A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim – that’s how Oxford Dictionary defines Strategy. Simple and bang on! Every marketing media and media vehicle that brand chooses has to fit in its overall strategy seamlessly. TV, print, Radio, Internet portals, Mobile did that and now it’s time Social Media follows suit.

We have reached a point in time where the question has moved from ‘Why Social Media’ to ‘How Social Media’. Social Media is everywhere. It is hailed as the biggest revolution in recent times. To put it in perspective, if we assume Facebook to be a country, it would be the third largest populous one after China and India. If Youtube was a TV channel in India, it would have been the 11th biggest. Twitter is the second largest search engine closely followed by Youtube. While you were reading the above stats, more than 100+ hours of video has been uploaded on Youtube. Aston Kutcher and Britney Spears have more twitter followers than the entire population of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama. More than 25% percent of search result for any brand would link you to user-generated content on social media. All these things work in favour of social media in spite of Facebook and Youtube being banned in China (stats courtesy – Socialnomics). The return on investment (ROI) in the case of social media is tremendous considering you’re still in business after 5 years! There is no escaping this media.

One should not enter social media without a proper strategy in place. Any mistake done on this media is amplified to a great extent. In this article, I will explain the way to build a successful social media strategy from group up. Follow the below 5 steps and you will have a successful social media strategy.

Step 1: Listen
Before deciding to enter the social media hemisphere, listen online. Listen online to what people are saying about your brand, about your company, about your products, about your services, about competitor brands, what the wants are and what are opinions of people who could be your prospective customers, listen to the influencers.

Through effective online listening, you can create an all-encompassing picture of your web presence, brand favourability and online reputation. By listening to online conversation, you can identify areas of opportunity and begin to develop a strategy. Listening will tell you which platforms you should be more active on. Listening will give you the starting direction to your strategy. PepsiCo shifted its focus to football from cricket in India by listening to its prospective customers views/opinions on social media. Listening is the first step for your strategy and the most important step.

The other steps will and can follow only on successful implementation of this step. To help you there are lots of tools in market like Technorati, Google Alerts, Twendz, Google Blog Search, Twitter search, Google analytics. Another important thing to identify is the people driving communications in regard to your company and industry. They are known as ‘Influencers’. They can make or break your reputation online. A good tool to identify and listen to influencers is WeFollow.

Step 2: Goals and Objective
Now that you have ’listened’ to your audience, you should be in a better position to establish your goals. The goals can be creating a platform on social media for customer interaction, reputation management, new customer acquisition, feedback mechanism, driving web traffic, increasing sales, etc. Remember, social media is more about your audience than you and therefore consider not only your goals, but also theirs. You must understand, ‘What are their needs? What are they interested in? What are they talking about?’ Design your goals in such a manner that it addresses 80% to your audience’s demands and 20% to your senior management’s demands. Promote less and address more. You will find you can build more influence and trust with the value you provide your followers.

Step 3: Develop your plan and content
Your goals will guide you in deciding the content you need to create. Will you reach out and leverage Influencers? Will you provide free material or samples? How will it be delivered? You may have products that are environmentally friendly. Will you moderate and lead a conversation about environmental issues? There are many creative ways to approach your audience. Be innovative. Every company worth its salt has a marketing calendar in place. If you don’t, do it now. Include social media in that calendar. Plan ahead regarding which festivals or occasions you need to address on social media. Develop your content in such a way that it addresses your goals. It’s a good practice to schedule the whole week’s content. Your followers should know at what time you will be addressing them so be consistent. Content can be tips, promotional offers, white papers, opinion polls, case studies, news, photos, opinions, statistics, etc but should be in line with your goals. Next, decide which social media sites you need to be present in. Ensure you start with one or two sites at a time and develop them so they are solid before moving on to another social media site. Please note: It’s very easy to be creative and drift away on social media. To avoid this, always refer to your goals which you decided on in step 2 after listening in step 1.

Step 4: Engage
Armed with smart objectives, a solid timeline, great content, and the right social media sites you are now ready to post your content. Engage in the conversation and express your point of view. Remember to keep to your schedule and be consistent. Have the resources on hand to respond to comments and feedback so you can keep the conversation going. This is not an "if you build it they will come" type of scenario. You have to keep at it.

