1. Gather information about their consumers
2. Sell more products and services

Fast forward to today, and businesses leverage social media the same way. After all, social media do not only direct a user to a product, it also allows business owners to create a community around their brand.

In addition, there are now paid and unpaid ways on how you can promote your products on social media. That said, here are five things you can do to maximize the power of social media for your e-commerce business.

1. Start With Just a Few Channels

Before you dive into social media marketing, you need to consider which social channels to use to promote your e-commerce business. Doing so allows you to test the waters without spreading yourself too thin.

You can do this by understanding your target market well and checking out where your competitors are building their online presence.

Understanding Your Target Market

First and foremost, you need to conduct demographic and psychographic research about your audience. That way, you can build a buyer persona for your business.

Your demographic analysis could be age, gender, location, educational background, and technical know-how of your target market. Psychographic analysis, on the other hand, deals with why a person would buy your product.

For example, you have an online store where you re-sell drills from famous manufacturers. Your customers’ demographics could be dads who are aged 35 – 45, living within the US, at least a high school graduate, and can somehow manage to buy stuff online.

Now, the question is why would they want to buy drills from you? Is it because their old one is broken and they are looking for something durable? Is it because a drill is an essential tool for their job? Or is it because they do a lot of DIY at home and their current project requires drilling?

Check Out Where Your Competitors Are

Another thing that can help you figure out which social media channel to use is to know where your competitors are.

Using our previous example, look for other online stores that sell drills. See if they are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like. And then see how they are performing.

If your competitors are on Facebook, and yet not one of them is generating engagement, then that could mean that you should not be on Facebook.

If you see one of your competitors are sharing video tutorials, and they have plenty of subscribers, likes, views, and comments, then that could mean that you should do the same.

Also Read: The Value of Social Listening as a Social Media Strategy

2. Run Social Media Ads

As mentioned earlier, there unpaid and paid ways to promote your business on social media. If you come across a Facebook post that says “Sponsored” then it means that it is a paid content.

Should you do the same thing for your e-commerce business? Yes!

For one, social media advertising allows you to target your customers based on their demographics and interests. There are also platforms like Facebook that allows you to re-target people who visited your site or interacted with your previous social media ad.

In fact, we always encourage our clients at Voy Media to install the Facebook pixel on their website. That way, they can measure, optimize, and build audiences for their Facebook ads campaign.

Each social media channel has its own step-by-step guide on how run an ad, but here is an overview:

1. Determine your goal. Do you want to drive website traffic? Do you want your social media followers to call you? Do you want them to buy from you?
2. Choose ad types and placements. Every social media platform can offer you different kinds of ad types depending on your goal. You can also choose where you would place your ads (e.g. newsfeed, IG stories, or on a YouTube video description).
3. Set your audience parameters. It basically means configuring who can see your ads.
4. Set your ad budget. The cool thing about social media ads is that you only pay when someone clicks or watches your ads after a certain period.
5. Run and test your ads. That way, you will know whether your campaign is effective or not.

3. Create and Share Valuable Content

As Ron Dod, CMO of Visiture, would point out, “People aren’t going to like you on Facebook or follow you on Instagram just for nothing.”

Thus, aside from promoting your business and products, you need to create and share valuable content for your audience. These are content that can demonstrate your expertise in the industry where you belong, as well as showcase the benefits that your products can provide.

So, if you own an e-commerce business that sells drills, some content that you can create are YouTube videos demonstrating how to use the drills that you are selling. You can also publish video tutorials for a DIY project that requires drilling.

The key here is to not shove your sales page to your audience. They will buy if they need to, especially if you can give them a reason to do so.

Regardless, the content you produce on social media will enable you to be the first store that will come to your buyers’ minds should they need to buy a drill.

Also Read: How To Social Media Marketing To Build Any MLM Business

4. Engage With Your Audience

Despite using social media to promote your businesses and products, keep in mind that it is still a network. Meaning, people use social media to connect with their family and friends. Thus, you should do the same with your customers and audience.

In fact, Smart Insights data reveal that 63% of customers expect businesses to offer customer services via social media. In addition, 90% of social media users leverage the platform to connect with a brand.

This explains why you should also treat social media as a customer service channel. When you provide a positive social media experience to a customer, he or she is more likely to recommend your e-commerce business to his or her network. That’s one opportunity that you would not want to miss.

5. Embrace Social Media Influencers

Nowadays, more and more social media users are using their influence to promote a brand or a product. These people are called social media influencer. You can collaborate with them to help your e-commerce business grow.

However, do not just go for people with a lot of social media followers. Look for someone who is in your niche, and whos followers share the same interests are your target buyers. That way, you can maximize the benefits that you can reap from influencer marketing.

