These days, social media video marketing is no longer only about reaching your customers and building brand awareness.
With social media videos, optimized for engagement, you can grow sales. After all, video is dubbed the most powerful way to increase your sales and grow your ecommerce business.
Here’s the proof:
According to Wyzowl’s video marketing statistics, 87% of social media marketers agree that video marketing has helped them increase sales:
On top of that, 59% of consumers use social media to purchase products or services:
When done right, social media videos can be a powerful tool for achieving your social media marketing goals—specifically sales.
However, creating social media videos to grow sales is easier said than done.
In fact, according to a HubSpot report, 40% of social media marketers say they struggle to create an effective video strategy:
If you’re among them, fret not.
In this post, you’ll learn practical ways to use social media videos to grow sales and revenue for your ecommerce business.
How to Use Social Media Videos to Grow Sales and Revenue
Note that while many of the methods here will generate direct sales, some play an important role in driving indirect sales as well.
1. Make Your Videos Shoppable
Considering that around 45% of brands sell directly through social media sites, making your videos shoppable is a good way to leverage social media videos to grow sales.
Why?
Because shoppable videos are interactive and enable users to buy straight from the video by clicking on the embedded links. This means customers don’t have to leave the website to make a purchase.
They can easily start and complete the whole transaction on social media which relieves them from the hassle of clicking through to a website or online store to complete a transaction.
Moreover, viewers can click, drag, or scroll on the video to get a deeply immersive experience.
The good news?
Making your videos shoppable isn’t difficult. You just need to shoot the video, leverage the best video editing software from the Attrock curated list to edit your video and insert a call to action, add a shoppable link within the first few shots, and upload your video.
You can also display these social media videos on your website using social media aggregator tools to increase the reach of your social posts.
2. Partner with Nano-Influencers
Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing tactic that leverages product endorsement and placement from influencers—people who are perceived as experts in their fields.
69% of social media marketers already use TikTok for influencer marketing.
Considering that 61% of young Americans trust social media influencers and their product recommendations, creating solid social influencer video campaigns can help you generate more B2B inbound sales for your brand.
Since social media influencers have established strong relationships and are trusted by their audience, having them feature your products in their videos can help to drive sales for your brands.
Essentially, there are four types of social media influencers:
Nano-influencers tend to have a small audience but they have stronger relationships with their audience. For instance, a fashion influencer with lesser followers may have an organic and dedicated follower community as compared to an influencer with more followers but with an audience that doesn't engage. Additionally, partnering with them is cost-effective.
It’s no wonder that 44% of brands are planning to work with them in 2024, according to Influencer Marketing Hub:
3. Leverage Live Video Shopping
Live video is considered by 37% of consumers to be the most engaging type of in-feed social content:
Additionally, 32% of Gen Z consumers say that livestream shopping is an excellent source of inspiration and ideas, helping them shop smarter and make more informed buying decisions.
When done well, live video shopping can greatly boost your ecommerce sales.
Luckily, with platforms like Instagram and Facebook offering live video shopping capabilities, you can easily promote your products in real-time while allowing customers to buy your products without leaving the platform.
Another social media platform, LinkedIn, can also help in streamlining the process further through LinkedIn automation software by managing the leads and streamlining the sales process.
What’s more?
Live video shopping allows you to engage with your audience via Q&A sessions, polls, etc.
Besides, the good thing about live videos is that they allow you to manage your viewer experience in real-time.
Here’s how to leverage live video shopping effectively to boost ecommerce sales:
- Choose the right platform
- Build up excitement before the live event
- Create timely and irresistible content that provides value
- Leverage giveaways and time-sensitive discounts
- Partner with influencers
- Track your metrics
4. Share Product Explainer Videos
Other than educating your audience and effectively conveying a compelling message, explainer videos can help you sell products.
Why?
- They keep users engaged
- They are practical and easy to understand
- They act as user manuals
- They make your sales pitch more memorable
- Encourage customers by building interest in your product or services
- They can increase conversions
Explainer videos are useful if you run a service-based business where customers cannot touch and feel the product.
For instance, you could share an explainer video showing how B2B marketers can leverage an automated cold outreach tool to improve conversions.
Here’s an effective explainer video example by Miro, an online whiteboard and project planning software used for remote, in-office, and hybrid team collaboration that shows users how to get started with the platform:
Here are practical ways to boost sales with explainer videos:
- Address the right pain points
- Highlight your competitive advantage in the first few seconds
- Be fresh and unique
- Use an attention-grabbing story
- Always include a compelling call to action
5. Leverage Customer Video Testimonials
What’s a better way to showcase trustworthiness in your products or services than leveraging customer testimonials?
Customers trust other customers. Thus, customer testimonials are a powerful social media marketing tool because they help to create trust in your brand and product on social media.
Note that even though written testimonials are good, video testimonials convert better.
Why?
They bring the happy customer to life and allow others to identify with the testimonial.
Moreover, video testimonials deliver a human touch and give a fresh perspective to the product.
Creating customer video testimonials is also not difficult because you can shoot them live with your customer or request them for one.
Better yet, you can request a few of your loyal customers to provide a video testimonial for your product or services.
You can then share the video on your social media profiles and add links to the product or service the customer is explaining about.
Alternatively, you can leverage the AI text-to-video generators available on the market to convert your written testimonials into short testimonial clips.
Here’s an example of a video testimonial where the Instagram account shares a personal experience using hairstyle products from a certain brand:
6. Share Unboxing Videos
Who doesn’t enjoy opening a present? Every one of us does. That’s why sharing unboxing videos is so appealing to customers and can be a powerful way to encourage people to purchase a product.
An unboxing video is simply a video that takes the viewer through every stage from taking out the product to assembling the components and actually using it.
This helps to reveal how and what the product looks like when all the components have been assembled.
This video style helps add an element of realness to the product and showcases the experience from a customer's perspective.
Product unboxing videos allow people to share their experiences with a certain product or brand.
You can either share an unboxing video of yourself doing it or encourage your loyal customers to do it on your behalf then share the video with your audience.
Here is an example of an unboxing video where Nicki Marie unboxes a drink from OLIPOP and does a review:
Pro tip: While leveraging these social media video strategies to grow sales, you can also tap into the power of online advertising by leveraging robust video ad networks to maximize your reach.
Conclusion
As a marketer, you have multiple ways to leverage social media videos to grow sales. All that is required is to understand what kinds of videos to create and which platforms to leverage.
By following these strategies, you can greatly increase product understanding and sales for your business.