7 Ways to Use Social Media to Grow On Amazon
Social media is a place to share news about your brand and start to understand your customers better. And pull more of them into your sales cycle where they eventually make a purchase.
Your social media accounts are rarely a one-stop-shop for instant conversion, but they can sometimes be. Either way, using social media is a key component of creating a competitive sales strategy on Amazon. Understanding how using the theory of social proof on Amazon combined with your Amazon social media strategy can affect your unique Amazon business model and value proposition is essential for your brand’s overall marketing strategy.
- Importance of Amazon Social Media Marketing
- The Changing Landscape of Social Media & Amazon in 2021
- Don’t Discount the Power of Organic Traffic
- Align the Social Aspects of Your Website With Your Social Accounts
- Constantly and Aggressively Solicit User Generated Content (UGC)
- Integrate Chatbots Into All of Your Platforms
- Keep an Eye on TikTok
- Leverage Your Social Outlets to Build Email Lists
- Conclusion
Importance of Amazon Social Media Marketing
The reality of the current economic climate proves social media marketing for your Amazon business is helping to replace traditional “foot traffic” in retail locations. COVID-19 has dramatically reshaped the way we think about physical space and congregating in large groups with other people.
It’s unclear how permanent these changes will be. But retailers – especially those in malls, etc. – need to think about replacing people who casually stroll into their stores with another type of traffic. You can’t replicate the experience of touching a product or trying it on via social media. But you can do your best to describe products and their benefits to elicit the same emotions someone would feel walking into your stores. It isn’t easy, but the returns are worth the effort.
Like Amazon A+ Content or a branded store, a compelling Amazon social media strategy can also tell customers more about your brand and encourage them to follow for updates about new products and information. Using Social Media also increases your Amazon Customer Lifetime Value.
Social media helps plant a seed in a potential customer’s mind. To help them see your brand as a solution to a problem. Or your products being a way to make their daily lives more comfortable.
Even though one-click conversions straight from social media share to purchase are relatively rare, that doesn’t mean they don’t happen occasionally.
According to Smart Insights, social commerce has exploded in the past five years. More direct e-commerce purchases straight from social channels had happened since 2018 than ever before.
The future is here and there will be unique opportunities in the realm of social media, which we should all be looking to capitalize upon as e-commerce business owners.
The Changing Landscape of Social Media & Amazon in 2021
Your social media followers’ experience must have as little friction as possible. They need to navigate with ease and ideally click once to make a purchase and move on.
People aren’t naturally in the mindset to make a purchase when they’re on social media. They’re most likely killing time between one activity and another. Therefore, purchases that come with a large commitment will rarely happen with one click.
Hopefully, you are already thinking about your private-label brand strategy that will cover everything having to do with your branding, audience, content, and overall advertising strategy. You might already be using this branding strategy via the brand Registry, or running Amazon Ads, for instance, Amazon Sponsored Ads: Brands or Products.
Keep this in mind as you build your social sales strategy. Focus on impulse purchases. Customers on social media want to buy products with a low price point without much thought about the purchase.
1. Don’t discount the power of organic traffic
2. Align social aspects of your website with your social accounts
3. Constantly and aggressively solicit User Generated Content (UGC)
4. Integrate chatbots into all platforms
5. Ditch macro influencers for micro-influencers
6. Keep an eye on TikTok and Clubhouse, and
7. Leverage social outlets to build your email lists
Don’t Discount the Power of Organic Traffic
It’s now a reality that most social networks require some degree of “pay to play” to get traction and reach for your posts. There’s plenty of power in organic content not only on your Amazon product page & Amazon listings but also on your social media.
Content may not get the organic reach it once did on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But there are other platforms where it does. LinkedIn content creation, for example, is vastly under-rated. Only about 3% of LinkedIn users actively create content.
Therefore, the content you create has an opportunity to reach plenty of people in your target audience purely due to scarcity. Creating content around what your brand does differently and how your products & services make your customers’ lives easier is a great way to drive attention.
Where you can, it’s a good idea to spend a few bucks on the social platforms on which you’re going to lean in. But don’t assume you have to keep feeding the beast to get the attention your content deserves.
Your efforts are only worth it when they get you Amazon business. Measuring the post-performance and leveraging what gets the audience is very important. It becomes very easy to gauge influence by using tools that each website offers and tools like SERanking. Of course, Amazon Analytics software for eCommerce sellers ensures your plan is working on both social media as well as Amazon.
