Use Social Media to Boost Online Christmas Sales

Christmas is here and businesses across the World are gearing up to make the most of the festival and gifting season. New products are getting launched, special offers and discounts being announced and retail spaces both offline and online being decked up to be in sync with the festival spirit.

 

The only dampener seems to be various predictions coming our way, which suggest the holiday season will see less sales when compared to 2007 or before the recession hit our economy towards the end of 2008.

According to a Gallup poll, a record-high 35% of Americans spent less on Christmas gifts in 2008 than what they spent a year before. This year National Retail Federation chief economist Rosalind Wells predicts “As the global economy continues to recover from the worst economic crisis most retailers have ever seen, Americans will focus primarily on practical gifts and shop on a budget this holiday season.” 

Now correlate these predictions to a survey report by Nielsen Wire and you will probably have the answer on how to focus your marketing budgets and efforts to get the most out of this holiday season.  

In a recent Nielsen Global consumer survey of 25,000 internet consumers from across 50 countries it was found that 90 per cent of the consumers surveyed said they trust recommendations by people they know, while 70 per cent trusted consumer opinions posted online. Jonathan Carson, President of Online, International, for the Nielsen Company observes, “The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last couple of years means consumers’ reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don’t, has increased significantly.”  

The Nielsen survey clearly showcases the power social media yields in our times.

Social media sharing over channels like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc. have today become a way of life for most of us. These social networking sites have become a medium for people to share information with their family, friends, acquaintances and even like minded strangers. It’s also become a place where people discuss politics, products, issues and causes, garnering support and voicing their views all at the same time. It is this powerful medium which needs to be tapped in a way that it helps retailers spread the word and increase their sales.  

So how can ecommerce sites or e-retailers use this information to boost their sales?

 Simple, device methods and provide means to a happy customer – ‘To spread the good word’ and in turn bring in more business for you.

Given below are three simple and easily implementable methods -

Provide the means

If you have an ecommerce site, ensure you provide the right tool for your customer to share his find with others in his network. There are plenty of options available, you can have individual tabs/buttons for different social networking sites like – facebook.com, twitter.com, delicious.com etc. or you can have social media sharing widgets which give multiple channel options like AddThis, ShareThis or Tell-a-Friend .  You can also find drop down tool bars which offer similar services. These referral tools give a visitor the option to share a content he sees on a page with his network of friends through various channels. Having these social media elements on your website will ensure that if any of your happy customers want to spread the word, they have the means to do it in an easy and systematic way. 

Provide the motivation 

The objective here is to give your customer an incentive or motivation to spread the word. While in the previous method, you leave him with the choice of spreading the word about your great offering amongst his network of friends, here you reward him for this extra effort.  

The method is simple – you link your referral and rewards program – so every time a customer refers you to his friend he gets a discount or some reward points which he can claim for his current or future purchases.  

The person to whom the customer does send the recommendation is not aware the product was referred to him in lure of the discount. In fact, he sees it as a genuine recommendation from a friend, who bought the product, enjoyed the experience and decided to share the information. Hence, it becomes a win-win situation for all involved. Your offering gets a third party personal and reliable endorsement and hence another more convinced customer. Your referrer customer gets a discount on his purchases and the person receiving the recommendation gets a first hand opinion or reference on something he is planning to buy.  

Recently John Lawson an eBay Platinum PowerSeller and eBay Certified Education Specialist who owns an ecommerce site and authors an ecommerce blog –ColderIce posted a video on his personal experience of using one such widget which combines both the referral and rewards program and which helped in boosting his ecommerce sales. You can watch his video to know more about this ecommerce tool from SocialTwist.  

Nurture you customer relationships  

It is very important for any retailer to build his customer base and also to retain them. Social media can be a great tool in building and nurturing these relationships. As a retailer, it would help you to be present on social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc. where you can create a profile or fan page for your store. Devise a way to find out where your customers are present (use feedback forms) and be there – it could be any of these social networking sites. Invite your customers to be a part of these groups and profiles and interact with them on a regular basis. Update them about the new stock in your store, steal buys, discounts, collections etc. Invite their feedback, listen to their queries and resolve their complaints and just by keeping in touch you will win their loyalty. If they really value you and your products, it is a given that they will share information on you within their network.  

Social media is here to stay and the best way to use it – is to be a part of it. It is a humungous marketing force available out their – all you need to do is to win them over and help them market your offerings. The returns of this little investment is manifold and beyond ones apprehension.

How to successfully use word of mouth marketing in a B2B set up

In my last post I had shared with you the importance of Word of mouth marketing and why it should be an integral part of every Company’s PR and marketing plan.

In this post I share with you some statistics to prove this. In a recent report by Nielsen Global Online Consumer survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries, it emerged that “Recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising. Ninety percent of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.”

