Social media advertising is a powerful tool for any online store, and e-commerce social media advertising can have a more significant impact than other types of online advertising. Why? Social media helps you showcase your products visually and personally connect with your target audience. People love purchasing from stores they feel a connection with. E-commerce social media advertising enables you to build that connection. This blog will walk you through effectively leveraging social media advertising to boost brand awareness, engage your target audience, and significantly increase online sales with tiktok ecommerce strategy.
Shophunter’s Shopify Sales Tracker can help you achieve your social media advertising goals by tracking how your ads impact sales. With this tool, you can see your sales, orders, and returning customer rate for the period before you run your ads and compare that data to the stats after your ads have run. This will give you a clear picture of your ads' performance and what needs improvement to help you reach your objectives.
What is E-Commerce Social Media Advertising?
E-commerce social media advertising is all about promoting products on social media platforms to drive sales and increase revenue. Its primary purpose is to help online stores reach potential customers already spending time on social media. Many social media ads include:
Sponsored posts
Stories
Video ads
Each ad type can help you reach specific business goals, such as boosting brand awareness and driving sales. Social media allows you to target specific demographics to get the right audience with your ads. You can also utilize analytics to measure the success of your campaigns and make informed improvements over time.
What is Social Media in E-Commerce?
Social media in online shopping involves using sites like:
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest
It is to help businesses showcase their:
Products
Attract shoppers
Make it easy for people to buy things online
It's a way for online stores to:
Connect with customers
Sell more products
Improve the shopping experience for everyone involved
The Benefits of Social Media for E-Commerce
The advantages of social media for e-commerce are extensive. Let's unpack some of them:
Enhanced Global Exposure
Social media networks attract users from all around the world. Your e-commerce brand can tap into this global marketplace, extending your reach beyond traditional geographic boundaries.
Targeted Advertising
Social media platforms provide sophisticated tools for demographic targeting. By influencing the right audience at the right time, you can often improve conversion rates.
Cost-Effective Marketing
Paid and organic social media advertising are generally more cost-effective than traditional social media advertising. This puts small and medium-sized e-commerce companies on an equal footing with larger competitors.
Direct Communication
No other marketing approach allows you to communicate directly with customers. Social media provides a real-time interaction platform, allowing instant feedback and improved customer service.
Increased Brand Loyalty
Creating a lively social media community around your brand encourages customer loyalty. Followers are more likely to purchase from brands they follow and have a positive relationship with.
Insights and Analysis
Social media analytics provides valuable insights into:
Customers' behaviors
Interests
Preferences
These insights can inform strategic decision-making and optimize sales performance.
Integration With Other Business Functions
Social media can easily integrate with other business functions such as:
Customer service
Operations
Logistics
This ensures seamless communication and fulfillment, providing an enhanced shopping experience to customers.
What is E-Commerce Digital Advertising?
E-commerce digital advertising refers to promoting your e-commerce website and products using paid online channels and digital technology. With e-commerce digital advertising, you can create data-driven campaigns that expand your reach and encourage consumers to convert into paying customers.
What Types of E-Commerce Digital Ads Are There?
When you invest in digital advertising for e-commerce websites, there are several types of ads you can choose from depending on which online channels and consumers you want to target.
1. Search
With over 70% of consumers researching companies online before purchasing, search engines have significant potential to boost your leads and sales. Fortunately, with search advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) ads, you can effectively promote your e-commerce website on search engines like Google.
With paid search ads, you’ll bid on specific keywords and phrases your target audience searches online. With an optimal bidding strategy, plus a High-quality Score and Ad Rank, your ad will display at the top of the search results each time a user searches for those keywords and phrases. As a result, you’ll earn more web traffic and sales for your e-commerce website.
2. Display
If you want your ads to have more visual elements, display ads could be an excellent choice for your e-commerce website.
Display ads contain visual elements such as:
Images
Videos
Infographics
Banners
Buttons
And more!
Display ads can appear across:
Websites
Apps
Social media
When 90% of users say that videos help them make a purchasing decision, display advertising can help you drive more sales for your business.
3. Social
Do you want to promote your e-commerce website to more than five billion active users? Social media advertisements could be the solution you need.
With social media ads, you can promote your e-commerce website and products on several social media platforms, such as:
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
Instagram
And more!
