CYBER MONDAY AND SOCIAL: OUR 10 TOP TIPS TO MAKE SOCIAL SELL BY GIDEON LASK, FOUNDER AND CEO OF BUYAPOWA

Ask the majority of the population about ‘Cyber Monday’ and many would probably guess it’s a re-run of an old Dr Who episode. But if you are in eCommerce or any other industry expecting to sell to consumers over the Internet it is increasingly likely that this recent American import has been circled in a bold colour on your calendar as a key date for your business.

With so much riding on ecommerce sales at or around this date, it is important you have all elements in your marketing mix helping pull in those sales. And yes, social can and should be a part of delivering that sales target.

With that in mind we thought we would share some of our top ten tips on how to get social to support selling in the run up to Cyber Monday.

• Start as early as possible: Build up expectation. Drop out teasers and hints before launch. Create a page where anyone interested can sign up and leave an email to get an alert as soon as the campaign goes live.
• Make sure you have a great offer: There will be a lot of noise out there at this busy time. What will really help break through the social chitter chatter and offers from competitors is a great offer that your fans and followers feel confident to share, in the knowledge that by propagating a great deal they are providing their friends, family and followers value and not just spamming them.
• Get your social media stars to help spread the offer: Whether it is celebrity endorsers or just staff who are Social Media Kings or Queens, get them to help push the offer. If your offer is tacky, poorly presented or has no apparent value, then these people will be risking their credibility on their networks by sharing. But if the value is apparent and the offer is great this should be easy, as you will be helping them provide a great deal to their friends, family and networks.
• Don’t exclude staff from the offer: Linked to the point above, especially when you have a great offer, why exclude staff? They all have friends, family and followers on social networks.
• Give the campaign a push start and keep pushing: Give the campaign a push through all your social media channels when you launch to try and get some initial excitement. But it shouldn’t be a ‘fire and forget’ launch. You should keep pushing it with entertaining and informative posts and tweets right up to the end.
• Don’t forget little old email: While we are talking about selling via social, email and newsletter lists are still your best friends. Push the campaign out via these channels.
• Coordinate your messages across social and email: Make sure your campaign messages are consistent across each of your social channels and emails and resonate with your brand. Create a unique campaign landing page which reinforces your brand, summarises the advantages of the deal, make it easy to participate and share all from one place. Remember that a person coming in by email may want to share by Facebook or Twitter or vice versa.
• Make it easy to participate, buy and share on mobile: We don’t need to repeat all the stats about how many people open emails on mobile, mobile traffic to social networks and the mobile vs desktop share. If you don’t know these stats then you haven’t read a marketing blog or magazine over the last 2 or 3 years. But the point is that the whole process from receiving the message, purchasing and sharing must be easy, no make that ‘super easy’, on mobile. If not you are throwing away Pounds, Dollars, Euros, Roubles or Yen to your competitors.
• Ask people to share: Don’t just expect your customers to share just because you add a Facebook button to the page. Ask them to share and give them a reason to do so. For example, which of these two calls to action would incite you to share with friends and family?
• ‘Share with friends and family’
• ‘Share with friends and family because the more people who join the better the price gets for everyone, and if you refer the most people you will also get a special prize’ We think you know what we mean.
• Build social into every aspect: In appreciating that social is different from other channels, you need to ‘bake in social’ from the beginning. This impacts all aspects of the campaign from how you communicate, how customers buy and how social interacts with the offer. At Buyapowa, we have learned that it is crucial to sell in a smart way on social involving three key elements of (i) co-creation (ii) dynamic pricing and deals and (iii) gamification. When  you understand the importance of each of these elements and how they interact together to make a compelling social sale, then we think you are on the way to becoming a social media selling guru!