Social media has undoubtedly come a long way. From just a simple way to communicate and share your thoughts to arguably the most dominant digital business hub today.
You see it every time you’re logged in to any of your accounts—ads for offers or products and entrepreneurs putting out heaps of engagement and value-driven content.
And as a business owner yourself, you’ve probably noticed how this oversaturation has made it harder to generate leads and convert. With so many options literally at their fingertips, consumers have the upper hand.
And now, there’s something new shaking up the business landscape: SOCIAL COMMERCE.
If you’re still scrambling to figure out your social marketing strategy, we have both good and bad news. Social commerce offers tremendous growth opportunities for online businesses. On the other hand, it’s another new development you have to adapt to quickly—and the longer you put it off, the farther you fall behind your competitors.
Well, you’re in luck! To give you a headstart, we’ll be diving into everything you need to know about social commerce and how it can help your business thrive, so read till the end!
Social Commerce: What Is It?
Try to picture shopping at a physical store. The whole process of browsing through the aisles and toting all your finds back to the cashier. The process on social media is pretty much the same—except it all happens on your phone or laptop. You don’t even need to leave the app anymore.
A variation of E-commerce, SOCIAL COMMERCE is the process of selling goods directly through social media. That means the entire customer journey takes place on that one platform.
So what exactly does SOCIAL COMMERCE mean for your business?
Social Commerce Makes the Buying Process Quick and Seamless
Let’s start with the most obvious one.
Because all the selling takes place on social media, customers can more easily complete their purchasing journey.
The old way of doing e-commerce was to lead your customers to landing pages or lead generation forms, which still provided them with plenty of opportunities to back out of their purchasing plans.
The more buffers, clicks, and processes you can bypass for your customers, the more likely it is that they’ll stay focused on your products and go through with the purchase.
Social Commerce Improves the Shopping Experience
Customers don’t like the idea of being sold to and making any purchases without first getting to know the products or services offered.
Social commerce can get you past that hurdle, too!
As we’ve established earlier, social commerce takes place within social media. It’s part of the whole social media experience, which means it doesn’t come off as a disruption. The power to choose which ads to ignore also gives them a greater sense of control.
It also makes the buying decision a more social experience. They can easily scour your page for reviews from other people, share the product with their friends for a second opinion, and reach out to you right away.
Social Commerce Makes It Easier to Gather Feedback
If you don’t already know, customer feedback is a crucial component of growing and scaling your business. It’s how you build the credibility and reputation of your business.
Social media was originally meant to be a place where people share their stories and thoughts. As long as you give them a reason to be happy, your customers will readily leave glowing reviews, likes, and comments, and even promote your products to their friends and family!
And if you do social listening right, you can glean insights about products or features they want to see in the future, allowing you to determine various growth opportunities.
Social Commerce Allows You to Hypertarget Your Audience
In case you need a reminder, social media stores a wealth of user and customer data AND often has built-in tools that allow you to study and specify your audience based on their demographics and interests. And given that the idea of social commerce is to sell ready-to-buy products…
…just imagine the potential deals you can generate by placing your products on the feeds of hyper-targeted leads!
An Innovation Worth the Gamble!
We get that digital innovations are hard to keep up with—it seems like there’s a new game-changing feature every other week. But while they’re daunting, they’re also exciting opportunities to take your business even further! And with the potential perks social commerce has to offer, it’s one that you can’t miss.
We hope this helped you understand what social commerce can do for your business, and stay tuned for more insightful blogs from TopVA!