Social media ads enable you to get your brand in front of more consumers to create:
Advertising your e-commerce website with influencers can also be an excellent way to boost your brand awareness and expand your reach. That’s because 92% of consumers trust influencers' recommendations over brand promotions.
Influencers are social media users who have a large following. When you use influencers to advertise your e-commerce website, you can get your brand in front of more consumers by promoting it to the influencer’s audience.
When you choose an influencer within your niche, you can reach more members of your target audience and increase your business's conversions and sales. For example, if your e-commerce website sells beauty products, consider partnering with an influencer who offers makeup tutorials and can showcase your products.
The Best Social Media Platforms to Advertise On
Remember that each social media site has a unique audience when deciding where to place your ads. Find out where your ideal customers are, and reach out to them there.
The most popular platforms for social media advertising include:
Facebook
As the largest social media platform in the world, it’s safe to say that Facebook is a reliable choice when deciding where to advertise. Facebook is popular among various demographics, meaning there’s a good chance your target audience is engaging with the platform, too. Aside from allowing Facebook users to connect and share content online, the platform enables merchants to advertise their products and services online.
Here are a few Facebook advertising options that can help you meet campaign goals:
Image and video ads
Facebook provides the most basic ad formats and is among the simplest to design. Advertisers can highlight through a single high-quality image or video and use them at any point in the sales funnel as:
New products
Services
Brands
Stories are full-screen:
Images
Videos
Carousel ads
It is presented through:
Facebook
Messenger
Instagram
Unlike typical stories, stories ads do not disappear after 24 hours, giving them greater breadth and freedom of expression.
Carousel Ads
Carousel ads allow advertisers to show two or more images or videos within a single ad. Each ad can be presented with its:
Headline
Description
Link
Call to action (CTA)
Slideshow Ads
Slideshow ads are video-like ads that display up to ten images or a single video within a slideshow. They differ from video ads because they are fast-loading and easy to create.
Collections ads
Collection ads are more accessible from their phones making the products easy:
To discover
To browse it
Purchase products
Each ad features a primary video or image with several accompanying images in a grid-like layout, pulling together in an immersive experience.
Messenger Ads
Messenger ads are presented in the Chats tab of the Messenger app. When customers tap on an ad, they’ll be sent a detailed view of the product or service, complete with a call to action to visit a site or begin a conversation with an agent.
Playable Ads
Playable ads are interactive video ads designed for mobile app advertisers to drive customers to their applications through a demo-like process. You can entice users without being intrusive by allowing users to test-drive your app before downloading or purchasing.
Instagram
Known for its glossy photos and videos, Instagram is an ideal platform for brands with visually appealing products that can be easily incorporated into visual media. It has a massive user base, the second-highest engagement rate among social media platforms, and one of the youngest audiences.
If your business and target market fit both characteristics, Instagram ads could be your best option, offering advertisements such as:
Image and Video Ads
Because Instagram advertising relies so heavily on images and videos, photo and video ads are the most common type you will use and come across. Between posts by their friends and followers, users can see advertisements pointing them toward a:
Company’s page
Website
Store
Instant Experience Ads
Instant Experience (IX), formerly known as Canvas, ads are an immersive full-screen format designed primarily for mobile devices. They can be supported in both Instagram stories and feeds.
Collection Ads
Like Facebook, collection ads are more accessible making mobile users for products easy to:
Discover
Browse
Purchase
Each collection ad includes a cover video or image, with smaller product images added below.
Explore Feed Ads
Appear on Instagram’s Explore page, where users:
Discover new content
Watch the latest videos
Find new shopping experiences
With these ads, businesses can reach receptive customers where they want to be seen.
Polling sticker Ads
Are an interactive format used in Instagram stories to drive engagement and discover customers' needs. While simple, these ads can effectively allow your audience to interact with your business.
Instagram Shopping Ads
Enable customers to tap a product tag to learn more about an item and discover how to purchase it. These ads are used within Instagram Shop to maximize the reach of your products and boost shoppable posts.
Twitter
Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has been one of the most popular social media channels. It is the go-to platform for discovering breaking news and engaging with minor—and big-name influencers.
