing on the right of google search (like when you are looking for a bakery, hairdresser...), this gives useful tips like opening hours and days, phone number, physical address and so on. If that's the case for you, create a few accounts and leave positive reviews with comments in the field there (do them with a few weeks/months beetween each) and make them realistic (like talking about a product purchased, even adding a picture). It will help, and once there are a few comments, your customer might feel like leaving a comment too. By the way, never delete any comments with 1 star. It's better to answer them. People can't see deleted comments but the 1 star remain...

[wakabayashi]

@Gotabor good post sir! I agree with videos. For me this is between content marketing and social media marketing. They are very powerful. The problem is tough, that they arent really updateable. For example if I do a list like: "best boardgames for fanatasy nerds". In a video this list gets outdated. In a blog post you change a few lines and the blog post is again up to date. 

Of course not all kind of videos get outdated, but it can happen quite often. Also when your products change a little bit over time. 

[Gotabor]

In your exemple with "best boardgames for fanatasy nerds" I agree that the video isn't the best media. It could work if you do one for each month or year to show new boardgames. But I don't know if the time you'd spend en such content would bring you much views and orders.

Though in the case of boardgames, maybe you could find a compromise by sponsoring a influencer. Giving games and maybe some cash in exchange for a sponsored ad in the video presenting the game (I don't know how this really works so if someone got some insights on the topic it would be great).

For the blogs, I agree they are useful, but making a high quality content takes an awful lot of time. And you need to update it quite often to bring viewers. Once again it depends on the products sold, but I think that if I have time to write something in a blog, then I can update or create an awesome product description by rewriting the text, adding images inside the description and so on. In other word betting on natural SEO.

[x97wehner]

We've been increasing social budgets over the last couple years as we see definite results coming from it. We're B2C with no physical shop. We do a lot of content and email marketing as well since the only cost is time and effort.

My recommendation to any new comer would be to exploit content and email as much as possible since there is no cost, but also spread across different channels until you really find where your customers are at and the best way to reach them.

[Gotabor]

Have any of you tried the ads on gmail ? I was wondering if it is interesting or not.

Since they are always at the same place are they impacted by the "blindspot effect" ? (When an ad is always present at a certain spot, the user ends up neglecting it without even being aware of it)

[Guest]

I too have found content marketing to be the best long-term solution.
Regardless, there will always be those customers who look you up on social media to try to decipher whether you are a legitimate company or not. Social proof builds trust so it's important to at least have a presence and a certain amount of followers/ratings.

[goldprint]

Hey guys, sorry for bumping this thread. I've launched a new Shopify store, and I'm interested in finding out where I should promote my product. Social media or maybe search engines? 

[Bodegadelibros]

20 hours ago, goldprint said:

Hey guys, sorry for bumping this thread. I've launched a new Shopify store, and I'm interested in finding out where I should promote my product. Social media or maybe search engines? 

Congrats on launching your Shopify store! 

It really depends on your target audience and product type. Social media can be great if you're looking for a more engaged, younger demographic, whereas search engines might be more effective for broader reach and specific searches. Personally, I've found a mix of both to be effective.

 

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Bodegadelibros

[Kenneth Ong]

On 9/25/2023 at 7:09 AM, goldprint said:

Hey guys, sorry for bumping this thread. I've launched a new Shopify store, and I'm interested in finding out where I should promote my product. Social media or maybe search engines? 

Depending on your niche. I have a Shopify store, and I am selling on it teeth whiteners. So, I get my customers from social media. Believe me, it's hard to run proper advertising campaigns to get traffic to your site.

As a tip, I can recommend using the adspy tool. I'm using it to find out what marketing strategies my competitors use on social media platforms. It might help you a lot in the beginning.