Promotion of an online store in social networks: a complete guide

In this article, we tried to set out the maximum about the promotion of online stores in social networks. And try to read to the end.

SMM basics

SMM (social media marketing) is also social media marketing. To understand how it works and from which side to approach the promotion of business in social networks, you need to understand what both parties want from them.

Read more: Social networks and their importance in Internet marketing.

What do business owners want from social media?

1st place, it is not surprising, is profit. Therefore, most goals are always geared towards sales. Sale of promotional goods, new products, urgently and a lot.

2nd place is to create a community of consumers. A group of loyal audience who would remain their customers until the end of their days and challenge their superiority over competitors.

3rd place is already more long-term, but nevertheless feasible tasks – the image and competent positioning of the brand.

What do consumers want from social networks?

Everything is simple here:

1st place and the only one – communication.

So, all your desires to promote the store in social networks should be carefully thought out and interpreted with high quality, taking into account the desires of consumers. And for this you need to correctly determine your goals, about them below:

The main goals of SMM

When you have already decided which goal is your priority, well, it’s time to start working on the implementation and promotion of your online store on the network. And this work must be done step by step, consistently performing all the steps. This is the only way you can claim success! Well, now let’s look at what these stages are.

Stages of SMM promotion of an online store

Stage 1. Choosing your social network and defining a strategy.

At this stage, you already need to clearly know who your target audience is, how and what they live and breathe. This will be one of your starting points when choosing a social network. As well as an understanding of what each social network is. But here we can help you. So, let’s begin:

Facebook

First of all, it’s content. More specifically, business and entertainment content is published here in almost equal proportions. Therefore, Facebook is becoming a kind of business environment. Since people here can make deals, promote not only their personal brand, but also goods with services.

The second feature is advertising. Its functionality is amazing. A lot of metrics for tracking the effectiveness of campaigns, various types of placement (including Instagram).

And the last but one of the main features is the audience. The fact is that a characteristic feature of the audience on Facebook is that it is considered the most solvent in comparison with other social networks. Mostly they are residents of large cities aged 30 to 45 years. Therefore, this is a real goldmine for e-commerce products.

Instagram

Instagram content is visual. Photo/video/animation. The text is more like an addition. For many users, the Instagram page acts as something from the category of a personal photo album, as it is mainly photos from everyday life, holidays and travels.

Advertising. Instagram is exactly the place where people buy with their eyes rather than their minds. Since his main strong point, as we said above, is visual. Therefore, if your ad is about beauty and aesthetics, then Instagram is right for you!

The audience here will be younger than on Facebook, since about 90% of users here are under the age of 35. Accordingly, this public is less solvent. And therefore it is more expedient to promote here the business that is aimed at a younger audience.

Youtube

Over the past 5 years, content, like YouTube itself, has been actively developing. If until quite recently it was mostly funny videos, records from the scene of incidents, all kinds of challenges, viral videos and movie trailers, now everything is completely different. As the audience matured, so did the content. And now there are approximately equal proportions of entertaining and educational videos.

In terms of advertising, YouTube also has something to stand out for the better, against the background of its “colleagues”. The first is the cost of advertising. Here, link clicks are spent many times less than on other popular social networks and contextual search advertising. But at the same time, YouTube was able to maintain the quality. Since the performance of these clicks is very encouraging. According to statistics, more than 80% of users pay attention to advertising, about 50% decide to visit the site and a little more than half then show interest in the advertised product.

As we wrote earlier, YouTube has changed a lot lately. The same, in fact, happened to the audience. Previously, it was the age from 18 to 34, but now it is 18-40 (and this audience is as much as 90%). And yet, it is not surprising. It’s just that the audience has grown in five years and, accordingly, has become more solvent.

Vkontakte

This is a network where entertainment content prevails over business content. In fairness, it’s worth recognizing that this does not mean its complete absence, but it falls short of Facebook in this regard. Although, Vkontakte is the most popular Russian analogue of Facebook.

The audience here is predominantly young, with a slight bias towards the male side. Basically it is 15-30 years old. Yes, it is not difficult to guess that due to this age, this is not a very solvent audience. But! With the world on a string, as they say. The total volume of consumption here is quite sufficient to consider this audience for promoting your business.

Advertising online store VKontakte. With this, when promoting the VKontakte store, everything is in order. Here you have targeting (almost like on Facebook, but with its own nuances), and cross-posting, and advertising in communities and promotion of posts. In general, a great option for almost all types of campaigns in the CIS.

