All you need to know about Social Commerce & Shoppable Posts

All you need to know about Social Commerce & Shoppable Posts

14 May, 2022 | Build a Presence, Consulting & Coaching, Marketing Strategy & Sales

Social Selling | Ryan Marketing Solutions | Ireland

Have you come across products or services displayed on posts on Social Media channels and wondered what they are? Want to know how can you create these posts? Want to find more about it? Then check this blog post where we will cover all aspects of social commerce and shopable posts..

Simplified, social commerce allows consumers to buy a product or service directly from a social media channel. Basically, the discovery of the product, information about it and the checkout process takes place on the social media platform.

According to “Statista 2021” research shows that 11% of social media users make a purchase immediately after discovering a product or service. Furthermore, 8 in 10 US businesses anticipate selling on social media platforms within the next 3 years. These figures show that social commerce has exploded over the last years and a substantial amount of purchase is motivated by impulse buying.

In the early days of social media brands, businesses used social platforms (Facebook , Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter) only to post images or short videos about their products or services. Now, because of a plethora of social media native social commerce tools businesses, brand can sell their products or services directly on these social media channels. The customers does not have to leave the platform as they have the option to See it, Click it or Buy it the product or service.

Social commerce solves an issue that many buyers faced when trying to buy a product or service. Most of the times buying process takes time and involves clicking or leaving the social platform (going to an e-commerce website) in order to buy the item. Now, if a customer discovers a product or service on social media channels he/she no longer require leaving the platform.

At the moment social media platforms that offer social commerce services are:

In order to set up and use the native social commerce services in the above social media channels you have to switch to a professional profile. This is done during the installation or afterwards (is an easy process anyway). In Facebook this is done via your page settings.

You can sell almost anything on these platforms. However, some items such as digital products, weapons, alcohol, cigarettes, subscriptions, event tickets are prohibited. If you intend to use social commerce it is a good practice to check the merchant guidelines for the each social media channel network.

Facebook and Instagram Shopping  allows users to manually create a catalog of products or service or upload an existing catalogue from ecommerce platforms such as WooCommerce (WordPress e-commerce plugin), Shopify, BigCommerce or Magento(CMS).

At the moment TikTok Shopping is only available to Shopify merchants with a TikTok business account. TikTok Shopping allows the content creators to directly sell products and promote products or services on the platform.

As a tip when adding product images focus on image quality and style. Every product has to have at least 4 high resolution images and at least three attributes such as size, colour, and material.

Product description should include as many details as possible, use business phrases, keywords. Bear in mind that the product title should not have more than 34 characters.You could add business keywords in it too. You can add links in the product description too but at the minute they are not clickable. The general idea is that every field from the product or service catalogue should be populated.

TikTok Shopping is only granted for UK, US customers and for Canadian (only few companies) customers. This is expected to change in the near future.

Pinterest allows users to convert all entire product catalog into Rich Pins, all at once. Pinterest rich pins works by displaying metadata from marked up pages (product, shop) from your business, brand website. If you’re using Shopify for your online ecommerce store you don’t have to do any extra work as the products metadata is already by default.

It is proven that when businesses add Collections Ads Shopping  to their Pinterest mix, they see an increase of 3x the conversion and 2x the positive incremental return on ad spend (ROAS). Pretty awesome isn’t it?

According to the latest statistics buyers on Pinterest spend up to 40% more per month than shoppers on other social commerce platforms. Don’t have Pinterest set up? Let Ryan Marketing Solutions help you.

Did you know that on average viewers are watching over 700 million hours of YouTube content on TV daily? That’s why YouTube is enlarging the ways content creators can monetize their content(educational videos, entertaining videos, conversational streams, life blogs, playing games videos, etc), interact with viewers, and create new ideas for their social media own channels.

 YouTube Shorts is getting new tools, features (video effects, ability to reply to comments, enhanced editing capabilities) in 2022.  YouTube Shopping (Shoppable Videos, Live Shopping) is going to be generally expanded on across the platform more widely. If your business sells products or services online YouTube Shopping is a tool that you can’t afford to miss.

Now, the question is how to convert your social media followers into customers. There is not a magic formula to do this. But if you integrate shoppable tags in your posts, allow UGC (User Generated Content), answer questions and offer interesting and valuable content the chances are that some of your followers will turn into customers.

Another way of turning followers into customers is to utilize influencers. But many of us don’t know how to find these influencers or do not know what they are.

