With 901 million active monthly users, Facebook is still the king of social networks around and is a goldmine of opportunity for your eCommerce store.  With so many active users, one of the best strategies for boosting traffic and sales is from Facebook.  For the sake of this post we’ll assume you already have a Facebook company page setup,  and are at least somewhat active on the page.

Let’s dive right in…

1. Evaluate Facebook Insights to determine what post types are generating the most quality traffic, and engagement with your brand.  Depending on your type of store this could vary between images, video, audio, text, or a combination of all of them.

Here’s a good way to determine which types of media are driving the type of traffic that you are looking for.

- Go into Facebook Insights and download to Excel a report of the last 60 days of analytics.

- Sort the spreadsheet by media type and then determine a cumulative amount of traffic for each type.

- Login to Google Analytics and look at traffic sources, and specifically look at the individual pages that Facebook users are visiting.  Once you determine which pages people are visiting from Facebook, you can evaluate your strategy of what is being posted to Facebook.

Once you determine which post type it is, generate more content of that type.  Maybe it’s a video (if those are driving the most quality traffic) of someone wearing your scarf, or hiking in a product that you sell.

2. Run specials on your Facebook page.  There are multiple strategies to do this, and frankly, it could be a post all on it’s own, but for now we’ll cover the best ways to do this.

Specials can apply just to users that have liked your page, or for anyone who happens to stumble across your wall.  It’s up to you, but before you rush to to your Facebook page and eCommerce store to setup a special – evaluate how many ‘likes’ that you have to determine if the special is worth it.  If you have 500 likes on your page, and need 350 orders to break even from your special then you may want to evaluate either the special itself, and how you are going to run it.

As Clark Fredricksen said:

“More to the point: Consumers — even those on social networks — really aren’t that offended if you give them a good deal.”

Two ideas for driving sales are:

- Time limited.  It’s likely that you know, given the price point of many of the items you sell what the buying cycle of your customers is like.  For less expensive items flash sales have become popular and been able to generate a great amount of sales in a short time period.  If you limit your sales to just a few hours, or even a

- Ensure that the special is really special for Facebook users.  If a potential-buyer is able to find the same coupon or deal somewhere else then they likely will have a hard time believing you in the future.

3. Engage with users, don’t just post and hope for the best.  The Boeing Store is currently running a special that that has been getting a lot of comments.  Admins for the page have done a great job responding to inquires quickly with recommendations for products.

Not only is it good customer service, but reviews and recommendations can play a enormous part in driving traffic to your storefront and actually getting prospective customers to purchase.

4. Invite your followers (people that like your page) to events. Whether it’s a webinar your hosting, a tradeshow, or even better a special event just for your followers events can draw engagement and as a result, increase purchases.  If you are online only and have no way to connect in-person (which truly is best) then try a Google+ Hangout On Air and invite as many of your followers as possible.  Given that Google+ On Air is generally a one way broadcast, try to interact with the audience as much as possible.

5. Facebook Ad’s really can drive sales. Take a look at the report recently issued by ComScore, The Power of Like2 which details notable brands and their Facebook Ad performance.  One of the examples highlighted is Starbucks, which found that “Starbucks Facebook fans were 38% more likely to spend money at Starbucks after seeing their content.”  If your target market hangs around Facebook, Ad’s should be a consideration in driving product sales.

We would love to hear other ways you are using Facebook to drive customers to your eCommerce store – let us know in the comments.