Twitter ads offer several different options for brands to create advertising, including:
Image and Video Ads
Twitter image and video ads allow businesses to highlight their products and capture the attention of potential customers. Easy to create and use, their ads can point people toward a site or drive campaigns via viral engagement.
Carousel Ads
Carousel ads allow you to tell a story and drive users to your website or app. You can showcase multiple products or promotions with up to six horizontally swipeable images or videos.
Moment Ads
It allows users to craft a collection of Tweets to tell an immersive story beyond the standard character limit. They can provide different perspectives and promote unique stories.
These native ads are meant to feel like regular Twitter content, allowing users to expand their business's reach organically.
Follower Ads
It promotes an account to a targeted audience, building awareness and attracting new followers. They appear as Promoted Tweets in the target’s timeline, appearing natural and allowing for organic discovery.
Twitter Amplify Ads
These pre-roll advertisements align brands with the premium content your customers are watching, from highlights to viral clips. By targeting the customer’s location, you can build on a pre-existing audience by going where the customer is already located.
Twitter Takeover Ads
Twitter Takeover ads place your brand at the top of the conversation as the first ad of the day. When your target audience refreshes their Twitter Timeline, your ad will be the first one they see, leading to greater engagement.
TikTok
A relatively newer player in the social advertising game, TikTok holds enormous potential for reaching potential customers, especially among younger audiences. In just three years, the platform has grown in the US from 35.7 million users in 2019 to more than 94 million in 2022.
TikTok ad options are growing and include:
Image and Video Ads
Despite being a video platform, TikTok supports both image and video ad formats. Brands can place both ad types via TikTok’s news feed apps or between videos on a user’s feed.
In-Feed Ads
In-feed ads allow brands to achieve their marketing objectives quickly and flexibly. They appear in a user’s For You Feed and are designed to capture attention and drive engagement.
Hashtag Challenge Ads
Branded Hashtag Challenge ads transform how brands interact with their audience by sparking trends and cultural movements through viral challenges or hashtags.
Pinterest
Pinterest is another highly visual platform decorated with:
Whimsical wedding photos
Cooking videos
Fashion reels
It is an ideal platform for social media advertising, considering its users typically use it to find and purchase products.
Pinterest ads use a highly targeted search engine, allowing brands to advertise via the following options:
Standard and Video Pin Ads
Standard and Video Pin ads are the primary option advertisers, allowing brands to present high-quality content that will stand out in people’s feeds. You can capture people’s attention and drive them toward engagement through these ads.
Carousel Pin Ads
These are standard pins with multiple images. They are a fantastic way to showcase a product's features and capabilities or advertise numerous products simultaneously.
Idea Pin Ads
These are multi-page spreads that share ideas, showcase the brand's personality, and drive people towards your store with unique content.
LinkedIn
As the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn has an extensive professional user base and can target customers based on job qualifications. Unlike most other platforms that focus on B2C advertising, the nature of LinkedIn advertising also makes it better suited to involve B2B advertising campaigns.
There are several types of LinkedIn ads, including:
Single Image and Video Ads
It allows brands to captivate a professional audience with native image or video content displayed across the regular LinkedIn feed at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Carousel Ads
Carousel Ads allow brands to tell an interactive story through the LinkedIn feed to a swipeable series of:
Cards
Images
Videos
These brands are extensively customizable, from the content to the landing URL.
Event Ads
Event Ads allow businesses to amplify LinkedIn events or webinars to drive maximum attendance.
Document Ads
Helps brands and businesses collect leads and drive customer engagement by sharing documents within the LinkedIn feed.
Conversation Ads
It engages prospects in LinkedIn Messaging to drive professional conversations and promote products or services.
Message Ads
It allows businesses to send direct messages to prospects, sparking immediate action and beginning conversations.
Lead Gen Form Ads
Lead Generation Forms make it easy for brands to collect quality leads from ads on LinkedIn through pre-filled forms or documents.
Text Ads
It can drive new customers to your business through compelling headlines, brief descriptions, or optional images.
Follower Ads use existing connections to promote your LinkedIn page and acquire additional followers.
Snapchat
Snapchat is one of the most casual social media platforms, with an audience primarily among millennials and Gen Zers. With $2.8 billion in revenue in 2021 and an audience size of over 300 million, Snapchat is no laughing matter and is a significant opportunity for advertisers.