An influencer is a person that has the potential to persuade potential buyers of a product or service by recommending or promoting the items on social media platforms. To find an influencer for your market niche you have to do hash tags searches, check your competition follower list, use Google searches or use influencer marketing tools such as BrandWatch, Awario, Brand24, etc.

If you researched and discovered influencers first step is to select the influencers with the highest engagement rate and big follower number. Some of them would require a payment for content creation, promotion and some would do this pro bono (challenge to find them nowadays).

The idea to use influencer marketing is that they have the power to bring customers to your business. For example, when an influencer uses shoppable tags on Instagram, they push the potential buyers to your shop.

Final Thoughts 

We all know that social media is a very powerful tool at our disposal. It’s up to us to discover and utilise all of its features. This social media trend is still on the expansion (many new channels and feature), meaning you’ll want your business to jump on board as soon as possible so you don’t get left behind (can you afford that?).

If your business is looking for Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Consulting & Coaching services don’t hesitate to contact Ryan Marketing Solutions. . If you find the information from this blog post useful please share it with your friends.

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7 Tips To Drive Growth in Your Fitness Business in 2022

7 Tips To Drive Growth in Your Fitness Business in 2022

15 Mar, 2022 | Build a Presence, Consulting & Coaching, Marketing Strategy & Sales

Since early March 2020 Irish fitness businesses have been forced to close their doors for almost 15 months (depending on their venue) due to Covid-19 restrictions. Because most gym, fitness clubs customers stayed home, high rents many fitness businesses have struggled to survive and some never reopened their doors (Hope you’re not in this category).

However, there’s good news as Gyms and Fitness Centers Industry is expected to recover from the economic disturbance. Below I am going to list 10 tips that hopefully will help your fitness business get more customers in and increase your brand trust and authority.

#Tip No1 – Have Strong Online Presence

Did you know that 97% of customers rely on the social media when researching for a product or service in the local area? To accomplish this you need to spread the word out there and be visible on your current or prospect customer social media accounts (Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook).

To keep them engaged you need to post content (text, images, videos,) regularly. You can use your own or curated content. It is also highly important to interact with your customers. Reply to their comments on social media posts, blog posts, and reviews. Show them that they are important to your business. In fact they are every business lifeline.

If you’re just starting up you can avail of the social media advertising benefits. Every social channel now allows you to easily promote your business at relatively low price (compared to Google’s or Bing PPC). Create engaging ads where your customers can see your latest offers and promotions.

#Tip No2 – Go One Step Further 

Don’t stick with the basic training, fitness programs. Be flexible in your approach and offer different services. We know that most gym goers opt out for muscle building and weight loss. Offer them other services too, for example, nutritional advice or mental health counseling. I know you may say is not in your duty to offer those services or you’re not skilled to do that.

But you can easily bring once a month, a week a nutritional or mental health counseling expert for a meeting with your gym, fitness club members. That little step shows your customers that you care about them and it build your brand trust and reputation.

You can also print (inexpensive) flyers, brochures with information about services provided and other tips your customers might be interested in.

#Tip No3 – Be Active In The Community

One way of doing that is look for gatherings, events, challenges that takes place in your local area. Once you have identified those try to involve your brand, business into those.

Something like sponsorship (money, products) won’t break your bank but it will have a great impact on the perception of your business in the community. Show them that you’re not only there to charge a fee (for your membership) but to help them too.

This way you’ll increase brand awareness and build trust amongst the community.

#Tip No4 – Offer Online Virtual Classes 

This is a great way to keep in touch with customers who travel or can’t come to your gym or fitness club location regularly. All big fitness centers have now free or paid online live or recorded fitness classes.

Social media is huge (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok ) and represent a great opportunity for your brand to increase reach, awareness and grow. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Team, to name just a few allows you to connect with your customers from virtually anywhere in the world at anytime. The idea is to be flexible and to embrace all new technologies available at your disposal.

Another way to keep engaged with your customers is to build a fitness app. It might be costly but it worth. Statistics shows that millennial (born between 1981-1996) use fitness apps more than other age groups, with women using them twice as much as men.

#Tip No5 – Don’t Exclude Senior Customers 

Baby Boomers (born between 1946- 1964) are one of the type of customers you should actively marketing for. I know, you will say that they don’t have the drive, energy as the young generation. But if your fitness business focuses on bringing senior through their doors you got yourself the most loyal customers.