Step 5: Measure and Optimize

Measuring and Optimizing are the most crucial elements of any strategy and should never be ignored. Clearer goals will lead to accurate measurements. Facebook has its own inbuilt measurement system known as ‘Insights’. Use it extensively. For other sites there are ample of tools available in the market both paid and free. My advice is to try out tweet deck, Google analytics, Klout, Facebook insights and Youtube insights before you graduate to paid tools. Some of the parameters you should measure in addition to achievement of your defined goals are share of voice, awareness, engagement, influence and popularity of your properties on social media. Work on the insights gained to optimize your content and plan. Remember, one should always learn and grow as the nature of social media is never static.

Follow these five steps diligently and you will have a successful social media strategy in place. A good social media presence will help you in executing successful campaigns. You can get in touch with me any time through my social media handles mentioned on this site. And yes, don’t be present on any media just because your peer/competitor is.

Hey, nice to meet you. Thanks for being here and wanting to know a little more about me, I think that’s very cool.
Let me first tell you a bit about me and this blog. I will use this vehicle to demystify the magical world of marketing for you. You will find interesting marketing related insights in this blog which you can apply to increase your brand/personal awareness, drive traffic to your website and generate revenue from your marketing initiatives. This blog is written with an intention to provide insights, resources and commentary on a range of marketing and public relations topics including:

• Advertising (Offline and Online)
• Search engine marketing and optimization
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Business blogging and marketing
• Public Relations

This post is global in nature and the insights are true for all countries. This is the third part of a three-part series covering the following:

1. Reasons for shopping cart abandonment.


2. Ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate.


3. Ways to bring back the customers to complete their purchase after they have abandoned the shopping cart.

In the first part we analyzed why a shopper abandons the shopping cart before making a purchase. In the second part we discussed various ways to stop a visitor from abandoning the shopping cart. In this part, I will discuss ways to bring back potential customers to complete their purchase after they have abandoned the shopping cart.

Ways to bring back the customers to complete their purchase after they have abandoned the shopping cart

When a potential buyer visits E-Commerce websites, the websites convert the buyer into an actual buyer at anywhere between 1-2%. If you are converting at 1.5% for example and you can reduce your cart abandonment rate by 25% (from 50% to 37.5%), your conversion rate increases from 1.5% to nearly 1.9% - a nice improvement. Taking it one step further, if your average sale is $100, for instance, and you are spending 10% of revenue on paid search marketing to drive website traffic, you have improved gross margins by 40% - this is meaningful. You have spent your resources to get visitors to your shopping cart and you have spent further resources to keep them from abandoning the shopping cart. However, even after all your attempts, a few visitors are abandoning the cart. How do you get them back to your site and complete that purchase?
You’ll never completely solve the cart abandonment challenge, but there are two great ways to get that customer back, even after they leave your site. They are as follows:

Email Marketing:
If the visitor has provided you their personal information and email address, send them a mail. The mail should cover the following aspects:

1. Contact details for help.


2. Discount offer (if possible).


3. Benefits of shopping through you.

Let me give you an example. Robert had visited www.bestshop.com shopping cart section and had abandoned it before making the purchase. Have a look at the below example of a mail sent to Robert:

Hi Robert,
It seems like you tried ordering goods from bestshop, but didn't complete your order. We would love you to come back and complete your order. To get you started, we're offering you a free $10 coupon.
Apply the coupon code: XE37-X0X5-7J15-F9XX while making payment. The expiration date of this coupon is 11/05/2013.
Shop at bestshop.com for:

• A one-stop shop solution thanks to our wide range of brands.


• Return policy: Goods once sold CAN be returned back.


• Quick delivery.


• Free shipping.


• Various payment options including cash on delivery.

Such email encourages the visitor to come back to your site and complete the purchase. However, the email should be sent within one day of abandonment and not after. Don’t wait too long as you may miss the window, and don’t be too shy about it.

Re-Marketing:
Use a platform like Google Adwords for this kind of search engine marketing activity. When a visitor gets to your shopping cart place a ‘cookie’ on their computer so that if he/she doesn’t complete the purchase then you can do some online display advertising targeted specifically at that customer.
For instance – a customer shops your site, places a product in your shopping cart but abandons the site without completing the purchase and then goes elsewhere on the internet and visits a site that has display advertising (banner and other advertising). Your display ad shows up to reinforce your brand and encourage the customer to come back and complete the sale.

Remember: Shopping cart abandonment is huge problem for e-commerce site. However, don’t lose hope. Follow the strategies mention in my post and I guarantee you that you will soon see the sales figure going up. Do keep me updated on the strategies you adopted and how are they delivering.

In my next post, I will explain how to build a successful Social Media strategy for your company. This post will be applicable to all industries.