There are several different Snapchat ad types, including:
Single-image and Video Ads
Single Image and Video Ads are full-screen ads that are easy to create and can be used for all business objectives, from awareness to purchase.
Collection Ads
It showcases products through four tappable tiles, providing a frictionless path for users to
Browse
Select
Purchase
Story Ads
Make it simple to reach users with a series of 3-20 single image or video ads, either through the Content page or a branded title in the Discover section.
Lenses AR Ads
Lenses AR Experience ads allow brands to create interactive moments with augmented reality experiences that users can play with or send to friends.
Commercials Ads
Commercials are non-skippable ads that appear for six seconds up to three minutes. They are used within Snapchat’s curated content to engage with the audience and drive brand awareness.
Filters Ads
Filter ads use Snapchat’s various artistic overlays to drive conversations as they visit different areas or participate in viral engagements.
How To Build a Creative E-Commerce Social Media Advertising Strategy
Social media platforms make it easy for customers to shop and discover products within their networks. Leading the pack are:
Instagram
Facebook
TikTok
To use social media for your e-commerce business, set up channels to make shopping easy for customers. Instagram and Facebook share the same backend shopping operation, the Meta Commerce Manager. You can start tagging products on your posts after loading them into your product catalog or linking your website’s e-commerce platforms (such as Shopify and WooCommerce).
Leveraging Social Media Platforms for Seamless Shopping Experiences
When products are shown on Instagram posts, they can be tagged, allowing customers to view purchase details with a tap. Clicking on the tagged product will lead you to the product’s website page to make a purchase. The browser pops up within Instagram, so you can return to browsing when you close out or finish your purchase.
TikTok also allows you to create your shop, a great place to promote your products. While Pinterest removed its in-app shopping features, it remains where people research products, so your e-commerce store will also want a presence there.
Find Your Authentic Voice and Be Unique
Five years ago, DTC brands in the furniture retail segment were few and far between. Now, dozens of mid-century furniture manufacturers are alone, vying for your social attention. DTC brands specializing in dozens of market segments have repeated the same story. How do you set yourself apart when the field is so crowded? One way to do this is to find an authentic brand voice for your company.
Paired with brand visuals, this is one of the first steps to getting noticed. Identify what makes you unique and different from others in your field. It could be your:
Company’s story
A specialization
Even customer service
Research has found that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. If all of your products are similar to those of your competitors, providing excellent social customer service can set you apart from the pack.
Use Organic and Paid Strategies for Social Media
A combination of organic and paid strategies is usually the preferred way to go on social media. Paid social media can help you reach an even wider audience—but your organic content will keep them coming back. Here are a few tactics your e-commerce business can use to combine these powerful strategies.
Organic Social Media Strategies
Organic social media strategies for e-commerce presence and use of product reviews on your social media accounts
Adding relevant hashtags to increase the discoverability of your brand's personalized interaction with customers on your accounts and theirs
Providing excellent social customer care using user-generated content to further your social proof use social listening to improve your product and discover new customers.
Paid Social Media Strategies
Paid social media strategies for e-commerce paid advertisements and post boosts using lookalike audiences and website visitors to supplement your advertising
Running advertisements and boosts of any of the organic strategies mentioned above
Use Social Proof to Build Trust with Potential Customers
Word-of-mouth and reviews are still tried-and-true tactics for encouraging purchases and are great examples of social proof. Social proof is a concept in psychology that declares consumers are more likely to buy from companies they see other happy consumers using. So, customer reviews, user-generated content, and influencer marketing help gather social proof to share with your audience. For networks like Facebook that allow reviews as a feature, letting your customers leave reviews makes business sense.
Ask for more customer reviews, and you’ll be supplemented with social proof. Reviews are even better when managed and responded to by the brand. Another way to boost your social proof is by using an influencer marketing strategy. Pair Eyewear does a great job of influencer marketing all over TikTok and utilizing those influencer videos for paid and organic content (shoutout to our last point here).
Use Social Listening to Improve Your Sales Strategy
Social listening can benefit all departments of your company. But for sales specifically, you can use social listening to identify gaps in your competitor’s strategy and see what your industry’s customers are talking about. These discussions can lead to new products, strategies and better customer service. For an online-only company, social listening is imperative because you rely more on interactions and online activity to guide your strategies. Which leads us to setting yourself apart from others in an increasingly crowded social space.
