Social shopping where social media meets eCommerce. Social shopping is also known as Social commerce.
Users worldwide are acknowledging and following online modes of shopping apart from the traditional shopping methods. In this digital era, 93% of users globally have said that they check for online reviews before purchasing any product or service from the brand.
The users and brands have widely used various social media platforms to connect well with each other and make purchases. It has become important for brands to mark their presence on different social media platforms to reach them easily by using their preferred platform.
In this article, we will take a deep leap into the concept of social shopping, why your brand should consider it, how to use it, and the benefits of implementing a social shopping strategy.
Let's explore it!
Concept of Social Shopping
Social shopping is a point where E-commerce meets social media platforms. Social shopping or Social commerce is the method of empowering the brands to directly sell their products or services on different social media platforms.
90% of users globally follow brands or businesses on social media platforms.
The social shopping concept has changed a lot over a decade, and the brands have derived the benefits like improved conversion rates.
A social shopping marketing strategy was developed and implemented to reach and target the maximum audience through the customer's preferred platform.
Prospects or users use different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and many more to check the reviews or recommendations about the brands' products or services.
Selling products directly from the social media channels has just not empowered brands.
Rather it has also enabled users to use social media platforms to share their experience about the product or the service taken from the brand.
Importance of Social Commerce!
Social selling or social commerce just not only lets you sell products or services through social media platforms.
Rather it is also about the recommendations, reviews, direct interaction with the brand, and much more. With the new add-on features like Instagram shop, Facebook shop, and many more on different social media platforms, your users can directly purchase the social media platform.
It helps brands reduce the friction rate and the cart abandonment rate as the user purchases without even giving a second thought about it.
E-commerce selling and purchases are massively motivated through digitalization, making it important for brands to utilize social selling and drive benefits out of it.
On any social media platform, your customers could be anywhere on any social media platform, so it becomes immensely important to reach them out on their favored platform.
There are many ways to boost your brand's revenues, and Social shopping is one of the most widely used and new-age social media marketing tactics to give new heights and growth to your business.
How to Leverage Social Shopping
You must have realized the importance of social shopping, especially for E-commerce brands. Social shopping is not a hard nut to crack!
If your brand is still not on social media platforms, the first and foremost thing is to create a social media page for your business or brand.
If you're already there,, you just need to get involved in your users' conversation and create a buzz around your brand.
You can follow certain tips or tricks to get started with social shopping. These are:
- Give support to your customers on social media: When you think of giving heights to your business, you must support your customers through social media platforms.
Get involved in the discussions with your customers through Facebook live chat option, Instagram DMs, or directly respond to their comments on the posts or feeds.
- Indulge in the discussions: To get started or improvise your social shopping strategy, you need to know the most important thing that your customers think about your brand.
To get the best out of your social media campaign, you need to get involved in the interactions. If there are any bad, ugly, or good reviews, you should always acknowledge them; this makes your customers believe in your brand and its products or services.
- Target your Customers: More and more interactions will help you in getting more and more customers. More customers mean an increased number of sales.
Social shopping is all about prioritizing your customer's interests and showcasing the products accordingly. However, creating and running a successful social media campaign will help you reach out to your customers and build trust and loyalty out of your customers.
Users analyze much about your brand and the product through the reviews that your customers have posted or the user-generated content you have posted on your social media page or an official website.
- Create and Implement a strong social media strategy: Being on different social media platforms will not drive your brand or business results.
However, creating and implementing strong social media strategies will drive results for your brand. Evaluate and determine your brand's strongest social media channel, add call-to-action posts or stories, get feedback from your customers, and improvise customer experience.
This will help you set up the clear target and help you achieve it more efficiently.
- Mobile-friendly strategies: Users make maximum purchases on the go. Your users are constantly using their mobile phones, and the alliance of social shopping & mobile is incredible.
Social media direct buying options are creating a buzz among users. Platforms like Instagram have a 'Buy Now' option to make the direct purchase from Instagram itself, and the Pinterest 'Buy It' button has been immensely used by users through their mobile phones on-a-go.
Benefits of Implementing Social Shopping Strategy
When your customers are comfortable and convinced with your brand, and its products or services, they share and recommend your brand on different social media platforms or through their preferred social media platform.
If you have yet not discovered the business benefits of social shopping, I have prepared the list of variable benefits; let's explore it:
- Steady growth in your brand admirers.
- Increased traffic to your website will improvise your brand's search engine rankings.
- Higher organic traffic and legitimate user-engagement.
- It deepens the trust and loyalty of your customers, which helps in customer retention as well.
- Positive and higher return on investment.
Closure
Technology is not so pricey these days, and the variant social media platforms have made people more connected and digitized than ever before.
Social media has become an important part of every user's life, and people are following brands and businesses widely on social media platforms.
Add social shopping features or elements to the bucket list of your social media marketing strategies. Get going with it and embrace its benefits.