As a brand you may have found that social media and technology have been beneficial tools for consumer relationships as well as promoting the business itself. If you are using several different social media platforms and have been for a while, it is time to consider the kind of data you can use to your advantage as a retailer.
1.) Use Social Media as a Merchandising Influencer
Business Insider recently released an article about how Nordstrom has decided to take a leap of faith in their consumers by using the most popular items on Pinterest in their store. They plan on using red tags in order to showcase these products. According to the article, “Bryan Galipeau, social media manager at Nordstrom, told Business Insider it ‘makes sense’ for the retailer to incorporate social feedback into the shopping experience.” This kind of influence doesn’t have to stop at Pinterest. What are your Facebook fans saying about your products? Which products get the most positive reaction from consumers? What are your twitter fans’ favorite products? Listen to your fans and consumer’s feedback in order to gain a better perspective on merchandizing strategy.
2.) Social Reviews
If you are using an ecommerce website, social reviews are a great way to include interaction with not only the brand, but also the products themselves. Mashable came out with an article on “3 Ways Companies Can Leverage Social Reviews” throughout multiple social platforms. Positive reviews will make for great testimonials you can use for further promoting and negative reviews allow for an opportunity of appropriate response. (To learn how to appropriately respond to negative comments refer to Virginia’s previous blog post) SEO is also a great benefit from social reviews for gaining more traffic and recognition of your brand.
3.) Facebook Re-targeting
According to Zephoria.com, Facebook has 1.11 billion active users. Imagine the percentage of visitors that come to your site that have a Facebook account based on this statistic. According to AdRoll, “Generally 2% of shoppers convert on the first visit to an online store. Retargeting brings back the other 98%. Retargeting works by keeping track of people who visit your site and displaying your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online.” Often times brands will see positive results with incentives on a re-targeting ads such as percentage off the consumer’s purchase or perhaps even free shipping.
Social can become an intimidating tool due to the vast amount of platforms and opportunities. Find out where your brand fits best and “pin down” a strategy that will help your retail performance.
