Four Ways Retailers Can Use Social Media To Boost Sales

With 53 million active social media users in the UK accessing their accounts daily, it is no surprise that 91% of businesses choose to utilise social media to supercharge their digital marketing strategies.

Advertisements and sponsored posts are becoming increasingly popular amongst social platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. With billions of active users, these social sharing channels open up a mass market of hungry consumers who can be specifically targeted by brands based on a range of factors including their age, gender and interests.

This laser-focused targeting enables small retailers to accurately pinpoint their ideal customer and allows them to present a tailored ad at the right time, to the right people. This works wonders for increased brand awareness and often helps to generate a nice boost in sales figures.

But targeted ads are not the only benefit of social media for businesses…

Customer service

Excellent customer service is invaluable in every industry; but it is imperative in retail.

With more and more people turning to social media as a point of contact for brands and their customer service team, it goes without saying that keeping active on social media is important!

There are a whole host of reasons why customers turn to social media; some log on to leave a review, to chase a delivery or to merely seek out advice. Others use social media to openly voice their opinion, make a complaint or worse, go all out to tarnish the reputation of a brand to discourage others from buying their product or service.

To make sure you are keeping on top of comments and interacting with your customers effectively, brands should ensure that they have an active and positive presence on the platforms being used. Brands need to be sure that they are replying to all customer comments whether negative or positive, as this shows your customers that you care about their feedback. It also helps to increase engagement rates.

Also, be aware that savvy consumers actively seek out brand social media profiles to get a feel for how customers perceive them. Do they have good reviews on their social profiles? Are the comments positive? Are any negative comments addressed fairly? How many likes or followers do they have?

The answers to these questions will determine your brands social status. They will either give consumers the confidence to buy from your brand or heed the warning to shop elsewhere!

Target YOUR audience

When we say your audience, we mean YOUR audience.

Small business owners, especially local retailers, need to make the most of their marketing resources and more importantly, their time. Make sure you are targeting the right people, in the right area at the right time. Social media allows you to find and target people from a certain demographic, whether that is an age group, gender, job title or location. Small, locally focused retailers can utilise social media’s targeting abilities to ensure that only potential customers who are based locally are targeted, which could potentially increase footfall and boost your sales.

Monitor relevant conversations

Monitoring conversations on social media comes in many forms, whether you are monitoring conversations as a part of your customer service strategy or monitoring conversations that are happening within the industry, you need to ensure you’re staying alert and up to date.

In terms of customer service, normally there is no way you will find out what someone is saying about your brand, service and products unless you hear through word of mouth, but like with any hearsay, you never know how reliable that is.

Using social media allows you to monitor what people are saying about you, for example, on Twitter you can either search your company name or your Twitter handle (e.g @TheInsuranceOct) to see if anyone has mentioned you in a conversation whether it be directly or indirectly. This allows you to stay on top of any complaints, recommendations or enquiries people have about your business.

As well as monitoring conversations which you are mentioned in, you can also see what is happening within your industry and keep up to date with the latest trends. Whether it be a new digital innovation or a new flavour of crisps which your competitor has released, it is an advantage that you know as soon as possible to ensure you and your business are not left behind.

Get inspiration from your competitors

Have you always wanted to know what your competitor three streets away is getting up to?

Don’t worry it is totally natural, we all do it!

Social media allows you to monitor what your competitors are doing, what new products they are selling, what they are receiving complaints about and what they are doing to promote themselves.

Generally, competitors are people you can learn from – whether that is learning what to do or what not to do, you can use them as a way of growing as a business. For example, your competitors do a ‘follow and RT(retweet)’ competition every month where the prize is one of their products and they get a great response from their customers, perhaps it is time for you to do the odd competition to increase brand awareness across social media.