These results are quite significant as it reaffirms the power of Internet/online media and in particular the growing influence of social media. Today as marketers we are dealing with a more aware, informed and inquisitive consumer, who has several channels and mediums to seek information about a company, its products and the quality delivered, before making a purchase.

While WOMM is critical to any business, it is hard to generate, especially for B2B clients where the target audience is niche. In a B2C scenario, some success can be expected, by ensuring a quality product which caters to a significant need of the end consumers; by creating awareness and excitement for the product among the target group using various media channels; by listening to their suggestions and feedbacks and improvising on the products if required and foremost by keeping the channels of communication always open between the company and its end consumers.

In B2B since the stakes are higher, referrals are not easy to come by, also clients refer your services or products to other businesses if they themselves have tried, tested and are completely satisfied with your services over a period of time. In such cases the gestation period for generating leads through referrals can be a lengthy and uncertain process. Following some of the B2C procedures mentioned above might speed up the process and might ensure a more satisfied customer but may not result in a referral.

So how do you ensure that your customers in both B2C and B2B type of businesses give you referrals?

It is simple – incentivise their referrals! Combine a referral with a reward program, it could be discounts, it could be entering a sweepstake program, giveaways, any reward program that you can link to your product or service and your customers can benefit from.

Giving incentives for referrals – HELPS

By initiating such a marketing activity, you give your customers an added incentive to refer you, in the process ensuring both parties involved are happy.

When planning such a program ensure you are present in every medium which your end customer uses – these might vary for B2C and B2B companies.

The marketing and PR should be well planned and coordinated, so that you reach out to all your customers. For the time period the program is running, all your messaging should work towards promoting the program, on your website, on your ads, billboards, on your press releases, on social media forums, wherever you expect your customers to be.

It is only a matter of time before the technique starts finding you success!

Such programs are not new, have been tried and tested by several companies over the years, and have found success even offline.

I am sure most of you will remember the simple referral campaign run by the magazine Reader’s Digest. Fill in 14 addresses of people you know and win an interesting book in return. They would then reach out to your contacts with a personalized letter stating you thought your friend would like subscribing to Reader’s Digest. Simple but effective way of referral marketing and it did help the magazine to a great extent in becoming one of the most read magazines in the world, even though it was circulated only through subscriptions(not sold on stands), until some years ago. I have filled many such forms as a teenager in lure of the books and have seen many of my family and friends subscribing to the book….see I told you it always works

In a world where there are so many voices and opinions some times it helps to raise the stakes……..

Simple ways of doing Word Of Mouth Marketing……

Why WOMM is a must for every company..

As an individual, I am pretty vocal about my views. I make sure, I  share my likes and dislikes about various things with my family and friends and within my circle of influence. My personal opinions could be biased but are based on my personal experiences and hence carry my personal conviction, which is why people who value my opinion pay heed to my advice.

I guess its the same with many of you as well. Our experiences help us form impressions and our impressions form the base of our beliefs and convictions. Before the social media revolution, we used to heavily rely on the experience and opinions of experts, news journalists and other information providers, but today with blogging and social networks becoming an important part of our lives, each one of us can claim to be an expert in our own right.

Your blog on your wonderful experience buying a television set online can send many of your friends hunting for a great deal on the same online store. They go to the store because they believe your word, you on the other hand have unknowingly lent your personal credibility to the online store by sharing your buying experience with your friends.  This is the power of word of mouth marketing or WOMM. No advertisement, no PR effort by this online store can ever match the extent of leverage they got from you – a real customer advocating his shopping experience.

WOMM why it works.....

Today companies are slowly realizing the immense power of this age old marketing tool. Surprisingly it still works and much better as social media makes it possible to increase the reach of your credible word to a larger audience or circle of influence.

Implementing WOMM as part of your company’s marketing and PR strategy is important since it is one of the most effective, simple and cheap marketing solutions currently available.  To begin with, you need to take care of two things – firstly, ensure your product or service offering delivers what it promises and secondly, you have adequately empowered your satisfied customers with  some simple tools which enable them to  easily share their experiences with others.

WOMM tool is  most useful for start-ups and companies who have a shoe-string budget for marketing their products. I recently came across a blog post by Vijay Pullur, President of SocialTwist the makers of the social media sharing widget called Tell-a-Friend on www.bootstrappingblog.com. The post talks in detail about how in a very simple and easy way you can build visibility for your product or service through word of mouth marketing. For those Marketing and PR professionals who are planning to add WOMM to their service portfolio, its a good read.

As for me, the more I learn about how effective WOMM is , the more I am convinced – maybe you don’t need loads of money or need to own the best advertising real estate to ensure, a lot of people talk about you and your brand. Maybe its just about giving that terrific user experience to everyone who visits your site, who buys or uses your products or service………so that they just cant stop telling their friends how great your offerings are.

Maybe its not so much about getting your money’s worth but giving their money’s worth.