Businesses understand that there is a vast pool of potential customers on social media, but the challenge is found in driving their social media followers to purchase products. In this video from Park Street University’s series with Speakeasy, Sommer Burbank, Paid Media Specialist for Speakeasy Co., discusses how to turn social media followers into customers. Burbank emphasizes why brands should engage with their online community, and use imagery and verbiage that speaks to their unique qualities.
There are many points in a customer’s shopping experience that are important for driving conversions, but your e-commerce product page is ultimately where site visitors decide if your product is worth their hard-earned money. In the latest video from Speakeasy, Burbank returns to discuss how your business can optimize your product page for conversions. Burbank underscores the importance of high-quality images, social proof, mobile experience, and more.
Turn Social Followers into Customers
Sommer Burbank 0:03
Hi, my name is Sommer Burbank and I’m a paid media specialist at Speakeasy Co. Today we are going to discuss using your social media audiences to grow your e-commerce business. By the end of this video, I would like for you to know how to inspire your social media followers to purchase from your online store. With the constant evolution of social media algorithms and the growing number of alcohol brands entering the market, it is especially important to maintain and attract steady growth on Instagram and Facebook, where your competitors are most active and where your ideal consumers engage the most. Between building your social following and driving social media followers to convert, there are numerous strategies to encourage your audiences further down the funnel. Let’s dive into how you can drive sales across your social follower audience using organic and paid strategies.
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Number one: post relevant, high-quality content. Content marketing requires attractive content that features interesting and relevant aspects of your business and products. It’s extremely important that the content you share on your business profiles is engaging and also a reflection of your brand’s personality. From static images and videos to GIFs and carousel posts, there are numerous formats proven to engage your audiences. Within these different formats, you can test different types of content to attract users and encourage them to try your products, such as short-form educational videos, testimonials, product demonstrations (for example, cocktail recipes), and much more.
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Number two: use a call to action. You’ve caught the attention of your social media followers, but the work doesn’t end here. After you’ve reeled in users with what makes your beverage alcohol brand different from your competitors, it’s time to direct your followers to take an action. Whether you want your followers to learn more or shop now, it’s important to convey which specific action you want them to take as well as how they can complete the action itself. For example, a short-form video demonstrating how to enjoy your gin in summer cocktails is well accompanied by calls to either “discover new cocktail recipes on our site” or “shop our versatile gin online.” The idea here is to drive users from social media to your e-commerce site, where they can learn more about your products and ultimately convert.
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Number three: collaborate with industry players. Collaborating with similar businesses is a great way to create content that expands your reach and visibility on Instagram and Facebook. Businesses of any size can partner with other brands to grow their mutual audiences and to provide valuable content that appeals to both parties’ followers. When seeking potential partners, look for brands that your target audience is interested in or already follows, and prioritize brands whose products complement yours. Number four: engage with your audience. Engagement with your followers can make or break consumer perception of your brand and products, turning average followers into repeat customers or even turning off followers entirely. Creative assets and copy used on your brand’s social profiles can start a conversation between you and your followers, or even people who didn’t previously know about your brand.
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Because of this, it is up to you to ensure that you are creating a sense of community underneath your posts or within your messages, where followers can consistently defer to you with questions about your brand, product, and more. Try asking questions in your tweets, captions, and stories to get to know your audience and their needs, or prompt viewers to click a link (for example, a “link in bio” prompt) to help them discover how your products can be of value to them. From there, maintain conversations under your posts and in your direct messages to build a relationship with your followers and familiarize them with your brand image, tone, and voice. When engaging with prospective consumers, it is important to accentuate your brand image using your brand’s predetermined tone of voice. Think: how do you want people to see and associate your brand? For inspiration on developing your brand voice and communicating with followers, it can help to check out social profiles for other brands in your category.
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Number five: combine paid and organic efforts. In addition to the previously mentioned recommendations, layering paid advertising with organic content strategies is a great way to reconnect with your audience at a higher rate. While organic content on platforms like Facebook and Instagram can only reach anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of your total followers, using paid advertising allows you to reach more people with even more tailored content. If you have a Facebook business account set up in Facebook Business Manager, you have the ability to create custom audiences that can be targeted in ads and customized to meet the needs of each specific audience you create.
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The following audience types are available for creation and targeting within Facebook and Instagram. For Facebook, you can leverage:
- People who currently like or follow your page
- Everyone who has engaged with your page
- Anyone who has visited your page
- People who have engaged with any post or ad
- People who have clicked any call-to-action button on your page
- People who have sent a message to your page
- People who have saved your page or any post
For Instagram, you can leverage custom audiences including:
- Everyone who engaged with your professional account
- Anyone who visited your account’s profile
- People who engaged with any post or ad
- People who sent a message to your professional account
- People who have saved any post or ad
Keep in mind that in order to create an Instagram custom audience, you will need to have a professional account—not a personal account or a creator account.
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Once you’ve created your custom audiences, you can begin building out Facebook and Instagram ads within Meta’s Ads Manager using a Facebook ad account. After you determine your parameters at the ad set level, you can begin targeting your custom audiences with tailored ads based on their existing relationship with your brand. For example, ads to users who have only visited your page will have different messaging than ads to users who follow your page or have engaged with your posts. As you run ads to retarget users who have engaged with your brand, use data gathered in Ads Manager to make decisions about your messaging, imagery, and targeting, and don’t be afraid to test new variables consistently.
