Do you wonder what social media campaigns are best to run for your e-commerce store to attract more new customers? Maybe you’ve tried other marketing strategies to increase sales. Like most online vendors, you must’ve delved into Facebook[2] ads, re-designing your website, increasing site traffic and, putting more HD images of your products, to no avail. Oh, the pains of conversions.
But you don’t really have to suffer the agony of a lack of buyers for your online store products. There’s a smart solution that you can do today to gain new customers who will surely admire your products and even share it with their friends and communities. You just have to leverage your existing resources and make the most of them. Are you ready?
Look no further than your existing customer[3] list and website traffic. Every person on your list has his own reach. Your customers’ recommendations to their own circle of influence can be the large-scale and yet personalized marketing, that your e-commerce shop needs so people effortlessly begin to know, like and trust your brand. Put it simply, referrals may just be the missing link to your success. It’s good for your business because referrals are not only cost-efficient, excellent social proof, and a great source of profitable and loyal customers, but also, they’re simple to launch. It’s really not complicated to create referral programs, especially when you use the right software. If you don’t have referral programs right now, you’re doing a disservice to your e-commerce business.
Before you set-up, you need to know first what referral marketing programs you can quickly implement on your site. This enables your happy customers to easily share their recommendations with their own network, whether it’s about your products or their buying experiences in your online store. If you want them to take immediate action, you have to make the sharing process quick and hassle-free, else, they’ll forget about it. How do you achieve this?
Here are three ideas to generate more referrals for your products. Remember, the best social media campaigns that will help boost your sales are those that focus on your referral marketing programs. If you follow through, you can expect to have new customers in no time.
This is the most effective strategy to ask your customers for referrals. If you’re only able to implement one referral program, this is the one. The key to more buyers coming to your e-commerce site is for your customers to invite their connections to come and click the link.
You need to give your existing customer a unique link that’s to be shared via social media or email[4]. When friends click on the link and purchase, the coupon applies, and your customer receives the reward.
First, you need to determine the right offer to your customer’s friends. Since the goal is to get the friend to purchase, you need to provide your best coupon for first-time buyers. Then, you need to decide what’s the right offer to your customer. You’ll need to test out different offers to find out the best reward. But you can start by giving away gift cards and discount coupons from your own e-commerce store. Giving away gift cards from big, popular online stores like Amazon and Starbucks also works well.
When your offers and rewards are ready, you can create your own program rules. Then you need to put it up on a page in your website. And, you’re all set to launch.
The invitation to join your referral program needs to be visible and obvious. After purchase, they should be presented with the opportunity to share in exchange for a reward. You can do this through a pop-up window, email, store page banner, Facebook page tab and social media news feeds. Want more detailed instructions on how to create them? You can get a copy of our white paper here.
This program is very efficient in converting your customer’s purchase into more referrals. It works so well because the customer receives an incentive for an item that he or she really likes which makes him or her more motivated to buy. Additionally, customers tend to buy another item which they wouldn’t buy normally because they’re presented with a chance to get the item for free.
The way to do it is, to encourage your customer to complete the purchase and share with friends. When it’s done, your customer receives a refund for the item when three of his or her friends also purchase.
You have to decide what’s the right offer for your customer’s friends. Bear in mind, that you need to give them a generous discount to win their attention, as they’re not yet your customers. Then you can prepare your program mechanics. Upload it on a page on your site and you’re all set.
You can promote this program on every product page of your best-selling items. You need a piece of code from your software provider, that you can copy-paste on your product page. It typically works on iFrames, sticky tabs and buttons. It’s also perfect with email marketing[1]. You can send a thank you email after purchase, where you can include a link to the program page.
This strategy performs very well in growing the size of your email list. It’s so easy for your customers to do what you request of them because there’s no selling involved. They simply need to ask their friends to sign-up for an email list. It can go viral and result in more website visitors signing-up for your email offers, with expectations of winning the prize.
When your customers join your email list or eNewsletter, they’ll be entered into a weekly sweepstakes. They are presented with the opportunity to share with their friends, through a link that you give them in the Thank You page during sign up. Ask them to share with friends so they can receive 10 bonus entries in the weekly drawing for every new sign up they referred. The software tracks everything and selects the winner automatically. Posting the name of the winner at the bottom part of your weekly offer emails is proven to boost open rates, as they want to see if they are the winner each week.
It’s always good practice to choose the right offer or prize for your subscriber. When the offer is ready, create your program rules. Publish it on a page in your e-commerce site and start promoting the program.
This type of program can be done on every page of your website. Statistics say that a person needs to be presented an offer at least seven times before a purchase happens. Most likely your first time visitors may just be evaluating your store. Make sure to capture their email addresses through your sign-up form. You can send them offers in their emails until they’re ready to buy. Through a copy-and-paste code from your software provider, you can put up your sign-up form as a button in the store header and as an ‘exit intent’ pop-up if the visitor attempts to leave your store. You can also create a Facebook page tab where your social fans can go, to become your subscribers. You can also post your sign-up form page link on all of your social media feeds. This way, your social fans can get into your email list anywhere, anytime.
If you want to know further details on how to go about these three ideas and, receive four more great ideas to help you easily gain referrals that convert into new customers, you can download our complete report.
If you want to have high customer retention who willingly spread the word about your business for you, and not only new customers who make a purchase now but are gone tomorrow, then you’ve got to make sure that your products are of high quality and prioritize customer satisfaction. When you’ve done this, your current customers will be more than willing to join your referral programs.
Do you know that although these ideas can be applied to any social media management platform, you can run more efficient and targeted social media campaigns when you use Sociamonials. You can make your campaigns as creative as possible, through an array of options available at a click of your mouse. Whether it is ‘Refer A Friend Program Campaign’ or ‘Get This Item Free Program Campaign’ or ‘Email Offers Sign-Up Campaign’ that you want to implement, you can get it done a few minutes from now.
Are you ready to create your first campaign? Do it fast and easy, and yet, of high quality and efficiency through the state-of-the-art campaign management technology available only at www.sociamonials.com.
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