Leverage User-Generated Content to Boost Social Engagement
As seen in the social media case study examples above, user-generated content is among the most crucial types of content for e-commerce brands. It makes customers not just idle watchers. It transforms them into your loudest cheerleaders online. You ask why real user testimonials and photos matter for your e-commerce marketing strategy? Because they’re genuine, relatable, and convincing. Statistics show that UGC has a 4.5% higher conversion rate than non-UGC. Let’s assume you spot a rave review with a happy snapshot. It’s proof as much as an invitation to join a community of satisfied clients.
Here’s how to encourage your customers to share their experiences:
By adding a hashtag
Participating in a photo contest
Leaving a review on your website
Including some pop-ups on your e-commerce website
By offering coupon codes.
Don’t forget to feature on your social media channels to set the trend:
UGC
Testimonials
Photos
Audience Targeting: Get Specific
Targeting an audience means zoning in on a select demographic:
Age
Gender
Occupation
Interest
By using keyword search, surveying and interviewing customers, and creating clear customer personas, you can better picture your customers and target them more accurately. Not only should you target new and potential customers, but you should also make sure to retarget existing customers. This will help remind customers of your brand even if they’ve already made a purchase and is more cost-effective than advertising to potential customers.
Don’t Forget Mobile-Friendliness
With over 98% of Facebook users accessing the app via mobile, your ads must be mobile-friendly. Your ads should fit physically on a mobile screen and be designed with the mobile user in mind. This means, whenever possible, be:
Legible branding
Large and clear text
Eye-catching graphics
Interactivity whenever possible
Use Analytics to Guide Your eCommerce Sales
We mentioned social listening before, but there are additional analytics you can take advantage of when approaching social selling. Using social media data to inform your sales plans on an ongoing basis will only help your ROI. From social media analytics, you can find many e-commerce-related data:
Website clicks
Profile visits
Social shares from your website
Mentions from customers' ad offers
Click-through mentions of new products or campaigns
Some analytics, like Instagram impressions from the Explore page, are part of an organic e-commerce social strategy. Others, like website clicks or social-only offers, are more specific analytics to help define your social ROI.
10 E-Commerce Brands That Nailed Social Media Advertising to Inspire Your Next Campaign
1. Dove: Challenging Beauty Standards
Dove is not an eCommerce business; its products are widely available through various eCommerce platforms and retail outlets. Dove utilizes e-commerce marketing channels for sales, but its core business model is not solely based on e-commerce. Instead, it combines traditional retail and online sales through various distributors and retailers. Social media can be hazardous to our mental health and our perception of our bodies. All those polished photos, all those smiling and successful people—this content can create significant pressure on users, especially younger generations. One of the social media case studies on our list delves into this issue and tries to combat it.
Dove was among the first companies to understand the importance of inclusivity. In 2004, the brand recognized the insufficient representation of different women in ads and, later, on social media. Dove launched several eCommerce marketing campaigns dedicated to raising women’s self-esteem, including:
Real Beauty
This groundbreaking campaign of Dove featured women of various:
Ages
Shapes
Sizes
This campaign aimed to draw attention to what most women look like. The outcome was increased sales from $2.5 to $4 billion during the first ten years.
#SpeakBeautiful
Their eCommerce marketing strategy is all about self-love. For #SpeakBeautiful, Dove partnered with Twitter to address the issue of negative language directed at women and its impact on their self-esteem.
It spurred positive conversations about beauty and reacted to negative tweets in real-time.
No Digital Distortion
This initiative prevented people from retouching their photos to meet the established beauty standards on social media. The corresponding “No Digital Distortion” mark signified that the images were original. Such content spoke of body positivity and the acceptance of natural beauty.
#ShowUs
Dove’s messages center on inclusivity. #ShowUs is one of the latest campaigns involving the company and Getty Images.
The brand created a stock photo library with over 5,000 images, demonstrating women and non-binary individuals from diverse backgrounds.
