There are some exciting new trends for e-commerce marketing becoming available, and now is the absolute best time to get on the bandwagon and take advantage of what they can do for you and your small business. Two of these marketing vehicles are discussed below, and in the coming months you’ll certainly be hearing more and more about them, but now is the time to get on board if you really want to gain the benefits of this kind of marketing before it becomes more widely used.
This exciting new opportunity for marketers is being made available by Facebook, and since it’s in its very early stages, it has not yet been adopted by large numbers of businesses. Being on the cutting edge of any new technology has an appeal all its own, because it puts you ahead of the e-commerce trends, or at least on their leading edge.
This particular vehicle is called Facebook Lead Ads, and there are some terrific advantages to using them. At present, Facebook Lead Ads are available as a mobile-only offering, although they will also find their way to desktop at some point in the near future.
Here’s how it all works:
- A user receives an ad on their mobile device, asking if they’d like to opt-in to something (for instance, a DIY guide or something else of value to them)
- The user clicks ‘YES’ and Facebook auto-populates their email account with an email, then a second ‘Yes’ click from the email itself is all that’s necessary to receive a free e-book or whatever you are marketing
- Without ever having left Facebook, without entering their email address, and without navigating anywhere else from their mobile device, the user has received your marketing material. If the user were required to provide you with an email address, maybe 10% would do so, so this is a much tighter method.
One big advantage to this strategy is that it can target very specific groups or individuals, and there is no ‘weak link’ in the process, i.e. there is no point at which the user must be sent to a Landing Page, so there is no dropoff which might break the chain. Another strong appeal is the low cost of conducting this kind of campaign – after setup, it can save you as much as 90% on more traditional methods where the user would click on an ad, be sent to a Landing Page, and then submit an email.
Snap Chat 2016
This is THE social media platform for young people in the 12 – 17 age range, and with no internal ‘discovery’ mechanism like Twitter or Instagram have, Snap Chat users must be found from some external source.
The interesting thing about Snap Chat is that a much greater percentage of its users actually engage with new posts, because there aren’t nearly as many other distractions like posts, photos, and graphics. This form of social media is expected to soar in 2016, and if you can get your marketing message there somehow, you’ll be reaching a growing audience, and an engaged audience.
If you have a product or service to sell which makes it advantageous to target this kind of demographic, this is a social medium you should be using in 2016. Even if you don’t personally care to start another social media account, you could get around that requirement by compensating someone who already does have an account to put out your message. Whether it’s your own channel or someone else’s though, Snap Chat is going to enjoy huge growth in the coming year, and it’s somewhere marketers should be putting out their message.