Quick tips to get more festive sales with Facebook

Social media and mobile shopping sales will come of age this Christmas according to Facebook. New research shows that the mobile and shopping experience will be a key driver for retailers looking to ramp up their sales figures this festive season. If you’re selling online, now is the perfect time to roll out your festive sales strategy.

• Cross-Channel matters

Even if your brand doesn’t use multiple channels itself, that’s not to say you won’t have a cross-channel presence. Shoppers will review, post and discuss your brand and its products on channels that they use, sometimes bringing your business along for the ride. Get some seasonal listening started – assess where your audience is and what they are saying.

Creating audience segments and begin to develop ways of reaching your demographic in the places they are active. This will more often than not demand that you develop a cross-channel strategy if none already exists.

2. Be mobile savvy

Mobile will be a key driver of sales for many businesses this Christmas. Facebook estimates that 72% of UK shoppers use their mobile phones while they are in store. If you are a bricks and mortar retailer with a high street shop or other physical space, this saturation offers a huge opportunity to increase in-store sales off the back of online activity.

23% of UK shoppers have changed their mind about buying a product while in store based on research done on their smartphone. This translates to losing almost one quarter of sales. Get your mobile game on point by overhauling your mobile website – even adding a seasonal page can help. Make sure you are actively requesting reviews from shoppers across your product range and have a plan in place to respond to negative reviews. Social media can also fall under the mobile umbrella. If you have a Facebook page be pro-active about updates and respond to any customer service requests or complaints quickly, effectively and politely.

Still not sure it’s worth the effort? Facebook figures show that 10% of all offline sales were influenced by mobile at Christmas 2014.

3. Use Social

Facebook reaches 51% of mobile phone users in the UK. The average user checks their Facebook news feed 14 times per day. And 12% of shoppers have purchased an item after seeing it on their Facebook news feed.

4. Facebook Ads

You can tap into all of these benefits with a Facebook ad campaign combined with boosted posts. Facebook advertising works on in a similar way to Google AdWords. Simply set a budget, decide how you want to pay and create your ad text and images. Facebook has a fantastic targeting functionality so you can specify the age, location, gender and interests of who you want to show your ads too. This means you can display your Facebook adverts to those shoppers most likely to buy from you in the run up to the festive season. Facebook will also show you exactly how many eyeballs will see your advert based on your budget – just use the slider to adjust before deciding how much you want to spend per day.

If you’re short on budget, Facebook adverts are a cost-effective solution. Cheaper than Google AdWords, they cost less but have a massive reach, which can be precisely refined to your particular customer segment to max out the ROI.

What does this translate to? Sales.