Trevor Zheng of Archic Furniture On How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Ecommerce Business
An Interview With Francois Marchand, Editor of The Ecomm Manager
Staying discipline is hard, and I am definitely not perfect on this. It’s hard to stay focused on a distracting social media world around you. But you have to use everything that you want to urge you to stay away from distractions. Trusting me gut is also something many people underestimate. Your gut is often times following the correct path even though your mind thinks overwise.
Maintaining and growing a successful eCommerce business is hard work. Social media is an essential piece of promoting an eCommerce business. How can someone use social media to grow their eCommerce business? In this interview series, we are talking to founders, CEOs, or principals of eCommerce businesses about “How To Use Social Media To Grow Your eCommerce Business.” As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Trevor Zheng.
Meet Trevor Zheng, an entrepreneur and the founder of archicfurniture.com. Archic Furniture is an eCommerce website serving customers with premium and luxurious furniture from top brands in the industry.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you’re super busy. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
It all started when I realized that you had a passion for furniture design. I spent my free time sketching out ideas for unique pieces that you thought would be perfect for the modern home.
You soon realized that you had a talent for creating pieces that people loved. Friends and family members were constantly asking me to design custom pieces for them, and I began to think that maybe you could turn your passion into a business.
So, I decided to take the plunge and start your own ecommerce furniture business.
Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?
Absolutely, connecting and meeting amazing vendors and CEOs in the industry. Learning about how they built their business and how they manufacture furniture to fit customers needs.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Yes, shipping to the wrong customers. We accidentally send another customer’s orders to an old customer. Thankfully, we caught it in time, but it taught us to double-check shipping addresses before sending to our suppliers.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
We’re now working with a lot of bigger and well respected brands in the industry. This will give our existing customer base a chance to find new brands and discover brands that have items that they love.
You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?
- Staying discipline
- Trusting my gut
- Always be growing
Staying discipline is hard, and I am definitely not perfect on this. It’s hard to stay focused on a distracting social media world around you. But you have to use everything that you want to urge you to stay away from distractions. Trusting me gut is also something many people underestimate. Your gut is often times following the correct path even though your mind thinks overwise.
Always be growing is a mentality that even if you think you’re doing well, there’s always something to improve on, do more of, or to add something new to a business.
Excellent, thanks so much for sharing that. I want to shift gears and talk about eCommerce. What was your original vision for your eCommerce business? What pain point(s) were you trying to solve for your customers?
Archic Furniture provides premium furniture from top manufacturers in the industry. We want to help customers find what they’re looking for, a home remodel, an additional piece of furniture, and everything in between.
How did social media help you grow your business? What were your strategic objectives — brand building, top-of-funnel marketing, lead generation, sales, etc. — and how did you implement your social media plan?
With a well-executed social media marketing strategy I have been able to increase visibility of my business, increase traffic, increase my revenue as well as building a cordial relationship with my customers.
I created a strategy that would work perfectly well for my brand by
A. Developing a monthly social media strategy that supports the overall marketing plan and business goals, ensuring my contents is consistent with my brand standards
B. Managing social media marketing and day-to-day activities, which includes:
Publish all planned content across various social platforms
I also monitor, listen and respond to comments, messages, social mentions and tags
By also creating an online review and feedback funnel that would capture my audience feedback through social polls, Q&As, interactive posts, Ask me anything through stories
Identify opportunities or threats in user-generated content surrounding the company
Monitoring trends in the news or social topics, we can leverage to engage followers or reach new target audiences
Engage with industry professionals and influencers to expand our digital network and create opportunities for cross-promotions
Analyse competitor brands and suggest creative ways to attract more customers and promote marketing content
C. Compiling monthly reports to:
Analyse social performance, campaigns and content, and translate anecdotal or qualitative data into recommendations for optimizing plans.
Share emerging trends in social media channels, design, content, and community engagement
Stay up to date with latest or trending social media best practices and technologies.
These are basic strategies I work with
Which social media platforms have you found most beneficial for eCommerce specifically?
I majorly make use of Instagram and Facebook as my e-commerce social media platforms because they both have a lot of Audiences, especially Facebook, which has a marketplace where I can itemize my product and people could place orders from. Due to the kind of products I sell, I make use of demographics to determine where to sell.
Basically, Instagram and Facebook has been the best e-commerce platform to sell.
What social commerce trends are you most closely paying attention to, and how are you preparing to leverage them for growth?
Partnering with content creators to create short form content (TikTok UGC), Recent studies have shown TikTok to be the best platform for ecommerce promotion, Many brands have achieved success by developing strategic partnerships with the best influencers and content creator they hire, and with TikTok where marketers / content creators engage meaningfully with specific users via their own channels and develop loyal relationships with them. By tapping into the communities of my associated content creators, these partnerships help me build my brand and generate content and conversations for it — and more crucially, around it.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen when companies try to use social media to promote eCommerce? What can be done to avoid those mistakes?
Most companies do not strategize or make proper planning when it comes to social media management, and that is mostly because they do not know how to manage their platform.
Some leverage on social media managers to help manage their social media pages, by staying updated and creating reels, designs, videos, captions, copy writing etc and also making use of analytics to track their growth online.
Ok super. Here is the central question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are your “Top 5 Ways To Use Social Media To Grow Your eCommerce Business?” Please share a story or an example for each.
1. Engagement: I make sure that whatever post I would be posting either on my page as post, story post, reels, captions, graphics designs I make use that they are relatable contents my audience can easily relate with. I also ask for their opinions on my business e.g. asking them what they like that I do, any contributions to what they think I wasn’t doing well, design game graphics they could play, and also add a call to action statement in my captions
2. Competitors: I make sure I follow up and check out my competitors page. Either to see how they are thriving in the business or get daily trends.
3. Learn from your Analytics: analytics allow you to track a variety of different data points, from engagement rates to growth in followers, reach and whether your target audience is turning into paying customers or whether they’re just checking out your content but with no real intention of buying
4. Use stories
Stories provide a decent alternative to that and allow you to reach your target audience more frequently without overwhelming them.
When you create an Instagram post, the content that you share will sit on your profile for people to see forever. It can also come across as spammy if you post too many updates in too short a period of time.
5. Run ads to your ideal audience
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
A movement to learn more about social media for the generic public!
Social media has taken over the world, and people need to know how to use it safely for mental health.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
On our website: archicfurniture.com
I want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise with us. I wish you continued success!
About The Interviewer: Francois Marchand is the editor of The Ecomm Manager. Throughout his 20+ years in journalism, communications, and marketing, Francois has created and managed high-value content for Postmedia, Vancouver Film School, and Unbounce. He loves helping business leaders grow their skillsets and knowledge base to stay ahead of the competition. Visit The Ecomm Manager: theecommmanager.com
