A Complete Guide to Social Commerce
While having an eCommerce site might be the logical go-to choice for those who want to start an online store and sell their products, the increasingly popular social commerce has the potential to be an even better option. After all, the power and influence of social media has become an undeniable asset of many different kinds of businesses – and eCommerce is no exception.
For this reason, we’ve decided to explore the topic of social commerce, talk more about its ever-growing reach, and share some of the benefits of choosing this online selling method. In addition, we will share some essential tips that can help your social commerce platform grow and thrive and ultimately, take your eCommerce business to the next level.
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In a nutshell, social commerce is the process of selling products online using the help of social media platforms. Usually what’s typical for this eCommerce strategy is that a potential customer doesn’t have to leave the platform to buy products, but can do it all on the dedicated social media network instead. This includes the complete purchasing process, from searching for a product and adding it to the cart, to the checkout. This is what makes social commerce different from traditional eCommerce, an online shopping method that requires customers to do so through a website usually built on an eCommerce platform, like WooCommerce. In other words, social commerce allows online stores to use their social media platform entirely to run, manage, and grow their business, instead of having to create a full-blown eCommerce site for it.
Due to its immensely growing popularity, it’s only natural that using social media for social commerce (i.e. promoting and selling your products directly on social media platforms) has a huge potential of benefiting your business in the long run. For one, social media platforms have a huge number of daily users and a massive outreach. This only increases the chance of finding your target audience, or people that may be genuinely interested in the types of products you’re selling. Therefore, it’s only safe to conclude that social commerce is a great tool for growing your audience and finding customers who would be willing to buy your products.
There’s also a certain sense of familiarity and directness about social networks that can allow users to connect and engage with your brand with ease. In turn, they can be more inclined to trust your brand more and can be more likely to buy your products. In fact, there’s even a high chance they would end up sharing your products (and other product-related content) on their own networks and spread the word to other social media users who might also be interested in what you have to offer. And all this can only increase your potential of scoring more eCommerce sales in the long run.
Last but not least, by giving customers the ability to do the entire purchasing process on their social media without having to go elsewhere, you allow them to enjoy an uninterrupted and rather convenient shopping experience. This makes them much less likely to lose interest during the checkout process and decreases the risk of them abandoning their purchase altogether.
As you can see, there are many benefits to using social commerce. That being said, you do have to decide if this selling method fits with your brand and your specific business requirements before you start using it to sell your products.
Nowadays, many popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram offer complete social commerce functionality. Of course, which platform you will choose depends on the eCommerce niche itself as well as what platforms your target audience tends to use the most.
With that said, let’s take a look at some of the top social commerce platforms you can consider using to sell your products.
Facebook is a vastly popular social network with over 2.9 billion users. Aside from its popularity, Facebook is also a great choice for social commerce due to its Facebook Shops feature. Facebook Shops allows eCommerce business owners to create a fully customizable, mobile-first shop entirely for free. You will be able to sell products to the Facebook audience directly from your Facebook page, which means they will get to have an entire product browsing and shopping experience without going elsewhere.
You can either operate an entire store from Facebook, or you can have your audience click on a link that leads to your eCommerce store where they will be able to buy your products. We recommend using the former option, especially if you own a small business with a moderate number of products you wish to sell. Facebook is ideal in this case as it lets you create a simple Facebook store, connect your payments to a cart, and easily set up a checkout. Once you do that, you can proceed to add your products, create a product catalog (either by creating your own or importing it from another platform), etc.
With its visual appeal concentrated on captivating images and videos and around a billion monthly active users, Instagram is an ideal platform for running an online store. To be able to use Instagram for selling your products, you need to have a Facebook business profile and a Facebook page catalog set up. Then, you should connect those to your Instagram account. It’s also important that you have an active Instagram business account with a decent amount of followers.
There are a few different ways in which you can easily sell your products on Instagram. These include setting up shoppable posts, adding product stickers to your stories, and tagging your products in IGTV videos, among other things.
