Social commerce features are on the rise across several platforms, creating new opportunities for big and small brands. Moreover, the current situation where buyers are predominantly making their purchases online has further strained every brick and mortar store. So now, they are all toiling for a digital transformation.
So, how is it that you can leverage this new revenue-earning opportunity to your benefit? Read this blog to have a complete breakdown of what is social commerce and the top reasons explaining why you need it for your business.
What is a social commerce platform?
Social commerce, simply put, is the integration of social media with eCommerce. The platforms that support social commerce facilitate the buying and selling products and services on the media channel.
Before social commerce came into practice, eCommerce brands used Chinese social media platforms to market their products to derive greater conversions and sales.
But, with the emergence of social commerce platforms, users do not have to switch between multiple places before finally making a purchase. Instead, right from product discoverability to order placement, everything happens within the social commerce platform.
Now that you know the ‘What,’ let’s dig in to know its remarkable benefits.
Here are 6 key benefits that brands can derive from social commerce platforms
Better Reach
Social media platforms have a vast demographic of the audience using them. For example, Instagram (1B monthly active users) and Facebook(2.8B monthly active users) boast 3.8B active monthly users.
The number is huge and can have a tremendous impact on the reaching potential of the brand. Users’ are predominantly active and are constantly looking out for products to incorporate into their lives. According to the stats rolled out by Instagram, 70% of its users come to the platform to find inspiration to buy.
With social commerce, the discovery of the brand’s products gets easy, and the reach gets amplified.
Engages the audiences
Shoppable UGC posts engage the audience as they get to know more about what the existing users of the brand have to say about it, their experiences, and product usage.
These compelling visuals keep the audiences hooked to the brand’s product pages, which further improves the dwell time of the website. Furthermore, user engagement is crucial as it influences their purchase decisions, which impacts the revenue-earning potential of the brand.
Builds brand trust
By showcasing visuals of users using the brand’s products, gaining trust becomes easy.
As they can better know about the brand, its products, and operations. Social commerce platforms allow product tagging and description. By tagging the creator of the content and adding a product description, brands can attract users better. In addition, product tags can be added to user-generated videos, potentially gathering users’ trust.
Curtails down the process of shopping
The users’ behavior has undergone a massive shift; they have lesser patience and look out for faster processes; through social commerce, brands can easily take care of users’ requirements.
It provides for a two-step checkout process and eliminates the unnecessary hassles involved in buying. Shoppers can click on the ‘Buy Now’ button and straight away fill in their payment details and book the product.
This also helps in reducing the percentage of cart abandonment drastically.
Increases Conversions
With quicker processes and UGC incorporated in the shoppable posts, brands stand a chance to better convert their audiences.
More sales and revenue are the ultimate goals of the business, and with the help of social commerce, they can achieve it effectively as the strategy also provides for a better reach and brand awareness, which is an important step in getting greater leads.
Boost average order value
Integrating social commerce with your existing channels is a result-oriented strategy to increase sales. Also, it greatly helps in increasing the average order value, the average dollar amount a customer spends upon placing an order from any store.
This is because social media can convince shoppers to spend more predominantly. After all, they can seamlessly buy products directly through their smartphones, irrespective of their geographical location.
Other than this, the social proof that your brand and products gather can potentially influence the customers’ purchase decision.
Over To You
Social commerce is booming in the marketing world. Simply because it helps businesses in achieving their goals and upscaling business.
It gathers the audiences’ trust, makes them feel confident about their purchases, inspires them to buy more products, enhances their experience, and helps in better revenue generation for the brands.
Now that you know what social commerce is and how it can help you take the lead in the business, why wait still?