With creativity, paying for additional reach can supplement your organic content and not become the driver.
Align the Social Aspects of Your Website With Your Social Accounts
For your social accounts to grow incrementally, your website’s social aspects must align with your social accounts. Make sure social sharing icons are front-and-center on your site. Especially on blog pages, Amazon product pages, and those housing long-form content establishing your position as a thought leader.
It should be easy for your readers and followers to follow you with one click. The content you share on social media on Amazon should reflect the content you’d most want people to share.
When this activity is naturally aligned, there’s powerful reciprocity that builds your audiences organically. And encourages customers to be evangelists of your brand, not just consumers of your products.
Constantly and Aggressively Solicit User Generated Content (UGC)
User-Generated Content (UGC) doesn’t often occur in the wild. You’ll have to work hard to get the train rolling. But once it does, there are substantial compounding returns.
When your customers see that other people like them have contributed, they’re more likely to do so themselves. This tendency is social proof at its core. Therefore, it’s your duty and responsibility as a brand to continuously and aggressively solicit UGC to get things going and start this momentum. One method is to incentivize customers to create content. This incentive could be as simple as a discount for your products or services, a unique coupon code to use, or an Amazon gift card.
These types of incentives are potent if you’re soliciting customer testimonials or feedback to use on your social channels, and perhaps even as the backbone of paid ads.
Integrate Chatbots Into All of Your Platforms
Many new companies offer chatbots to act as virtual “assistants” across social media Amazon, and, your website. These bots may have some different flavors, but their primary purpose is similar: to engage with your readers and potential customers on the front lines.
The definitive SEO resource site, Backlinko, recently published a study on chatbots’ power for building brand affinity. The most telling stat they listed was at least 15% of people surveyed had used a chatbot to communicate with a business.
These people are typically engaging with chatbots for one of two reasons:
1. To get a quick answer in a pinch or an emergency, and
2. To resolve a complaint or a question
When you’re integrating chatbots into your social media platforms and your website, think about how these bots can act as support for your current and potential customers. You should assume that if someone is engaging with your bot, it’s not to find out information but instead solve a problem.
Prep the bot to serve and help. Not necessarily provide high-level information available elsewhere.
Keep an Eye on TikTok
All brands should consider leveraging TikTok to build a presence with a new type of social media user.
Plenty of brands see substantial success on TikTok leveraging the platform’s modern approach to social media through viral video to attract the younger set’s attention. While there isn’t yet a native integration of shopping features directly on the platform like on Instagram, TikTok is hard at work to roll out this feature no later than halfway through 2021.
While it’s still the Wild West, anyone interested in leveraging social media to drive their sales should completely depend on TikTok, if not jumping into the fray and seeing where it takes them.
Leverage Your Social Outlets to Build Email Lists
There’s never a replacement for building a robust, engaged email list that you can lean on as a marketing vehicle, especially when times are tough.
With a substantial email list, you’re less vulnerable to changes by social media outlets. And can continue to focus on the virtual real estate you own rather than the virtual real estate you’re renting on social platforms.
Take the time to promote your email lists on your social outlets. Let people know there’s another way to consume your content, learn more about your brand, and access special email-only offers by becoming a subscriber to your weekly newsletter.
If your email list gets strong enough, you may not have to worry nearly as much about Amazon social media marketing in the future.
It couldn’t hurt to have one less headache.
Right?
Conclusion
There’s nothing easy about building a social media following as an Amazon Business. If it was easy there wouldn’t be as much value in the process – and the results of the process – as there is. The best things in life and building a business are rarely easy. Therefore it’s your responsibility as an eCommerce or Amazon business owner to commit to social media Amazon growth as an element of your business growth.
It’ll take time – and doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There are some unexpected challenges you’ll have to deal with, but the time and effort will be worth it.
DataHawk’s robust suite of Amazon FBA software helps you to proactively develop all other areas of your business, and understand where you are in the competitive landscape. Using our Amazon Keyword tool you can watch keywords you’re chasing, find great product opportunities, leverage reviews to your advantage, and get thorough Amazon sales estimates based on a deep catalog of data.
Heck, you can even be alerted if someone’s trying to hijack one of your successful Amazon listings using Amazon alerts.
With the right attitude toward creating an Amazon social media strategy and access to DataHawk’s tools to do a continuous deep dive, you’re setting yourself up for success as an Amazon business owner!
