The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a significant increase in online traffic since most people worked remotely. According to an advertising industry report from 2022, the global digital advertising market could grow to $786.2 billion by 2026. This increase creates digital marketing opportunities for brands all over the world.
Effective social commerce strategies are crucial contributors to this increase. In this short guide, you will understand how this element of e-commerce can help modern advertisers. You will discover different strategies that you can try to turn your followers into loyal customers.
Key Takeaways
- Social commerce is an element of e-commerce involving selling services and products using social media platforms.
- The process promotes consistent audience growth and makes shopping a social experience. It also boosts brand awareness, making your brand well-known among Gen Z and millennial audiences.
- Examples of popular social commerce platforms today include Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok.
- Focusing on the proper advertising channels, keeping your branding consistent, and paying for ads can be effective ways to meet your advertising goals.
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Social Commerce: What You Need To Know
Social commerce uses social networking websites to advertise and sell services and products. It involves the entire shopping experience on different social media sites like Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, and Facebook.
Generally, social commerce marketers measure campaign success by how their audience interacts with their content through retweets, shares, or likes.
This marketing model moves social media beyond its usual role in the product discovery process. It encourages the audience to make a purchase without leaving the e-commerce platform.
Social commerce remains a complex topic that people need help understanding. Some think that it is the same as social media advertising. Some even use the term interchangeably with e-commerce. This misconception can lead to misunderstandings in the development phase of promotional campaigns.
Ensure salespeople understand social commerce strategies to avoid misunderstandings within your marketing team. Read below to learn how they differ from social media marketing and e-commerce.
Social commerce vs. social media advertising
Social media advertising is a process that focuses on getting your audience to click something that can direct them to an external website or landing page. It involves using user-generated content (UGC) promotions and other engagement strategies to attract more people to a brand.
Meanwhile, social commerce encourages people to purchase within social networks without leaving the site. It offers one-click payments, accessible product pages, and chatbot features that allow people to buy quickly.
There are apparent similarities between social commerce and social media marketing. Brands can engage in advertising without establishing a social commerce store. In contrast, it is only possible to implement a social commerce strategy with some form of social media advertising.
Marketers must use the same promotional strategies to drive traffic to their site and get people into their social commerce store.
Product promotions on Twitch, shoppable posts on Instagram, and subscription videos on YouTube are all still paramount to social advertising. However, modern marketers have more options for where to send buyers to check out.
Social commerce vs. e-commerce
Marketers must not confuse e-commerce or online shopping with social commerce because the concepts are inherently different.
Social commerce is a new type of e-commerce that occurs directly on social media. Meanwhile, e-commerce transactions occur through sites and apps designed for an online shopping experience.
For example, online shoppers can purchase on dedicated e-commerce sites like Amazon or retailer websites like Walmart and Target.
Now that you know the crucial differences between the three marketing concepts, you need to understand the importance of social commerce.
Importance of Using Social Commerce Strategies
If you are on the fence about establishing a social media shop, this list of benefits can help convince you. Read on and discover why social commerce can be a worthwhile investment.
Promotes consistent audience growth
With the expansion of social media sites, brands have new opportunities to connect with a significantly larger audience. The options made it essential for marketers to carefully consider the merits of social commerce against e-commerce when developing advertising tactics.
With acquisition costs continuing to soar, social commerce is becoming a compelling solution that enables small brands to adapt and extend their reach.
By using social media correctly, businesses can effectively enjoy their potential for audience growth. Constant engagement on social media platforms makes them the perfect spaces to showcase offerings.
The shift towards social commerce lets modern brands engage the active communities on these platforms. This advantage boosts their chances of engaging with people who can become loyal customers.
Moreover, social media shops offer the added advantage of accessibility. This advantage allows sellers to integrate their offerings within the platforms where their audience spends most of their time.
By having a robust social media presence, brands can avoid the barriers that stand in the way of conversion and discovery. This tactic enables a streamlined customer journey, allowing for more efficient conversions.
Through consistent engagement with the target audience, marketers can build long-lasting relationships, boost brand loyalty, and foster a sense of community. Moreover, the interactive nature of social media platforms enables brands to maintain an ongoing dialogue with their buyers, which is crucial to building trust and credibility.
Through this engagement, brands can create a dedicated following to advocate for their products and participate in their e-commerce sales funnel.
Creates a social experience for buyers
Unlike traditional e-commerce, social commerce makes the shopping experience much more interactive for buyers.
Through social commerce, shoppers can quickly consult with their online friends about purchases. They can show off their new purchases, review comments from other shoppers, and talk directly with brand ambassadors.
By livestream selling on social media stores, brands are not only making a profit. They are also building connections with their customers while encouraging interaction between their audiences.
Enables authentic engagement with customers
Although getting more audience reach for your brand is crucial, your goal must be to foster audience engagement that can help you get loyal customers.
Today, being active on social media platforms plays a crucial role in developing brand recognition and reputation online. According to a recent survey from Brand Rated, 95 percent of buyers read reviews online before shopping. The number highlights how crucial it is for businesses to provide the best experience for their customers.
