6 Tips for Brands to Create Social Commerce Success
Wondering why your brand’s social media campaigns aren’t converting in a commercially successful way – despite highly engaging content? You’re not alone. So many teams put in the time and effort to create awesome social ads, yet they suffer from minimal ROI. The social media landscape is constantly changing, as are the ways that people use each channel. What worked last year may not work today.
That can be super frustrating – or it can be exhilarating, as we find new and different ways to engage our target audiences.
To help brands maximize their results today (right now), we’ve put together these 6 Tips on Creating Successful Social Commerce Campaigns. We’ve even got a real-life example from one of our craftiest clients to show how these strategies directly impact social commerce success.
1. Starting with What You Know: Your Customers
Having a deep understanding of your customers has always been the key to a brand’s sales and marketing success. The same is true when it comes to creating social commerce success. In a world where online privacy is of paramount importance, the insights a brand already has about its audience are invaluable. Think of it as using a treasure map you’ve already drawn up – it points directly to what your customers love about your brand.
2. Lookalike Audiences: Expanding Your Reach
Of course, we need to go beyond existing customers if we want to boost our social commerce success. Lookalike audiences are a great way expand your reach without losing relevance. They help you find new people who share similarities with your best customers, going beyond just basic demographics to include behaviors and preferences. These are individuals who have a higher likelihood of becoming your newest brand fans.
3. Pixel Power: Tracking Success
The importance of tracking pixels (like the Facebook pixel or TikTok pixel) on a brand’s e-commerce site can’t be overstated. These little tools provide vital feedback on what happens after someone clicks on your ad. By helping to connect the dots between ad views and actual purchases, pixels have the power to provide clearer picture of each campaign’s effectiveness.
4. Attribution: Knowing What Works
Different platforms attribute conversions in different ways, and those ways can change at any moment. Ongoing data analysis is imperative to any digital strategy – there’s simply no “set it and forget it” here. For example, Facebook allows you to choose how you want to credit conversions, like whether a sale came from a click a day ago or a week ago. This knowledge helps you fine-tune your campaigns for better social commerce results.
5. UTM Tracking: Keeping Tabs on Clicks
Really understanding your social commerce results requires data tracking, especially around campaign clicks. Using UTM parameters, you can pinpoint which ads are hitting the mark with your audience. It’s like having a high-powered magnifying glass that shows you exactly which parts of your campaign are shining brightest. (UTM stands for “Urchin Tracking Module” – now you have a fun fact to drop at your next big party. 😂)
6. The Path to Success: Adapting and Optimizing
The great thing about digital marketing: change is always possible! Brands that adapt their strategy in real-time based on the latest data have greater social commerce success, period. It’s about noticing trends, seeing what’s working (and what’s not), and tweaking the approach by pulling different levers. Sometimes, it’s as simple as targeting a different demographic or adjusting a video length.
Untangling Social Commerce for Lion Brand Yarn
Let’s look at Lion Brand Yarn. We began our social commerce journey by targeting millennial knitters on Instagram and TikTok. However, data showed us that we needed a pivot. We shifted our focus to include older demographics and moved more resources to Facebook. This change led to a fantastic 15x Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This is a prime example of how being flexible and data-driven can lead to outstanding social commerce success.
Social Commerce Success: As Easy as Knit One, Purl Two
Creating paid social media campaigns that actually convert into sales is a blend of art and science, with a bit of intuition thrown in. By understanding your audience, using lookalike audiences, leveraging tracking pixels, understanding attribution, tracking clicks, and being ready to adapt, you can significantly improve your campaign’s impact. Our experience with Lion Brand Yarn is proof of this approach to social commerce success. If you’re ready to take your social media campaigns to the next level, we’re here to help. Let’s move the needle together!
