Why You Should Care About Social Commerce

Clients ask us questions all the time about social media and ecommerce. But what about social commerce? This important merging of the two worlds is “a segment of ecommerce in which merchants sell products directly through social media platforms, allowing potential customers to interact with brands, browse goods and make purchases.” Additionally, customers can usually check out directly from a given social platform or follow a link to a page where they can check out. Either way, it’s known for offering a quick and seamless way to shop.

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Countless businesses are benefiting from using social commerce to sell their products, so the question becomes: can you? Here’s a little more about why social selling might be worth considering.

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Go Where The Buyers Are

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The main reason why social commerce can be such a lucrative avenue for businesses is that it places shopping opportunities within the social media platforms where millions of consumers already spend their time. It’s not surprising, then, that social commerce is expected to more than double from $492 billion worldwide in 2021 to $1.2 trillion by 2025. It’s also estimated that roughly 50% of adults in the U.S. bought something via social media last year. That’s a lot of purchasing power.

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It’s important to note, though, that your buyers might be spending their time on a different platform than someone else’s. So just because your brother’s company sells its products on TikTok doesn’t necessarily mean you need to sign up to do the same - at least not without doing some research first. Review all the platforms that offer social selling, and look into their user demographics. Compare them against your own buyer personas to find out which ones are most deserving of your time and budget.

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Ample Options

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Some of the heaviest hitters in social commerce currently are Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Here’s a quick snapshot of how selling your products via social media works on each one:

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• Instagram - With 1 billion active users and 70% of shoppers looking to Instagram for product discovery, it’s no wonder so many businesses advertise and sell on the platform. To get started, you need to have a Facebook business profile to link to Instagram Shopping. Once those details are handled, you can get busy importing a product catalog, tagging your items and planning your shoppable posts.

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• Facebook - Facebook Shops was built for SMBs, giving them the ability to easily create shoppable digital storefronts (for free). A few additional bonuses are that it’s mobile-optimized, completely customizable and will give your customers a personalized experience. You can either import a catalog or create a new one, and then let the selling begin.

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• TikTok - Social commerce on TikTok originally centered on product ads displayed on users’ feeds, with a “Shop Now” button below the ad that would take them to the brand’s ecommerce site. Now, more and more brands are also choosing to create a shoppable storefront with TikTok (similar to what you can do with Instagram and Facebook).  

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The more that social commerce evolves, the more frictionless and fast it becomes - which is all the better for consumers and brands. Interested in exploring your own social selling strategy? Contact us anytime!