Marketers must remember that authentic customer engagement involves responding to positive and negative feedback. This tactic demonstrates accountability, trustworthiness, and a genuine interest in customer needs.
Showing that you value feedback cultivates a sense of transparency and establishes relationships with the customer base.
Moreover, active social media engagement lets brands create a meaningful connection with their target audience. By starting conversations, responding to questions, and offering valuable solutions, brands can establish themselves as trusted authorities in their industries.
This level of engagement contributes to developing a positive brand image and encourages buyers to become brand advocates. It helps spread positive word-of-mouth recommendations and influences buying decisions.
Supports SEO efforts
When it comes to brand visibility, discussions about your brand on social media platforms are crucial in the eyes of search engines. By delivering high-quality and engaging content on social media, you are boosting your brand's reach while optimizing your overall ranking. This advantage can lead to exposure to a broader audience, which creates new opportunities.
Search engines are aware of the impact of social media on brand visibility and consider it when determining a brand's relevance. By ensuring your brand's online presence remains strong, you can do wonders for your brand's online reputation. You can increase its perceived value, boosting your search engine ranking.
The secret to a high search engine ranking is the consistent production and delivery of high-quality content. By publishing relevant content, you establish your brand as an authority and a trusted source of information.
This consistency reinforces your brand's credibility while helping to attract more attention and engagement from people on social media.
Another crucial element of an optimized social media platform is a positive customer experience. By streamlining the shopping experience for buyers, you remove barriers that may discourage potential customers. This advantage process facilitates conversions and enhances the user experience, which can lead to glowing customer reviews.
Offers valuable customer feedback
Remember that not all social media campaigns yield the same outcomes. One crucial advantage of social commerce is that it enables marketers to monitor and analyze essential metrics, including impressions, reach, and engagement. This invaluable data helps people identify the most effective platforms for the brand.
Moreover, using customer insights can enhance a marketing team’s ability to forecast inventory flow, which can streamline the process of receiving and fulfilling orders.
By studying the metrics that social media platforms yield, you can better understand how your target audience perceives your products. It empowers you to make informed decisions about where to invest more resources and where to focus your efforts.
This strategy approach allows marketers to optimize their efforts, ensuring they invest their time, money, and energy in the right platforms.
Moreover, your insights from social commerce can also help with inventory management. By monitoring which products generate the highest levels of engagement, brands can find new opportunities to adjust their inventory mix.
For example, if a particular service receives a high level of engagement, you should boost its prominence to increase sales. Meanwhile, you can swap products with less attention for alternative inventory with more significant sales potential.
Encourages long-term brand loyalty
Brands must balance nurturing loyal customers with actively attracting new prospects. Retaining the loyalty of current customers is indeed a must. However, businesses must still be able to attract new customers to ensure sustainable growth.
Marketers need a solution that aligns with the online shopping experience to support this effort. Through this strategy, marketers must be able to provide all customers with a positive experience.
This tactic ensures that buyers get the same high-quality service and satisfaction, regardless of how they make their purchases.
You can develop a compelling promotional message that resonates with consumers by effectively integrating your brand's values with your marketing efforts.
People who see your brand as authentic and trustworthy can become loyal customers who return to your shop. They will promote your products or services to friends and other online shoppers.
These are some of the crucial advantages of social commerce today. To enjoy these benefits, you must first find the right platform for your business.
Examples of Social Commerce Platforms
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Social commerce platforms enable social media users to purchase products or services from brands without leaving the app, dashboard, or website. Knowing the different platforms can help you determine the best sites and applications to start your social commerce business.
Twitch
Content creators, especially video game enthusiasts, use Twitch to live stream new games and other video content. The platform has garnered much attention over the past few years, recording 5.71 billion hours of watch time in the third quarter of 2022.
The Amazon-owned platform has features worth experimenting with, even for non-gaming brands. Through Twitch, marketers can do the following:
- Work with influencers - Marketers can work with streamers and reach new audiences through the influencer’s existing loyal fan base
- Involve buyers in product development - People want to connect with the brands they spend money on, and brands must do what they can to keep their audiences engaged. They can involve potential buyers in the product development experience by holding live streams on Twitch
- Use commands to answer questions faster - Instead of replying to comments after posting a video, you can use Twitch commands to provide real-time answers to viewer questions
This site is one of the most well-known social networking platforms today. As of January 2023, the platform recorded more than two billion monthly active users. Because of its popularity, it became a goldmine for marketers who wanted to boost brand awareness.
The photo- and video-sharing site has always had an advantage over its rivals because of the platform’s inherently visual nature. It can be the ideal social media site to display products, especially if you try to make your posts enticing. Instagram is the perfect platform for visual storytelling.
However, the platform is more than just an effective marketing tool. It is also one of the most well-known social commerce sites today.
The most basic way to use it as such is by using the shoppable post feature. Before, Instagram shopping redirected buyers to the appropriate page on other online stores. Recently, however, it upgraded its shoppable posts functionality to include an in-app checkout feature.