2. Airbnb: Live Like a Local
The following eCommerce case study on our list is Airbnb. Everyone knows this company and what it’s all about. Airbnb strives to build a global community as a mediator between people worldwide. To encourage users to click the “Reserve” button, the company taps into selling:
Emotions
Experiences
Human connections
So when you explore its social media content, you see that you don’t book a place. You’re choosing an experience.
Airbnb creates content specifically for each social network to connect with its audience. For example, on Instagram, the audience is more dynamic and consumes visual content more than text. Airbnb must enrich its feed, inviting followers to share their journeys and memories with:
UGC
Storytelling
Other posts
One of the most noteworthy Airbnb social media case studies was Live Anywhere. Launched in 2021, it allowed twelve individuals to live in various Airbnb locations for a year. These people provided a peek into their lives as locals and shared their experiences on social media. Social media buzz, engagement, and increased long-term stays due to this campaign were apparent.
3. Dollar Shave Club: Sheer Wit and Relatability
Dollar Shave Club sells razors and other shaving products. It’s a social media case study example that found a key to its audience through its tone of voice, which remained consistent even after Unilever’s acquisition.
Here are some tips on how to build a solid social media brand from Dollar Shave Club:
Make a Memorable Launch Video
Dollar Shave Club decided to cut through the noise with a video that soon became viral.
In this video, the company showcased its products and, most importantly, manifested its ethos. The secret to such content marketing success lies in the relatable humor and sharp wit.
Dollar Shave Club (DSC) presented itself as more than just a razor company; it showcased a refreshingly honest and humorously relatable personality. The bottom line is to speak to potential customers as friends, not just as buyers.
Incorporate Social Proof and User-Generated Content
DSC initially uses social proof. Like many companies, it capitalizes on excellent customer reviews and testimonials. DSC created a Pinterest board that featured genuine customer interactions and unboxing experiences. This creative way of combining social proof with UGC demonstrates a business that is confident enough to trust its audience with the representation of its brand. Dollar Shave Club Pinterest
This multifaceted strategy results in a:
Devoted following
A genuine brand
A billion-dollar valuation
4. CLUSE: The Power of Authenticity
CLUSE is another brand that heavily relies on UGC. It’s one of the best marketing case studies of integrating social media into the shopping experience. Unlike most brands, which bombard users with never-ending sales pitches, CLUSE adheres to more subtle and engaging principles.
Let’s focus on how it transformed its Instagram feed into a virtual storefront.
As soon as you open its profile, you notice that authenticity is at the brand's core.
It repurposes user photos and videos, whether of a digital creator with 3,558 followers or a fashion stylist with 63.9K subscribers.
The content varies from unpacking to people wearing CLUSE watches, providing a more relatable and realistic perception of the products. Cluse shop
Enhancing E-Commerce with Social Media Integration Tools
CLUSE also uses specific tools to connect social media with its online store organically. For this purpose, the brand has integrated Flowbox, a social media aggregation tool, into its website. The tool automatically scans social networks to collect relevant pictures and displays them on the website. This section is titled “Shop the Look.”
Visitors can access a dynamic and visually appealing gallery and explore more than what is present on product pages. If they click the image featuring a product, they’ll see a clickable tag and a photo under the “Shop This Look” title. The website will direct them to the dedicated product page if they hit these icons. Such functionality enables you to check how the item would look in real life and how you can combine it with jewelry, apparel, etc.
5. Burberry: A Modern Approach from a Legacy Brand
Burberry doesn’t exclude a wider audience from their campaigns even being associated with:
Royalty
Celebrities
Luxury
The brand constantly invents new strategies to appeal to buyers. Burberry’s team was among the first to adopt social media in high-end retail. What lets it stay so fresh? Let’s consider some of its social media marketing strategies. The company constantly thinks about and like its modern consumers. It preserves its heritage of British chic and authenticity.
Still, it introduces several strategies to stay relevant, such as:
Video Marketing
Video content is an effective way to tell stories and capture user attention. It lets you showcase your product from different angles and share your message and values. Consider following Burberry’s example by using Facebook’s video features. Their brief videos give potential customers a direct experience of the brand’s unique qualities and craftsmanship.
Addressing the Gen-Z Audience
When Daniel Lee joined the company, he announced a rebranding and further embraced a Gen-Z style. Driving younger consumers to the brand, it includes:
Casual compositions
Natural poses
Authentic backdrops
Burberry remains up-to-date and relevant by refraining from overly polished or staged imagery.