If you continue to employ a content strategy to grow your social media following organically, you can simultaneously grow your custom audiences, which will increase the number of users you can retarget with ads. No matter the size of your following, it is crucial to stay on top of your content strategy—including engaging with your online community, using imagery and verbiage that speaks to your brand’s uniqueness, and communicating the gap your brand aims to fill in the beverage alcohol industry. Try these tips to convert your social media followers into customers, and let us know what has worked for your brand!
Optimize Your Product Pages For Conversion
Sommer Burbank 0:09
Hi, my name is Sommer Burbank and I’m a paid media specialist at Speakeasy Co. We are here today to discuss conversion optimization and its relation to your e-commerce store. By the end of this video, I would like for you to know how to build a product page that inspires your ideal customers to take action on your site. In order to run a successful e-commerce business, you need to create a fulfilling shopping experience for your potential customers from start to finish. A good e-commerce site not only attracts visitors with alluring and strategic design, it also converts those visitors into customers and ideally keeps them coming back for more. Even with a great-tasting product, an effective advertising strategy, a frictionless checkout process, and ample website traffic, there is no deal to seal without an e-commerce product page that is optimized to drive conversions.
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The following elements are proven to not only enhance the appearance of your site, but also influence your visitors to take action. Number one: high-quality product images and videos. Business owners often put off investing in professional product photography and videography due to the financial investment. While it can be a costly venture, choosing the right photographer to capture the essence of your brand is definitely worth the money in the long run. Your bottle images on your product page are the most crucial visual element to help customers understand what to expect from your product and to differentiate you from your competitors. Low-quality or low-resolution creative assets can diminish consumer perception of your product as well as your brand. Whether you’re hiring a photographer to shoot product photos or taking them on your smartphone, be willing to invest the time and eventually the money into crafting a high-quality product photo and video gallery.
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Number two: product reviews and social proof. Highlighting social proof is a highly useful tactic when it comes to converting prospective customers. Recommendations and referrals from people we know, trust, or associate with are oftentimes more valuable to us than what a brand has to say about itself. Positive feedback from other consumers may invoke more curiosity about your product and encourage site visitors to complete their purchase. Use reviews, press, and social media proof to establish credibility, increase trust among your site visitors, and show potential customers how much your product means to others and how it impacts consumers’ lifestyles. Number three: value proposition. Among the many important pieces of information to include on your product page, it is fundamental to explain why a visitor should buy from you and what makes you different from your competitors. Showcase your product’s uniqueness with engaging, informative copy that ties in product differentiators as well as any benefits that customers will experience as a result of buying and enjoying your product. While your product description is mostly meant to describe what your product and brand offer to consumers—for example, price, size, or tasting notes—keep in mind that you should also use this space to speak to your target audience and highlight the aspects of your product that you know they’ll care most about.
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Number four: mobile experience. When it comes to shopping online, mobile phones are often the preferred device. Therefore, optimizing your product page for conversions means optimizing your site’s shopping experience for mobile users. Avoid missing out on this valuable group of potential customers by ensuring your products can be viewed smoothly and conveniently on all mobile devices, helping your customers buy from anywhere at any time. Number five: free shipping. Due to companies like Amazon, online shoppers often have expectations of free shipping, two-day shipping, or both. With this expectation, mid to high shipping fees can deter consumers from completing their purchases entirely. Because shipping is not cheap, offering free shipping for every purchase is often not possible for most brands with lower margins. Rather than eating the cost of shipping for the purchase of one bottle, you can increase your product price to cover the shipping cost or increase the purchase minimum for free shipping. For example, if it typically costs $20 to ship a $49 bottle, you can test alternative pricing such as $10 shipping on a $50 or $60 bottle. Whether your shipping cost is free, a flat rate, or fixed based on bottles purchased, be 100% transparent about any and all fees by clearly displaying shipping charges on your product pages or in other areas of your website, such as your header, banner, or footer.
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Number six: simplicity. It’s easy for the overall product page design to become cluttered with words and imagery. Keep navigation as simple for your site visitors as possible by ensuring your product page only includes the most relevant and essential information, as well as high-resolution photos. Removing all of the unnecessary elements from your product page helps potential customers focus on the products and contributes to a seamless shopping experience. Friction points cause confusion, mental fatigue, or frustration, and can result in your visitors bouncing from your product page almost instantly. Identify points for improvement to avoid causing potential customers any distress, such as page load times, design, checkout experience, and navigation. Ensure that your page loads as fast as possible, is simple and easy to follow, and lastly, has the option to search for products if applicable.
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Number seven: featured and best-selling products. Displaying additional products on your product pages can be highly useful in case your visitors want to see other product offerings or know what other customers are buying. By showcasing best sellers, you can give hesitant shoppers the opportunity to discover other products that may better fit their needs. Number eight: promotions and discounts. Limited-time percentage discounts and shipping offers are great incentives for customers to purchase your products, especially if it’s their first time shopping with your brand. Highlight all promotional offer details and expiration deadlines in order to amplify a sense of urgency. You can also create a sense of scarcity by highlighting products as though they will not be available for purchase at a later time. With both approaches, the goal is to get your customers to think that they are missing out on a great opportunity if they don’t invest in your product. Once customers do buy, you can also help them feel like they are part of an exclusive community with post-purchase email updates and more.
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While there are many points in a customer’s shopping experience that are important for influencing consideration and driving conversions, your e-commerce product page is ultimately where your site visitors decide if your product is worth their attention and their hard-earned money. Optimizing your product page using the above elements and more can help your business meet the needs of its consumers and inspire them to purchase your products. Have questions about optimizing your online store or need help getting started with direct-to-consumer sales for your beverage alcohol brand? Contact us today at speakeasyco.com to get started. Thank you!