Deepak "Dee" Agarwal discusses his top tips for mastering social media for your e-commerce business.

1. Dee Agarwal:
Social Media in Online Retail
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2. It’s no secret that social media has played a big role in
changing the business environment and redefining the
communication strategies of business giants around the
world.
● Retail is an industry that has benefited from social media the most, as it is, by essence, a social
activity.
● Top leaders have adopted platforms like Facebook and Instagram to help market and promote
their brand - and of course, attract new customers.
● The recent stay-at-home guidelines have forced many retail businesses to transition to a
primarily online strategy and focus their efforts on a more digital approach

3. Who is Deepak “Dee” Agarwal?
Dee Agarwal is an accomplished executive with
decades of experience leading companies across
multiple industries, from the retail to health and
wellness. In 2014, Dee Agarwal was named as a
finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards,
one of most prestigious global business awards for
enterprising entrepreneurs.
A business leader in the ecommerce space and c-
suite executive of several large multi-category online
retailers, Deepak "Dee" Agarwal has spent years
building organizations from the ground up, learning
every facet of what exactly it is that makes a new
business successful.

4. According to a McKinsey Global Institute
Study, 85% of consumer and retail
companies are amongst the top users of
social media for marketing purposes,
compared to 66% of companies in other
industries.

5. The following are
Deepak Agarwal’s Top
5 tips to Master Social
Media in Online Retail

6. 1. Personalize the customer
experience
● Social media is a great space to highlight the best of
your business, including promotions and deals.
However, the content will not sell itself unless it
makes sense for your customer.
● Personalized content, such as built-in messaging and
notifications to deliver customer service, is key to
success with your audience. This will not only boost
vanity metrics but, more importantly, engagement.

7. 2. Nurture client relationships
● Many retailers are under the impression that
social media is mainly for marketing and sales.
In reality, these platforms go beyond a simple
marketing strategy and can offer opportunities
for building client relationships and showing
other sides of your business.
● Customers highly value transparency and
immediacy in retail, and brands can build
connections with authentic and timely social
communications.

8. 3. Build a strong community
● A McKinsey survey revealed that while price is a top
deciding factor for shopping, it only represents 24% of
what customers think of when choosing an online
retailer.
● Other factors like experience and convenience are
also critical considerations.
● By picking the right moments and nurturing potential
customers with relevant and helpful content, your
community will take notice of your efforts and grow
over time.

9. 4. Listen & Learn
● In order to measure your success around each
product launch, store location, or sales promotion,
it is important to focus on what’s been discussed
and shared about your brand on social media.
● Start by tracking your mentions - whether they’re
positive or negative - across multiple networks.
● This monitoring can provide important signals into
what customers want, need and think about your
brand.
● This insight can then inform both marketing and
social media strategies. Additionally, monitoring is
the first step to providing online customer service
and better addressing client needs in close to real-
time.

10. 5. Measure success
● One of the biggest benefits of implementing a
strong and consistent measurement strategy is
that it will create an opportunity to hone your
messaging and understand what did and didn’t
work from a content perspective.
● All marketing efforts should have clearly
aligned performance indicators to both
measure success and glean new learnings.
● As society continues to adapt their
consumption habits to social media, the future
of retail and digital communications are bound
to be linked.

11. “Based on your goals, different calls-to-actions
and messages will have different effectiveness.
For example, language used to entice a customer
to read more about a product line may not work to
get them to click to purchase. It is critical that
companies tailor their messaging to the desired
consumer behavior”
- Dee Agarwal