How to Support Retailers Through Social

Many retailers–both online and brick-and-mortar–are starving for content. Regional supermarket chains often have one digital marketing manager handling their entire social media presence–and this person is often too busy to create effective content on a regular basis. So, why doesn’t your social agency do the job for them?

Think about it: retailers need blog and social media content to drive sales. If they’re an online store, content attracts visitors to their site. If they’re brick-and-mortar, social helps them reach consumers who are likely to purchase from their locations. If your brand has products in those stores, high-level content can benefit everyone.

Related Article: Why Social Media Should Have A Seat At The Strategy Table

Using Branded Content

Let’s say your brand makes cherry supplements. Your products help people sleep and lessen joint inflammation–and you’ve just gotten them into a bunch of supermarkets in the southwest region of the country.

Our first step: Write a few blog posts about how to combat joint pain or sleep deprivation, and present your products as a solution–all while keeping the supermarket chain in mind. Next, we design some vibrant images that make your content optimal for sharing. Once you have the content and visuals, we can reach out to that supermarket chain and have them share with followers. The better branded your content is for retailers, the more likely they’ll post about it on their pages.

Through high-quality, branded content, you can bring awareness to your products–and the ways customers can benefit from them. Even if the retailer has 1,000 Facebook fans or Instagram followers, you’re targeting highly qualified prospects: you know shop at the stores selling your products.

Read More: Who Should Handle Your Influencer Marketing? Social Media Agency vs PR Agency

Targeting Through Paid Promotions

You can expand that audience even more with paid advertising. If a retailer is willing to grant your social agency advertiser-access on Facebook and Instagram, we can promote your content to people who live near the retailer’s stores. Retailers post the blogs and visuals we’ve created, and we advertise on their behalf. A budget as small as $100 can be wildly effective thanks to this strategic targeting.

For example, let’s say your vegan protein brand just sold products to a brick and mortar store. Through Facebook advertising, you can target all the vegans who live in the same zip code of that supermarket. In this scenario, you don’t even need to involve the store–you can advertise to local vegans directly from your brand’s Facebook page. If you choose to promote content through your own accounts, you’re still supporting the store because that’s where consumers will flock to buy your products.

You can also offer giveaways to boost store traffic–both to e-tailers and physical locations. If you put another $100 toward coupons for your products, retailers can give them away to customers via social media. Or you can hand them out via your own channels. Again, this is a win-win: you drive people to the store, and they go primarily to shop for your brand.

Reaching Consumers Who Drive Business

When meeting with retailers, discuss social targeting and paid advertising from the get-go. In your first conversation with a buyer, outline your social agency’s strategy to drive web traffic and in-store sales. Lay the groundwork so when you meet with the buyer after the campaign, you can say, “Hey, look what we’ve done.”

Supporting retailers through social helps your brand retain placement in retail locations–and drives sales. By focusing the right amount of energy on a highly specific group of consumers, your content helps everybody win.

Stay tuned for more of our blogs.

Isaac Brody (aka“Ike”) is the owner and CEO of Socialike, a Manhattan-based creative agency that specializes in social and digital marketing. Isaac comments on trends in marketing. Socialike’s clients, whether they’re in natural products, hospitality or any other industry, get concepts that differentiate them–along with trackable results.