Not to mention that this generation has all the available time and they got stable income to support themselves (don’t rely on family support to pay for membership). They enjoy socializing and they will always refer you to their friends if your business provides them a friendly environment and a great experience. If your business does not prospecting for this market segment you’re missing out.

#Tip No6 Diversify Class Offerings 

Recently WHO – World Health Organization reported that more than 26% in men and 35% in women have insufficient levels of physical activities in urban areas.

90% of gym goers’ primary goal is to lose belly fat but not everyone fits this category. Try to be flexible, diversify the type of class offerings.

Adding classes like yoga, indoor cycling, strength conditioning, HIIT, CrossFit, Boxercise, Kangoo Jumps, Pilates not only will get you more customers but it will increase your brand loyalty and authority in the field.

Every customer has different needs. Try to anticipate those needs and offer a service for them.

 

#Tip No7 – Regularly Create Special Offers 

Customers like to feel pampered. Things like first class free, unlimited classes for “X” amount, buy 1membership and  get 2nd half price, 1, or any type of incentive provides customers an impulse to step your business door.

Did you know that more than 12% of new gym members join in the month of January?

These types of offers will get your business more customers and then it’s up to your outstanding quality of service to keep them. The more customers steps your door the more chances you have to prosper.

Final Thoughts

 With all the problems, stress people experience on a daily basis and the amount of unhealthy, junk food available in the market, there’s no wonder why fitness has been growing in popularity. In fact it has become a part of a lot of many people’s lifestyle.

This is “good news” from the fitness Industry business point of view. As a gym, fitness club owner or online coach, you need to make sure that your business is visible out there on any social channel (be aware of new channels too).

Diversify your class offerings, run promotions, cater for different segment of population, get involved in the local community and have a strong online presence is essential for business survival.

If you found this blog post interesting please share it with your friends or with someone who might get value out of it too!

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10 Social Media Marketing Call to Action Prompts

10 Social Media Marketing Call to Action Prompts

28 Feb, 2022 | Build a Presence, Marketing Strategy & Sales

Did you know that using Call to Action (CTAs) to your Facebook business page posts can increase click-through rate (CTR) by a staggering 285%? Or that emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks with 371% and sales with 1617%?

A CTA can be presented in different configurations. It can be text on a button, simple text with no links or a text or image hyperlink (link from a text to web address).

Let’s just say that you have built your business website, brand social media channels and you have started posting images, videos offers, about your business. Most of times businesses expected customer engagement won’t be met.

 There are various reasons for this such as: consistency, posting time of the day, irregularity patterns (posting once in a while).

Sometimes, this is happening because your posts, ads do not contain any calls to action or a poor written CTA. A Call to action is necessary as you’ll give your brand, business audience (customers) a clear message of what to do after seeing your social media post or advertising.

Do you want them to click and read your website blog post? Or perhaps you want them download a brochure, e-book or a request demo?

It is very important to let your target audience (customers) know exactly (they won’t engage if there’s something valuable for them) what the next step should be.

Before writing a Call to Action is necessary to know exactly the objective of your website blog or social media posts.

Below I am going to list 10 useful CTA prompts that will help increase your audience engagement and business awareness. It is essential for every digital marketer to be in sync with customer thoughts and anticipate their reaction when seeing the post.

1. Give away time. Enter to win, Free Gift …..

Customers like to be incentivised in any way shape or form. As long there’s something FREE for them to get, they’ll engage with your post. All of these words, phrases encourage customers to take action and engage with your post. If the offer seems good for them there the possibility to share it with their friends too. This way you not only get an extra customer but you’ll grow brand reach, awareness too. This is the most important step in the sales funnel. Without it the other (interest, consideration, conversion, retention) don’t exists. 

2. 50% Off – Buy Now

This in an excellent way of making a sale (conversion) of your business product or service. Existing customers will feel pampered and prospects won’t miss this opportunity.

3. Limited Time Offer

Create a sense of urgency using words, text like “now, in the next 12 hours, today, only this weekend”. Nothing will get customers more engaging than realising that they’ll miss out an offer or promotion. 

4. Free Download

Anything that’s free gives your business customers an impulse to act. Whether is a webinar, podcast, ebook, template, checklist or any other useful content will make your customers build trust of your brand.

5. Subscribe

If you’re planning to use this Call To Action on your website, mobile App, you need to make sure that your customers, audience know what’s in it for them, and why they should subscribe to your newsletter.