TikTok
One of the newer social networks that have experienced rapid growth over the past few years, TikTok is another great option for selling your products. Plenty of brands have gained success just from using the platform, as TikTok itself has an incredible reach and a well-developed influencer marketing to boot. As of recently, the creators of TikTok have also added some shopping capabilities you can use thanks to the new Shopping tab. You will be able to create shoppable posts and add your product catalog, letting people browse and buy your products directly from your TikTok page.
Given its main purpose of helping users find ideas and inspiration in all sorts of spheres and niches, Pinterest can be highly influential when it comes to people’s shopping choices. This platform also allows you to use Pinterest for Business and set up shop on your Pinterest page. You will be able to upload your product catalog which will trigger a Shop tab to show up on your profile. This will allow you to showcase your products as Buyable Pins which users will then be able to use to buy directly from Pinterest. In addition, you will get to use Pinterest analytics to get some valuable insights you can later use to improve the way you market your products and optimize your eCommerce business as a whole.
No matter if you want to enhance your overall social commerce strategy or you’re just planning to get started, there are different tactics you can implement that will help you get the most out of the entire journey. Here are some of the tips you can use to achieve maximum results from social commerce.
Make Sure Your Content Looks Top-Notch
In any sphere of marketing, well-optimized content can help you go a long way when it comes to winning over customer trust and ultimately, scoring those sales. And truly, social commerce is no exception to that rule. It’s a highly competitive market out there, and sometimes even the tiniest detail can make a huge difference.
So, no matter what industry you operate in and what types of products you’re planning to sell, you must make sure that all content you’re using to promote your products looks nothing short of perfect on your social media pages. This includes anything from text and images all the way to videos and filters. For example, your product images should be well optimized and also presented in a way to accommodate mobile devices first and foremost (by using vertical images). The text you use to describe your products should be brief and straight to the point, and the same goes for any videos you may be using.
Stick to Promoting Products With a Lower Cost
One of the best things you can do to keep your audience interested in your products is to make sure they are easy to obtain. As a matter of fact, people are more likely to look into (and buy) products with lower prices rather than overly expensive ones. So, when promoting your products, make sure to give priority to those that are on the low-cost side instead of those that would be considered a bit more pricey. The lower the prices, the more chances you will get to stand out among your competitors and score a sale.
Use the Power of Influencers to Promote Your Products and Expand Your Reach
Their name says it all – influencers are potentially one of the brand’s biggest assets when it comes to product promotion. People often admire and look up to influencers and consider them reliable and trustworthy sources. For example, if they see an Instagram story of an influencer recommending a specific product, users will be more likely to consider clicking on that buy button. Therefore, you should try contacting some reputable people in your niche and see if you can get them to promote one (or more) of your products, or even ask them if they would be interested to do a product review.
Connect Social Commerce With Your eCommerce Platform (if You Have One)
While you are completely free to stick to using social commerce only to sell your products, if you do own an eCommerce platform, make sure that it’s connected to your social eCommerce channel and that any changes are synced across all platforms. This includes details such as your pricing info, inventory, and any other notable product-based content. Integrating your existing product and/or catalog data with your eCommerce platform (and vice versa) is generally quite easy to do nowadays, and also allows you to expand your shopping reach across different channels quickly and effortlessly.
Many popular eCommerce and social media platforms have different integration tools that make this possible. For example, it’s quite easy to connect your WooCommerce store with Facebook and Instagram shopping thanks to integration plugins like, say, Facebook for WooCommerce. In addition, other eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce have similar tools at their disposal, including Facebook and Instagram integrations.
Wrapping Things Up
Considering the speed at which the social commerce market has expanded over the past few years, it’s safe to say that its significance and overall influence will only continue to grow in the future. Regardless of whether you’re planning to use this method to build an online shop from scratch, or you already own a full-scale eCommerce platform and you’re considering expanding your reach, social commerce is the way to go.
For a good head start, you should pick one of the social-commerce-friendly platforms we mentioned above and make sure that they also fit well with the nature of your business, the type of products you’re selling, as well as your target audience. Then, consider applying some of the above-mentioned tactics, like putting an emphasis on lower-priced products and optimizing your content to the best of your ability while focusing on mobile-first optimization. Finally, don’t forget to connect and sync all platforms that you use for online shopping. By doing all these, you will truly succeed in leveraging the power of social commerce and only help your business grow in the process.