Facebook, which used to be a purely social media platform, is expanding its social commerce tools to help companies streamline the buying process. There are two popular ways to get the most value from the tools to drive sales through the Meta company.
- Use Facebook Marketplace - If you sell to local customers, you can use the marketplace to showcase your products. You can use Messenger to talk to customers, answer questions promptly, and streamline the purchasing process
- Create a Facebook Shop - Start a business by opening a Facebook shop. If you already have an online store, you can still create a shop on the platform, serving as a smaller version of your e-commerce site. This way, potential buyers do not have to leave your Facebook page to make a purchase. You can even use Facebook ads to encourage buyers to visit your shop
TikTok
TikTok is a video-sharing social networking site that has taken the digital world by storm. Since its establishment in 2016, it has become the preferred platform for roughly 5 million brands.
There are many ways marketers can use TikTok as a social commerce platform. The following examples are only some of the most popular options:
- Go live on TikTok - TikTok live streams can be a profitable shopping channel for modern brands. When brands go live on TikTok, they can use pop-up product tags so shoppers can add items to their cart and buy something without leaving the app.
- Sync your store with TikTok - Brands can sync their Shopify platform to TikTok to create shoppable posts using social media content. Marketers only have to upload a product catalog and provide their audience with a direct way to buy products via live shopping
- TikTok influencer partnerships - TikTok gave smaller creators or micro influencers a chance to produce valuable content for brands. Businesses can use the Creator Marketplace to reach new audiences when promoting new offerings.
Social Commerce Strategies You Must Try
Remember that developing a successful social commerce strategy takes significant effort and planning. To help you get started, we outlined tips that can help you build consumer trust and boost online sales.
Focus on the correct social channels
Your choice of social media channels is a crucial factor to consider when developing a social commerce strategy. Remember that not all audiences are the same, and people may prefer particular social media sites over others.
You must find the platform where most of your customers are active. By focusing your efforts on the proper channels, you will get more out of your investment.
Do not rely on age groups alone when deciding which social media channels to use. If you want to target multiple demographics and interests, determine where your target audience is and how they use the platform.
Use checkout features
Imagine a potential customer scrolling through a feed and they find a product they want to buy. In this scenario, you do not want the slightest barrier to get in the way of the buy button.
Before social commerce, brands only added online store links to their bio. However, through social commerce, customers can purchase directly from a social media store. This change helped optimize the social shopping experience for customers.
If you want to make a streamlined shopping experience for buyers, you want to use the available checkout features on social media sites. These social commerce features enable brands to sell new products and services directly from social posts.
Keep branding consistent
Remember that when it comes to social commerce, consistency is critical. Establish a unique brand presence and ensure your logos, messaging, tone, and content are consistent across all social platforms.
Create and disseminate brand identity guides your marketing team can reference as they develop content for products, ads, video shoots, and other graphic layouts. This tactic can help potential buyers quickly identify your brand, regardless of the platform they use.
Try paid advertising
Remember that paid advertising is not required to establish a successful social commerce store. However, paid ads can make it easy for brands to meet their goals.
The following are examples of advertising campaigns where you can invest time and money:
- Livestream product advertisements
- Boosted posts
- Video promotions
- Influencer marketing
- Marketplace-sponsored ads
- Product-based ads
Stay updated on social commerce trends
Today, it is normal for social media platforms to launch and discontinue features all the time. If you are planning to invest in social commerce, you have to keep updated on new developments so you can change your strategies accordingly.
You should not be afraid of change. Instead of dreading new changes, you should monitor e-commerce trends and see if any opportunities arise for your brand.
You should also track competitor activity on various social media platforms. This way, you know their strategies and how their campaigns are performing.
Did you know? In 2021, social media use witnessed an impressive boom, exceeding 4.26 billion people actively engaging on various social media platforms worldwide.
Do Social Commerce Right With the Help of Archive
Starting a social media shop can be the best option for many new entrepreneurs today. However, without the right strategy, you may not achieve the goals you set for your social commerce campaign.
If you want to know the best ways to use social media for your business, contact Archive today. We can make it easy for you to get the best content from your community. With Archive, you can improve your social commerce marketing strategy without investing too much time and effort.
An effective social commerce strategy is now paramount to successful advertising. Call Archive today and grow your audience through social media!
FAQs on Social Commerce Strategies
What are the benefits of social commerce to customers?
One crucial benefit of social commerce for customers is that it enables them to use social media as a customer service channel. Through social commerce, social media platforms become a source of solutions for unique customer needs.
What are the risks of social commerce to buyers?
The security of sensitive customer data is crucial in social commerce. Social networking sites could sell sensitive data to others through social commerce, which could harm buyers.
That said, a security breach dismantles a customer's trust in a brand, so social media shops must do what they can to address potential vulnerabilities.
How do you maintain a competitive edge in social commerce?
There are several ways to keep a competitive edge in social commerce. Creating audience-focused content and publishing behind-the-scenes videos can effectively get the audience's attention. E-marketers should encourage their audience to post UGC, which they can use in their social media campaigns.