Remember customers don’t like to receive or click on unwanted emails. Be specific about why you sending them the newsletter and what this includes. If they know that there will be valuable information, offers, discount codes, they will more prone to subscribe. 

6. Ask a Question…..

That’s a great technique to open up communication and engage with your customers. In time this will lead to brand, business trust, loyalty and brand recognition amongst your customers (This is what you’re aiming for, don’t you?) 

7. Join Us Now, Over 1500 people like you have signed up

Especially useful for sports clubs, fitness & gym businesses. Is imperative, essential to create a sense of community around your brand. Showcase your business strengths (can’t show weaknesses) using terms like: satisfied customers, proven results, risk free, measurable growth, etc. 

8. Find everything you need in one place

This CTA spotlights your business capability of offering all products or services a customer needs in one place. Ideal for small and medium sized businesses.

9. Exercise from the comfort of your won home 

Useful for fitness businesses or gym clubs. It highlights the enjoyment, comfort that comes with exercising remotely, which can appeal to customers looking for these services.

10. Claim your exclusive deal now! 

This CTA can be used literally by any business regardless of its niche. It will make existing and potential customers feel special and privileged. They will perceive your business as something special and are very likely to engage with your blog or social media post.

Final Thoughts

As you can see there are a multitude of CTAs that you can create and add to your website blog or social media posts. They can be customised in different colours (red, yellow, orange), added to images, buttons to improve CTR, etc. They are every social media marketer secret weapon.

Those are extremely useful if you’re looking to increase website traffic, conversions, leads, or sales. In addition CTAs provide huge benefits to your social media posts and ads.

Developing a successful Call to Action (CTA) necessitates understanding of what actually works in digital marketing, A/B testing, and a desire to experiment with all the new methods (open to newFor outstanding calls to action you have to get creative. Think of what your business offers and try to come up with CTAs that will entice the customer attention (put yourself in customer shoes).

Tip! Try to use ONLY a call to action per post.

Drive your Business Forward Faster with a FREE Marketing Strategy Call!

Build Faster, Protect your Brand and Grow your Business with Ryan Marketing Solutions

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How To Establish a Digital Presence for your Small Business

How To Establish a Digital Presence for your Small Business

10 Feb, 2022 | Build a Presence, Digital Marketing & SEO Audits

Are you a small business owner and looking for ways to get more clients for your products or services? Want to establish a digital presence for your brand but doesn’t have a clue what steps to follow? Then this blog post is for you.

Nowadays, competition is fierce amongst business (big or small) to get more customers to their business. An online presence is essential in order attract more customers and your business be successful. Latest statistics shows that:

  • 36% of all small businesses are making their sales online, through ecommerce.
  • 1.79 billion People bought a product online in 2021 (expected to grow in 2022).
  • 70% of small-to-mid-sized businesses are investing more into their digital online presence.
  • 88% of all online shoppers perform online research before using a service or buy a product

Therefore, if you expect to grow your business without having an online presence is going to be very difficult if not impossible. Below I am going to list 5 steps to help your business establish an online presence.

1. Get listed on Google My Business & Bing My Business

Google and Bing are the major search engines that people use to search for things online. It is a good practice to establish an online presence on these Platforms before any other channels.

The process is simple and straight forward and consists of registering, creating a profile and verify your business. In literally few hours you can have all your business details (services, products, opening hours, images, locations, videos, bio etc) set up and available to see on two of the biggest search engines in the world.

Tip! List your business on Google My Business first then import all the information in Bing My Business.

2. Set up a Business Page on Facebook (Meta) and Instagram

Did you know that Facebook has an advertising audience of 2.14 billion and the largest demographic group of Facebook usersis between the ages of 25 and 35 years? Did you know that there are over 1 billion active users on Instagram worldwide? If you didn’t it’s time to get listed on those social media platforms.

Not only you’ll increase awareness and reach of your brand but you will also avail of the most efficient communications channels available today, for free (we’ll talk in a different post about Facebook & Instagram advertising).

Once you have created the Facebook Business page you can start posting on it information about your services or products, offers, pictures of services done, videos, etc.

Tip! Join groups similar to your brand niche and start sharing your posts, website blog posts on these groups. You’ll improve discoverability of your brand and reach new audiences.