Merging Online with Offline
Burberry’s new retail store in Shenzhen, China, was among the company's first attempts to extend its online presence. It partnered with Tencent, the developer of WeChat, to launch a “mini program.”
It offers:
Personalized and exclusive content
Product information
Bookings
Virtual tours of the store
6. J. Crew: Utilizing Fan Feedback
Crew is a famous American retailer that sells men’s, women’s, and children’s:
Apparel
Shoes
Accessories
Since 1992, this brand has been building its community, having accumulated 2.6 million followers on Instagram and 1.7 million followers on Facebook. The brand puts customer feedback front and center. J. Crew actively engages with its audience, responding to comments and striving to address any issues raised.
For example, if a person struggles to identify their size, the company steps in and offers its help, explaining how its numbers correspond to a sizing chart.
One key aspect of this e-commerce marketing case study is having a dedicated team to monitor social media comments and messages. The company regularly uses feedback to improve its products and services. J. Crew also posts high-quality photos of its new products on Instagram and Facebook, including links to shops from the feed.
Tailoring Social Media Strategies to Platform-Specific Audiences
Moreover, J. Crew frequently collaborates with influencers to promote its brand. For example, it has worked with Casey Neistat, a YouTube celebrity. Plus, it makes the most of each platform, tailoring content strategies to every channel. It comprehends the peculiarities of different media and the unique needs of their target audience.
For instance, J. Crew strives to reach a professional audience on LinkedIn. It publishes stories of successful entrepreneurs and highlights career opportunities. J. Crew also leverages Pinterest. There, it crafts engaging narratives through a captivating collection of pins that showcase the J.Crew lifestyle. This and other social media case studies highlight the need to adapt content to ensure a multifaceted approach.
7. ASOS: The Power of Visuals
ASOS, a clothing retailer, capitalizes on the power of high-quality visuals in its marketing strategy. The brand understands that compelling images drive sales, so it uses social media to showcase products from various angles, enhanced with interactive features like polls and quizzes. Central to ASOS’s ethos is a commitment to body positivity and inclusivity, with models of diverse body shapes, sizes, and cultural backgrounds.
This approach celebrates individual uniqueness and has helped ASOS cultivate a loyal and appreciative customer base. Just like other companies mentioned above, ASOS effectively uses influencer marketing. Opinion leaders help raise awareness among a wider audience and prove the company’s trustworthiness among the target market. Asos instagram
8. Away: Matching Promotion with Emotions
Away is another travel-focused eCommerce case study on our list. The brand specializes in selling suitcases and travel accessories. Like Airbnb, Away excels in marketing, but instead of promoting its products, it focuses on the emotions and experiences associated with travel.
For instance, in a recent Instagram post, Away conveyed that their suitcase is more than just an item; it’s a collector of:
Memories
Places
Encounters
This messaging encourages customers to think about the excitement and adventures of traveling, making the product more appealing. The brand also creates an authentic and relatable brand image by sharing UGC. This post demonstrates that Jennifer Mika, an artist with 215K followers on Instagram, brought her suitcase to the subway during rush hour. If you’ve ever been there, you can easily relate to all the problems seen in this video.
9. Spikeball
Spikeball is a company with a fun, easy-to-play outdoor game. And it has a significant presence on TikTok to promote its game. It also has its own TikTok Shop set up—though the brand doesn’t always tag its products in its video content.
One of its recent videos promotes a fun way to play its game: at night with glow gear on.
A screenshot of a Spikeball TikTok promoting its product. Because Spikeball is an active game, video promoting the product is an intelligent tactic. Showcasing people having fun while playing is the perfect way to inspire potential customers to participate.
10. Solo Stove
Solo Stove sells portable, smokeless fire pits, and it uses social media to help promote its products, primarily through video. What makes this video stand out is the fact that it’s promoting a significant sale. Both text overlays on the video and the video’s caption share details about a promotion: customers can get bonus items after spending at least $200 (more or less the price of a new Solo Stove, anyway).
Videos like this do a great job of generating new business and leading interested parties to your website. Solo Stove could have taken this further by setting up its Facebook Shop so viewers could immediately purchase directly from the social media platform.
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