Social Commerce: Why It’s Worth Selling on Social Media

As vast as it already is, the world of trade keeps growing and at great speed.  

The two years the world spent in a pandemic brought much change and made businesses find solutions to the deprivations we all had to endure. It was in this period that social commerce took a powerful kick-off.

In the following sections, we explore social commerce in detail to define the term, reveal social commerce strategies, and show you how social media channels can help encourage users to make online sales.

What Is Social Commerce?

Social commerce is sometimes also called social shopping. In a nutshell, the term represents social media marketing for the purpose of encouraging customers to buy products or services directly from social platforms. 

In essence, social commerce is a strategic way to increase sales by leveraging the favourite social media platforms that online shoppers use in their free time. Just like a physical store, you have a display window – a screen featuring product images to catch the eyes of consumers and engage them.

You also have plenty of easy-to-use tools and social commerce features to create and promote your product collections and to add descriptions, along with the images. 

Although social commerce sounds a lot like traditional eCommerce or the online shopping we’re all used to, there are some key differences. We look at all that separates eCommerce sales from social selling later on in this article.

How Does Social Commerce Work?

So how does social selling work?

Apart from being a valuable marketing channel for presenting and promoting your offers, some social channels have built-in native social commerce tools that enable direct selling. 

In a social media shop, you have the chance to show the right product to the right person at the right time. And both you and your customers benefit from the click-to-purchase convenience. All of this happens in one place, which cuts the risk of losing your customer’s attention.

Once you set it up, your shop is accessible from your social media accounts with product tags or shopping tags. The feed displays shoppable content and so do other content formats such as stories, Lives, and Reels (depending on the social media sites you use). 

In short, the process goes through the following stages:

• The business creates shoppable posts, virtual storefronts, or ads using product tags. 

• Social media users discover this content either organically or via paid advertising and click on it.

• Users engage with the content and click on provided links to go to a product detail page.

• Users rely on the in-app checkout to complete their purchase. 

You have so many ways to be seen, especially by a niche audience who wants to see you.

On top of that, you get a lot of valuable information like customer data. Your traffic, where it came from, conversion metrics, your audience’s demographics, even insights about the products in your catalogue – social commerce platforms support your business, integratingfree tools to collect this and much more data.

Examples of Social Commerce

But what does social commerce look like in real life? To help you get the idea, let’s look at a few examples of social commerce. 

If you’re a fan of ordering food online, you may be surprised to find out that some of your favourite takeaway places now take orders via automated Facebook Messenger flows. For example, this is something that Domino’s Pizza does.

At the same time, fashion brands like Gap rely on Instagram Guides tocreate curated shopping lists, while Nike utilises Product Pins on Pinterest to generate more sales. 

Key Benefits of Social Commerce

It’s no coincidence that social commerce is so popular nowadays. It all has to do with the vast amount of perks and opportunities social media channels create for those who wish to sell online.

Here are the most important advantages that social commerce brings to the table.

Target Your Ads With Precision

Both you and your audiences want ads that are well-targeted. The football coach doesn’t care for rich eyeshadow palette offers, just as the acrylic nail wearer wouldn’t typically dream of being up-to-date with car oil innovations.

The platforms where your social shops live show you data about people who viewed, saved, or purchased your products. With it, you can remarket your ads, particularly to audiences interested in your business.

Who viewed your shop’s home page, who viewed your products, who clicked to visit your website, who added your products to their cart, who started checkout, and who actually made a purchase? You’ll know so much about your market that your only option to target campaigns wrongfully is to be blindfolded when you’re creating them.

In Touch With Your Customers

Social commerce is about the users. You know a lot about your customers and you have multiple ways to reach them. You are also just a click away from them, too. Via the chat apps each platform integrates, you have amazing tools for two-way interactions. People can make inquiries, ask for help, give you feedback, track purchased goods and more.

It is key to remember also the original purpose of social media – sociability. What your social commerce campaigns achieve will depend on how you engage customers. Liking, commenting, rating, encouraging user generated content and sharing your catalogue and posts will all contribute beneficially to your social shop.

The Shopping Centre of Tomorrow

Statistics say that Facebook and Instagram enjoy immense popularity when it comes to business. No matter what age group your potential customers fall into, men and women alike – nearly everyone’s on Facebook and Instagram.

Many of these social media users love shopping. According to BusinessWire, around 80% of consumers in the United Kingdom used social media platforms for shopping in 2021. The primary social commerce consumers are 18-28-year-olds. In 2022, the market is expected to grow by 37.5% on an annual basis and reach $21 billion.

Your shop is your chance for a chunk of it.

Reasons Why You Should Try Social Commerce

As a business selling products or services, your main goal should be reaching your target audience, inspiring it to invest in your brand, and creating a customer experience that can meet customer expectations. 

Social commerce allows you to do this in multiple ways and there are several reasons why you should try social commerce. 

First, you can jump on the bandwagon of consumer trends and target your audience where it spends the most time – on mobile devices. 

Second, you can create a successful social commerce strategy by simply building a strong social media presence. You can achieve this by testing out different methods that will enable you to attract attention and generate social proof. 