3. Build a website 

If you’re looking to build trust and familiarity for your brand then a website is a must have asset. It will create and enhance your brand image, make it easier for customers to find information about your product or services and is an excellent channel to interact (use chat box, contact forms, etc) with your customers.

Good website content (unique & relevant) will help boost your Search Engine Optimization – SEO on the long term.

You can hire a web developer or you can create the website yourself using tools like WordPress, Shopify, Wix. It’s up to you which way you approach this but it has to be done professionally as it represents a mirror to your business.

Tip! Make use you use responsive design (website pages will adjust automatically to user device) as more than 78% of the online searches come from the mobile devices (smartphone or tablet).

4. List your Business on Online Business Web Directories

A business directory is an online listings of businesses. It comprises of businesses segmented on different categories, niche or location.

Sometimes this is an overlooked method by businesses simply because their managers think that is not worth doing it or because they do not know it. But this is the easiest way to get QUALITY back-links to your website and is free.

Such example of these directories: Golden Pages, Yalwa, Yahoo Local, Google Local, Hotfrog, etc. There are many benefits for adding your business on these platforms.

Amongst those are:

  • Higher traffic to your website, which can translate into more leads or conversions.
  • Improve SEO by having back links to High Authority domains.
  • Search Relevancy- Helps search engines better understand the structure of your business. In time this will help rank you better for your business products or services.
  • On some of these platforms customers can leave reviews to your business. These are very important because customers are looking for these reviews before making a purchase or use a service. Keep in mind that customers trust each other more than brands alone.

Tip! Check on Google the “top 10 online directories” for your niche, or location. For example you don’t want to list your business in London UK if you’re offering services in Dublin, Ireland

5. Create a YouTube Channel

YouTube is owned by Google and has over 2.3 billion users according to the latest statistics. Is the second largest social network platform after Facebook and it continues to grow. Also it can be categorised as a search engine (comes second after Google) since people are using it frequently for different tasks (tutorials, music, entertainment, etc).

YouTube is one of the most powerful tools out there that can help your business grow and reach new audiences. It gets over 30 million visits per day and nearly 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day. Surely you don’t want to miss that opportunity.

Sometimes videos are harder to make if don’t have knowledge, and can be quite overwhelming for many business. But there are now free & paid online platforms that allow you to create and edit videos. It takes time (and a bit of skill) to create videos but the outcome is definitely worth it.

Tip! If you create videos for your brand or business make sure you keep the content interesting and engaging. Use High Definition videos as they get a higher search amongst users.

As you can see there are quite few ways of putting your business, brand online in front of new audiences. You don’t have to break the bank in order to achieve that, but a fairly amount of time has to be dedicated. You don’t have to be skilled either. Surely there’s someone in your organization that has the ability to do those tasks.

If you got no time, skills or interests to do those we at Ryan Marketing Solution can help you. Whatever your query is, we are here to help you grow your business and be successful. If you find the information from this blog post useful please share it with your friends.

Drive your Business Forward Faster with a FREE Marketing Strategy Call!

Build Faster, Protect your Brand and Grow your Business with Ryan Marketing Solutions

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Best Strategy-Driven & Brand Focused Marketing Services Company

Best Strategy-Driven & Brand Focused Marketing Services Company

25 Jan, 2022 | Build a Presence, Consulting & Coaching, Digital Marketing & SEO Audits, Marketing Strategy & Sales

Social Selling | Ryan Marketing Solutions | Ireland

We are delighted to be awarded with Best Strategy-Driven & Brand Focused Marketing Services Company in the Irish Enterprise Awards 2022! 

A big thank you to the people that nominated us, to the EU Business News and Irish Enterprise Awards for awarding us with this 

These awards commend the businesses who continue to demonstrate excellence in their day-to-day operations and prove that the Republic of Ireland is home to some of the most innovative and diverse enterprises, businesses, and initiatives throughout Europe.

What a great start to 2022 to receive this fantastic news! To all our incredible clients & supporters who helped make this happen – thank you! 

We can’t wait to continue to help businesses solve their problems & build their brands 

You have to believe it, before you see it!  

If your business is looking for Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Consulting & Coaching services don’t hesitate to contact Ryan Marketing Solutions. . If you find the information from this blog post useful please share it with your friends.

Drive your Business Forward Faster with a FREE Marketing Strategy Call!

Build Faster, Protect your Brand and Grow your Business with Ryan Marketing Solutions

Schedule Your Free Call Today!