Sure, it is not always easy to measure how social media affects your business ROI, but that does not mean that you can skip it altogether. Keep in mind that if you cannot use social media in bringing in direct sales, you can still utilize it to retain customers and demonstrate your commitment to providing value to your customers’ lives.

Also Read: 10 Methods to Promote Your Business on Social Media

The post How to Maximize the Power of Social Media for E-Commerce appeared first on TodayTechMedia.

Relational Databases

The basic description of a relational database is a collection of spreadsheets with each one having a rows and columns of data. The striking difference between this database and common spreadsheets is that the contained data in relational database bear a connection.
Take the simple case of an ecommerce relational database having distinct tables for customers and orders. Ideally, there is a relationship between the orders and the customers such that is order is associated with a particular customer. The relationship is expressed in such a way that the data elements of an order points to a specific customer.
One awesome aspect of relational databases is that it reduces redundancy and thereby intensifying efficiency. For instance, a change in a customer’s information will only require single editing exercises. Take the case of change in email address for instance. You will only need to change the details in one row of the customer table without affecting the orders table. Subsequently all orders related to that customer will automatically be associated with the new email address.

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Ideally, relational databases are perfect for contents that are not product related. They are also ideal for transaction processes. This type of database also comes handy when it comes to design of product catalogues, especially when you are handling overwhelming numbers of combinations like sizes and colours. Over the years, they have grown more popular in the ecommerce industry. Some of the most common examples include MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.

Also Read: Essential Trends You Must Follow To Establish And Boost Your Business Database

API Database

Application Programing Interface (API) is yet another common type of database. It is essential for data retrieval. It enables connections between your ecommerce sites and third party companies through API to allow storage and retrieval of data. This type of database is mostly common in SaaS Platforms including Big Commerce and Shopify. This database allows different merchants to easily connect to the API and modify the functionalities of their individual stores.
This kind of database can be essential in determining some of your products on the high sale list and storing them in a specially designed page; the best sellers’ page. Although it eases ecommerce operations, API comes with its own fair share of limitations. It is only possible to work with the data that the supplier avails on its API. If the supplier doesn’t avail the order data for instance, there is nothing you can perform on that kind of data. That makes you so reliant on the API supplier.

Cloud Databases

They are more like hosting processes than database types. Cloud databases haven’t been around for long. Normally, they are hosted on other third party servers. One interesting feature about this database is that it can serve as a perfect combination of individual database types. With it, you can easily integrate independent relational and document databases to form a completely different thing. This makes it ideal for nearly all types of ecommerce data. A notable advantage of this database is that one wouldn’t have to bother with the rising needs of databases especially when there is growth in data due business expansion.
Nevertheless, there are critical risks associated with this type of database. Trust issues might develop, especially when the involved third party is not reliable. It not only possesses the risk of data interference but also loss of business in case the third party doesn’t stay in business for long. Most remote DBA experts therefore recommend a third party service provider of refutable record of accomplishment and unmatchable reliability. A perfect example is the cloud database offered by Amazon Web Services that combines both Relational Database Service and a DynamoDB document database.

Also Read: Why Businesses Should Have Databases

Document Databases

They are simple to understand and use. The most basic example is a set of files on your computer with each file bearing a unique name and data. For each data, there is an associated name, which is normally known as a key. The key is necessary for retrieval of the associated data. The contained data can be defined in the same way as the computer files. Taking an ecommerce store for example, you can have varied types of data like order, customer, and types of pages.
One amazing aspect of document tables is their flexibility. It gives you the room of defining the type of data depending on your needs. This makes them perfect for product catalogues and non-product contents. However, document databases also have their limitations. For one, modifying such kind of database is not one of the easiest things. Changing the structure of stored data might mean updating all the involved pieces of data. This can be hectic, especially if not planned for. This makes it less preferable for use in ecommerce stores. Typical examples of Document Database include MongoDB, CouchDB and Redis.

Expect a Difference

In reality, the databases might not be clearly defined as explained therein. In many cases, the features of one database can be shared by that of another database. Take the example of PostgreSQL, which is a pure relational database that also serves as a document database. In addition, other service providers like Amazon Web Service, which provides a combination of the cloud version of PostgreSQL with enhanced features like web interface and scaling.

Integrating Multiple Databases

To get the most out your ecommerce store, it might be necessary combining different sets of databases. Each database may be used for a different purpose but all work in unison to provide a perfect trading ecommerce platform for both you and your customers. With this you will be able to maximize profits even as you reduce unnecessary work load.

Also Read: Using WordPress to Learn How to Backup Your Database

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