Classmates

Another Russian network. The content here is a little “late” – usually it’s jokes, memes, demotivators (yes, even the most old-school ones), in general, what happened when promoting the VKontakte online store 1-2 years ago. That is, the main segment is entertainment content. (Well, and cats, of course, how could we forget about cats at all).

Odnoklassniki is the most female audience! Yes, you might say, well, what’s wrong with that, there are also more women on Instagram. But these are completely different figures, because there are already 80% of them! The main age is 25-50 years.

There is no built-in advertising account, as in Facebook or VKontakte, but advertising is still possible here. It can be launched through the MyTarget platform. But the most useful thing about Odnoklassniki, in terms of promotion, is virality. After all, the “Class” rating is an automatic repost. Well, isn’t it lovely?

LinkedIn

What happens if you remove all entertainment content from Facebook? LinkedIn! Yes, that’s right, and all because, although here you can join groups, keep / read blogs, basically everyone is mainly concerned about production issues.

The audience here is somewhat older than in other social networks (30-49). And more masculine. Since this network is called “a social network for professionals”, the purchasing power here is very high. Also, it is worth mentioning that most of this audience belongs to the IT-sphere.

Promotion through targeted advertising is somewhat peculiar here. For example, there are some restrictions, both in content and form. And one of them: the system will not miss the phone number in the text of the ad and will not provide a link to the page with a pop-up window. However, there are also pleasant moments. Here you can set up your audience not only by geography, gender and age, but also by criteria such as company names, positions, education, declared skills, groups, gender, age.

Well, I hope this helped you decide a little, so let’s move on. When the social network for promoting your online store is selected, we move on to stage 2.

Stage 2. Create a group or page.

The first step is to choose how you will represent your online store. Will it be a campaign group or a public / business page, or maybe just an employee page. Everything will depend on the social network you choose.

Read more:

• How to create and promote a group (community) on Facebook?
• How to create and set up a VKontakte group?

Stage 3. Registration.

Do not neglect this step. Since now it is the face of your campaign. Fill in all the fields. Give potential customers as much information as possible about yourself. And don’t forget about branding. No need to do just to like and hope for the best. (This is the face of the campaign, remember?)

Read more: Checklist “Is your Instagram account ready for promotion”

Stage 4. Filling.

When the page/group is ready, it’s time to start filling it out. It is best if you write content plans for a month in advance. Or at least for a week. But at the same time, you still need to keep your finger on the pulse and monitor what is happening in the world, so that at the right time you can always turn on the promotion of the current post.

And when drawing up a content plan, keep in mind that it must correspond to at least one of the points, or better, to all at once:

• to solve problems;
• evoke emotions;
• be in trend.

Read more:

• Content plan for Instagram Stories. What’s happened? What is it needed for?
• What should be the content plan for social networks?

Stage 5. Getting initial likes and cheating.

Yes, to get off the ground – you have to wind it up a little. Since the reality is that few people will like a publication that has few likes and the same is the case with subscriptions.

But here the main thing is not to hit all the hard ones and not to buy “dead souls” for yourself. This will not help the cause in any way, but only in the negative you will go later. A huge number of adequate mass following services have already appeared, where you will be added not a heavy load as bots, but real people.

Read more: 38 programs and services for promotion and promotion on Instagram

Stage 6. Methods of promotion and methods of advertising in social networks.

There are several promotion methods.

We recommend using at least three of them. Two are links on the site and on personal pages. In order to choose the third one, you need to test all the methods to understand which one gives you the best result.

Read more: SMO site optimization or Integration of social networks with the site.

Stage 7. Analytics.

As sad as it may be, using only the above three methods for a full-fledged promotion is not enough. Our promotion of the online store in social networks does not end there. You constantly need to publish new material, arrange various activities for your subscribers (surveys, contests, events, broadcasts, etc.). Beyond that, don’t forget to keep an eye on what times and days they are most engaged, what topics are most engaging, and what frequency of posting is best perceived by your audience.

Read more: 40 social media analytics tools.

In general, this is the main must have. Naturally, the work on promoting an online store in social networks does not end there, it is just beginning. Because it is a huge work, which takes a lot of time, effort, ideas and sometimes nerves. After all, as elsewhere, difficulties can arise here.

Difficulties and ways to solve them

To summarize?

If after reading this article you still have not changed your mind about promoting an online store in social networks, then firstly: we are very happy! And secondly: you must understand that an immense field of advertising opens before you! And it would be foolish not to take advantage of it. But everything needs its time. time and experience. The main thing in this business is to be patient and not to despair, but to continue looking for your unique formula for success!