Posted by Are you fully leveraging social media to grow your e-commerce brand?
The number of social media users keeps increasing year by year. In the month of July 2019, 2,375m people were recorded actively using Facebook.
And they are not only socializing on social media. 54% of them are researching products.
There are many who make purchases on social media platforms, as well.
Given that social media and e-commerce go hand in hand, it is only ideal that you use social media metrics to understand your customers’ behavior, what they like or dislike, and get their insights to strengthen your e-commerce marketing strategy.
Here are some crucial social media KPIs for e-commerce brands you should keep track of:
1. Follower count
Why should you keep track of your follower count? It will let you know whether your brand is reaching out to enough people.
While you are at it, pay special attention to your active followers. Find out the number of people who have actively interacted with your content in the past thirty days. If there are fake followers and indolent followers, don’t hesitate to clean them out.
Using the metrics, you can also check your new follower growth and annual follower growth. If they aren’t steadily increasing, your e-commerce content marketing strategy isn’t effective enough.
You will have to find out the most pressing questions, challenges, obstacles that your customers are facing and then meet those needs with your content. Only then, your followers will increase.
As per stats, on average, the yearly growth rate of followers is around 23% each on Facebook and Twitter, 24% on LinkedIn, 20% on Pinterest, and 100% on Instagram.
2. Website traffic
Are you getting enough website traffic from social media? If you aren’t getting the traffic or conversions you need, your money and time spent on social media is a waste.
Maybe you might have a lot of followers on social media, but if it isn’t improving your web traffic, you might want to consider tweaking your call to action.
Also, make sure that the content you are posting on your website is engaging.
Platforms such as Shopify Plus can help to effectively execute your e-commerce content marketing strategy and actualize your goals. The platform is customizable and comes with smart promotional tools like the Launchpad to help you strategize and automate all the activities required to easily execute a successful product launch, sales campaign, or a flash sale.
3. Impressions
Cost Per Impression (CPM) is the rate that you pay after an ad is shown to 1,000 viewers. When an ad appears in front of one visitor, it will be counted as one impression.
By tracking the CPM of your social media ads, you will know how many times your audience saw your ads. It can assist you in determining the visibility of your brand.
Measuring impressions is a bit tricky. Your followers may go and read or see the same content several times, and each will count as an impression.
But if the number of impressions is high, you can safely say that you are able to connect with a larger number of audiences.
4. Engagement
Engagement is one of the most crucial areas that you should keep track of on social media. The number of likes, shares, tweets, hashtags, and comments that your updates receive on social media is vital.
When you have a large following, but people aren’t engaging with your posts, it is probably because you don’t have a marketing message, or your content doesn’t resonate with the audience.
Find out the root cause of why people are not engaging with your posts and fix them.
Alternately, even if your audience is small, if they are engaged, it will generate leads that will turn into sales.
5. The share of voice
Don’t forget to measure this metric because the share of voice metrics will reveal how many people are raving about your brand online.
When people talk about your brand, it builds brand awareness and online authority.
‘When an individual or brand shares valuable content, they become trusted advisors or thought leaders who can inspire and influence people with their innovative ideas. Thought leaders are an authority in their field; as a result, they enjoy a great share of voice. But becoming a thought leader takes more than just a blog post or creative commercial! You need to commit yourself to the cause of educating your audience and adding value to the industry you belong to,’ says Devesh Sharma of DesignBombs.
If you are able to build a loyal community around your brand, you will see more sales, and you can build longer customer lifetime value.
If no one is talking about your brand, you need to reevaluate your strategy. Consider interviewing your existing audience about their major challenges and researching your competitors.
6. Customer support
Many businesses are already using or planning to use social media to offer customer service.
It will allow you to react quickly to your customers’ queries, thus improving customer experience.
Showing that you value your clients is important to retain them and build long-term relationships.
You can also avert the growth of social media catastrophes, turn your customers into brand ambassadors, and show a human face to your clients.
Measuring CSAT (customer satisfaction score) will let you know whether the customers are satisfied with your product or service.
You can also ask customers to leave a review or conduct a social media campaign allowing your customers to create testimonials.
7. Conversions
To a large extent, the conversions metrics will determine whether your social media campaign is a success.
It looks beyond the likes and shares and lets you know how your marketing efforts are affecting your bottom line.
For instance, you can monitor the number of conversions coming to your website directly from social media, and gain a general idea of the value of every customer. It will help increase your sales revenue.
You can also monitor the lead conversion rate and see how many leads end up purchasing your products or services.
And of course, you can monitor the non-revenue conversions such as customers signing up for your email newsletter, followers downloading your e-book, and so on.
Overall, the social media KPIs for conversions can help you assess how social media strategies are instigating action from your customers.
8. Social media story analytics
Many businesses post daily to social media stories, including Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.
Whether it is short-lived videos or images, many prefer to use them to engage with one another on social media.
By tracking the metrics on social media stories, you will be able to create a spot-on social media marketing strategy that works for your audience.
For instance, you can track the views and reach so as to grow and refine your strategy and determine the best time of day to post your stories.
You can also monitor the exit rate and interactions to know how many users have tapped back or forward or swiped to exit the story. It will tell you which kind of content engages your user and which kind of content makes them skip.
9. Shoppable feed statistics
Are you allowing users to purchase directly from your social feed? If you aren’t, you are missing out on a lot.
It is said that 33% of consumers who are 18 to 24-year-olds would buy products directly from Facebook.
If you are already implementing this strategy, it is crucial to track how often people are purchasing directly from your online profiles and which posts are making the most revenue.
You can then replicate that content to grow your social sales fast. While you are at it, track the metrics such as the average spend and cart abandonment rate of purchases driven by social media.
Wrapping-Up
Social media has revolutionized the way people shop these days. It is where people spent an average of three hours per day browsing products and often directly buying them from different social media platforms.
In order to grow your business in this modern era, you need to have a top-notch social media strategy. And using social media metrics can help you to strengthen your strategies and reach your goals.
Tracking your follower count, website traffic, impressions, engagement, the share of voice, customer satisfaction score, and conversions are all crucial to scale your business.
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