How Promotional Products Distributors Can Boost Sales By Leveraging Your Social Presence
With in-person interactions being limited due to COVID-19, having a solid social media marketing strategy has never been more essential. With 45% of the world’s population reported as daily active social media users, social media continues to be an important marketing channel. Promotional products distributors’ sales efforts usually relied heavily on trade shows and in-person client presentations. However, with events being cancelled, people working from home and social distancing guidelines in effect, there has been a significant impact on how you do business. One way to connect with current and potential customers is by increasing your focus on social media marketing.
Here are three aspects to consider in your social media marketing strategy for 2021.
3 Social Media Elements to Focus On in 2021
Shoppable Social Media — Leverage New Tools to Drive Conversion
If your business isn’t utilizing shopping features on social media, 2021 is a great time to start as social media platforms work on including more and easier eCommerce components. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all currently have shoppable elements that tie social media more closely with conversion.
Facebook and Instagram launched new Shops features in mid-2020 to help small eCommerce businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Instagram even added a shopping tab to the main navigation in 2020 updates, giving businesses a dedicated and easily accessible storefront on the app. In a recent update, Pinterest has added more placement opportunities for advertisers, better tracking of both paid and organic Pin performance, and the capability for businesses to make product Pins out of their entire product catalog all at one time.
TikTok also added shoppable videos to their strategy in order to encourage more brands to advertise on the platform. By adding direct purchasing capabilities to existing messaging on social media and fully utilizing shopping features across platforms in 2021, you’ll be able to drive more conversions through this channel.
Organic Posts — Why Engagement is the Metric to Watch
Relevant, organic posts are equally as important as paid social advertising and the utilization of shopping features because they create valuable engagement with your audience and deepen brand trust. Since 75% of people reportedly don’t accept advertisements as true, it’s essential for promotional product distributors to allocate time and attention to creating a people-focused approach to organic posting.
A voice that consumers do trust is that of other consumers (70% of consumers believe other customers’ opinions), so promoting reviews and ratings on social media business pages should be a part of your 2021 strategy. Whether that’s through email campaigns to past clients, direct in-store review capturing efforts, or automated review links sent to new clients is up to you.
Including more people-centered content by featuring employees and past and current clients (with their consent, of course) in posts creates a deeper connection with your audience. This promotes brand trust and loyalty by humanizing your business and providing tangible examples of your work.
Social media algorithms are formulated to show only the most relevant content to users, and post engagement is a measure of how relevant your content is to the users who have seen it. Types of engagement increase in value from likes/reactions, to comments, and finally shares, each one giving your posts a boost in social media algorithms.
This makes your post appear higher up and on more of your audience’s timelines, which can help promote more engagement, which can help boost your posts more, and so on in a cycle. Track engagement on different post types and platforms in 2021 to consistently tune your content to your specific audience’s interests.
Video Content — Keep Your Audience’s Attention
The continued rise of social video content has been prevalent for years now, but it remains important to emphasize as video consistently shows the highest impressions and engagement on social media platforms year after year. Most notably in 2020, new apps and features like TikTok and Instagram Reels focused on short-form video content to connect with users.
Although the user demographic on TikTok and Instagram Reels tends to skew young (mostly Gen Z, with an increasing number of Millenials hopping on the trend), it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. We’re seeing short-form video content in the feed and on Stories features continue to gain popularity, receive a high number of impressions, and retain user attention better than other types of social media marketing content.
The creation of slightly longer-form social video content is also valuable, since it can be re-cut and repurposed for a variety of different digital marketing efforts. Now that face-to-face product guidance is few and far between, many businesses are substituting it with innovative social video content solutions like doing product demonstrations using new social tools and formats or live Q&A sessions. Figuring out how social content creation can best fit their unique offerings and client base will be essential for promotional products distributors in the coming year.
iPROMOTEu Can Help You Give Your Social Media a Boost
iPROMOTEu offers our services to affiliated promotional products distributors to help them on the back end of their businesses. We provide year-round sales and marketing support including eye-catching collateral, personalized coaching, and product catalogs for your digital marketing efforts. Our back-office support, order financing, and preferred vendor program can help you to focus on marketing and sales rather than administrative tasks, freeing up more time for creating and maintaining a robust social media marketing strategy in 2021.
Connect with iPROMOTEu today to learn more or become an Affiliate.