For example, current social commerce trends include user-generated content, influencer marketing (especially working with micro influencers), and more. 

Not to mention that social media also allows you to handle the customer journey from start to finish, creating a positive feedback loop – one of the key benefits of this approach to selling. 

In 2024, the social commerce market is expected to reach a 25% penetration rate, meaning that one in four shoppers will use social media to shop. This shows the large potential impact of social shopping on global sales in online commerce. This type of online shopping experience could be extremely rewarding for businesses in the future if they adapt to this new trend. 

What Are the Best Platforms for Social Commerce?

Shopping online via a social media channel can take place on a range of different social networking sites. 

However, the top social commerce platforms today are:

• Instagram;
• Facebook;
• TikTok;
• Pinterest.

Each one of these offers opportunities for unique social commerce tactics to boost customer experience and generate more sales. 

For example, Facebook commerce tools like Facebook Shops are incredibly popular due to their low barrier to entry. At the same time, Instagram Shopping, which is connected to your Facebook Shop, also enables business owners to create product catalogues and sell directly. 

Which Social Commerce Platform Is Most Popular?

Without a doubt, Facebook currently dominates as the most popular social commerce platform. According to research, it’s forecasted to reach 64.6 million social commerce buyers in 2024. 

The second most trending social commerce platform is Instagram, with 46.8 million buyers purchasing products or services from the channel in 2023. 

TikTok ranks third, with 35.3 million users making purchases on the platform in 2023. However, this social media channel is considered the rising star when it comes to social commerce. Last year, it attracted more buyers than the net increase of consumers on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest combined. 

How Is Ecommerce Different from Social Commerce?

Being in eCommerce means owning a website that supports eCommerce transactions. Even if it costs nothing to build an eCommerce website (which is rarely the case), you’ll need to pay for its domain and hosting, as well as spend on a reliable eCommerce platform. You’ll also definitely have to build brand awareness and think about the entire shopping experience you provide.

Let’s imagine you have launched an eCommerce website, which is attracting a fair amount of visitors and prospective customers. 

Here is the usual buying process. They browse through your products, choose what they like and click the Buy button. The items they selected are sent to a shopping cart. From there, your potential customers have more buttons to click and much data to fill in until you can consider your eCommerce sales completed.

While eCommerce may make use of social media as one of its marketing channels, its sales take place mainly on the online shop’s website. 

Although today there are easy-to-integrate online payment solutions, until recently such integrations were more of a drag. When it all started, eCommerce seemed a quick way to make purchases – today significant parts of the process seem redundant. 

Now, there’s something better now that can optimise the entire shopping experience – social commerce. 

Social commerce occurs on social media and it makes use of the platforms’ native format. Your audience is by default focused – the mobile users who liked your page are likely eager to explore your products and make purchases. In that way, customers can also continue their social media user journey seamlessly.

The costs to enter this business market are also lower than for an eCommerce website. Setting up your own social media shop invokes no expenses. The payment is so simplified that to call it a process is inappropriate as it allows users to make the payment without leaving the social media platform. 

Tips for Success with Social Shopping

Managing your social commerce does not differ from what would be clever to do if your shop was physical. 

In case you’re not too experienced in the domain, here are a few things you can do to boost your sales. 

Use Your Storefront to Attract Visitors

Bring forward the most alluring products featured in your catalogue. These will help sell the rest, too. 

Frequently change what you show in the front. This gives a sensation of intense flow of goods, along with an urgency – if I don’t buy it now, I might never see it again.

Consider Seasonality 

Circle up in your calendar seasonal and other festivities, relevant to what you offer, and plan how to stir things up around each of these. They’re great opportunities to increase sales. 

Decorate your shop, make promotions and offer prizes. Use your creativity and competition intelligence to respond to seasonal demands. 

You can also integrate data collection tools to gain insights about your target market. More importantly, pay attention to and go along with your followers’ trends.

Try Product Bundles

Bundle similar products and give them more chances to be noticed. 

For example, all things light-grey, all things silk, and everything with short sleeves. Here’s how a light-grey, short-sleeved, silk shirt is now in three unique collections and can be seen by colour fanatics and fabric connoisseurs, or when taste is defined by the climate.

Create a Visually Appealing Presentation and Rich Descriptions 

Like in an online store, images sell in social commerce. The more, the better and it goes for their quality, as well. People can’t touch what you sell, so at least allow them a closer look. Give them as many perspectives of a product as it makes sense. 

Detailed descriptions are just as important. Try not to miss a thing about an item, while keeping it concise and simple.

Overall, the key to succeed in this market involves creating great, visually appealing offers while keeping track of your customers’ tastes and creating a great user experience for shoppers. 

Conclusion

Social commerce is powerful because it mixes what’s great about e-commerce with social media platforms. It’s free and it offers both a fairly easy onboarding process. You also gain access to an immense audience yet you are able to target specific consumer niches. 

Unless you’re just starting in business, chances are you’ve already used social media to popularise your products. Now both your ads and your purchase funnel are in one place – and that’s exactly where you want your shop to be.

Nevertheless, do not close your online store just yet. Rather, build your social commerce on top of your website and manage both along.