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You will know that worldwide, Facebook is the largest online social network, there are over 1.5 billion active Facebook users. This data from Global Web Index on active social media network platform active usage shows the continued dominance of Facebook.
How can retailers best take advantage of all these Facebook interactions? This post looks at Facebook fan engagement for e-commerce websites specifically - I hope the examples I show will give you some new ideas. The Smart Insights Guide to Facebook marketing has more details and guidance with retail examples too.
We will explore how to structure your page and what types of status updates to choose in order to gain the most relevant and loyal audience of your future customers. You will also find out what applications work best.
A huge advantage of a Facebook page is that it allows brands to get closer to their target audience. Facebook gives companies a number of ways to interact with their fans, show love to them and gives a human face behind the brand.
With Facebook you can talk about your business on a regular basis without being pushy and obsessive.
Facebook now allows very precise targeting of your, narrowing down the search even to the company a person is working for and their position. It reduces the cost of your ads and increases the conversion rate of such fans.
If you want your Facebook page to drive sales, which as a retailer you will, you should focus on how to engage audience with your brand and the content you publish.
If the audience is engaged, then are more likely to participate and to purchase. To spark interest in people who you invite to the Facebook page and keep them engaged, it is recommended to follow certain principles in your content strategy and page design.
Research shows that posts with images get the biggest audience engagement.
The rapidly growing popularity of visual-based social networks like Pinterest shows that online users are more likely to react to and share visual updates like this.
Such an approach can be accomplished through links to useful resources, news updates, how-to posts, answers to the most popular questions, etc. This way your brand page will become a source that your fans will visit regularly.
Take a look at Pretty Presets for Lightroom’s Facebook page. The company sells photography presets and they regularly host free webinars providing valuable information to their fans. The outcome is great audience engagement.
Good and consistent visual branding on your Facebook page is also an important factor. It distinguishes your page from your competitors’, makes it more memorable in the users’ mind and facilitates the further development of your brand.
To achieve this effect, use the same colour scheme in your Facebook page, images and logos as you use on your website and elsewhere. Pay special attention to the cover photo and images for apps, if done correctly and in the same style they create an instant impression of stable and well-established brand.
Source: Fanta Facebook page
Getting user’s attention is the toughest task in social media. Posting regular, quality content is not enough. It is important that the audience sees this content of course. On Facebook, algorithms like EdgeRank work behind the scenes and determine who will see your post in the news feed and who won’t.
One of such algorithms is the experience of previous interaction. If previously the user visited your Facebook page, liked the post, shared it or commented on, then most probably this user will see your post in his news feed. Consequently, having seen the post, he or she might view it, like it,follow to the products tab and so on.
Luckily, there are several smart ways how you can encourage your fans to interact more with your page. First of all, these are different types of contests. Marketing experts believe that a well-organized contest can surely give return in the form of quality leads.
There are different Facebook third-party apps that allow conducting contests in the tabs of your Facebook page. Also, after changes in Facebook contest rules, it is possible to run contest right on your timeline.
There are lots of possible contest ideas and they depend on the nature of your business. For example, for a food or cooking-related products a recipe contest would be a great option. It would also give your page a lot of user-generated content, which typically drives great engagement and wide audience reach.
In many cases to get fans talking, retail brands can use open-ended questions or ask fans to vote for the best option. For example, once Amazon asked people what they were reading to promote its deal on books. In the end, the post received 1,396 likes, 218 comments and 264 shares.
You can see a successful implementation of this tactic on the TJ Maxx Facebook fan page:
Fun social games are another low-cost, yet effective method to stir activity among your audience. Social games could be run right on your timeline and encourage people continuously come back to your page and interact with it.
Different types of gaming activities are possible: guessing games, storytelling, you can come up with your own idea remembering some games you played in the childhood. In this post you will find a detailed description of several games which could be easily implemented on Facebook timeline.
Support your efforts with proper calls to actions. Make sure that all your posts feature clear call to action – if you want people to click your link or status update, tell them about it!
A popular practice these days is including other social networks’ tab on your Facebook fan page. Such integration allows users seamlessly access the content of your other social accounts. As a result, your accounts receive wider audience and more ways how the user can interact with your brand. As a rule, brands choose Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest integration for their Facebook page. Pinterest is often best for fashion and style retail brands. Here's an example from Forever 21 from their Facebook brand page.
Source: Forever21 Facebook page
As an online store you can customize your Facebook page to make it more suitable to your e-commerce needs and market the business more successfully.
Facebook tabs featuring different apps can support the sales goals of an e-commerce business, sometimes called 'F-commerce business'. Here, online stores are able to create tabs showing full range of products on their Facebook pages. It's perhaps most relevant for smaller businesses.
Different options are supported: the buyers can follow to the website to proceed with the payment or complete the purchase right on Facebook without leaving the network.
Source: Winetasting.com Facebook
Shopify has a good selection of plugins that allow you to integrate your shop with Facebook fan page and ensure that your sales goals are achieved.
For example, Beetailer plugin avoids the hassle of product data migration by using your current catalog of products and stock information to create Facebook store. It also has social sharing buttons on each product page, lets you run promotions, and provides analytics to analyze the sales.
Facebook: Shopify Facebook
In fact, Facebook tabs have a variety of options, so go as far as imagination takes you, with wide selection of third-party apps you will be able to implement all of your ideas. For example, you can create tab listing.
For your brand upcoming events, newsletter sign-up tab or tab which will facilitate your digital campaign. Foods supermarket chain Whole Foods Market used tabs to show how-to videos, offer Thanksgiving quiz, run Wellness club and list job openings.
Source: WholeFoods Market Facebook
A large share of audience joins brand in social networks in order to always know about new deals or receive exclusive discounts. If your brand heavily uses discounts and deals in marketing, make sure to show them the best on your Facebook page too.
You can make the use of apps created specifically to offer coupons, gifts and run different kinds of promotions.
For instance, on Amazon's page, sweepstakes and deals apps are the most popular applications. Generally speaking, making exclusive offers to your Facebook fans is a huge driver of engagement too. Having received some kind of incentives, these fans are more likely to buy from your page and share it with their friends.
Thanks to Elena Ruchko for sharing her thoughts and opinions in this blog post. Elena is a GA certified individual and enthusiastic online marketer, who possesses experience in SEO and content marketing. Currently Elena works as a marketing assistant at Promodo.com.You can connect with her via LinkedIn, Twitter or Google+.
By Expert commentator
This is a post we've invited from a digital marketing specialist who has agreed to share their expertise, opinions and case studies. Their details are given at the end of the article.
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