Seizing Social Commerce Opportunities For A Successful Multi-Platform E-Commerce Strategy

Seizing Social Commerce Opportunities For A Successful Multi-Platform E-Commerce Strategy

In order to provide a seamless shopping experience, brands must focus on social commerce as part of their larger e-commerce strategy. Social commerce takes on many forms including in-app purchases, shoppable advertisements, organic shoppable posts, influencer content, live-streamed videos, just to name a few.

The global social commerce market size was $0.62 trillion in 2021 and is predicted to reach $7.03 trillion by 2030.

Insider Intelligence projects that there will be 97.2 million social commerce buyers in the US, which is 38.2% of internet users.

Let’s take a look at how brands can seize social commerce opportunities for a successful multi-platform e-commerce strategy.

Leading Social Media Platforms

“Tik Tok in particular is the wave of the social shopping future. At the start of 2022 the hashtag #tiktokmademebuyit had over 8.5 billion views. TikTok has outstripped Instagram and Google as the destination for Gen Z to find product reviews. Over 49% of TikTok users say that they have bought a product from the social media app,” shares Katharine McKee, Founder of Morphology Consulting, a digital commerce consultancy. “This content is hyper specific to a niche thanks to un-gated data, so when someone sees a video of a product, it is of someone who is incredibly similar to them in their wants and needs, rather than demographics. These videos aren’t shot or produced by brands and they are unfiltered reviews of goods that align to your specific needs.”

McKee goes on to share a tip that many of us most likely hadn’t even thought of – simply peruse Barnes and Noble’s most popular TikTok books. “You can take a look at the various Book Tok sections of Barnes and Noble to see how varied the types of books are that have been made popular by the app. And who wants them. It is a treasure trove of consumer behavior that retailers should be leaping on. The now viral example of Meredith trying and hating What The Foundation by Jones Road and the infamous clap back by owner and makeup artist Bobbi Brown – this is the schism of the two worlds. The brand found the negative video offensive. But anyone who applies makeup the way Meredith does immediately knew this wasn’t the product for them. There is a great democratization of how we view the things we consume that is incredibly powerful – brands and retailers should take note.”

Live Shopping

When done right, live shopping can attract more customers and increase conversion by increasing brand appeal and differentiating a brand from competitors.

“Live shopping is the next big achievable push in social commerce. Given that the format heavily favors content with commerce organically layered in, successful programming generally educates or entertains, which provides value-add for the consumer. The format is a great way to connect with customers, and build brand loyalty while increasing purchases. Live shopping boasts some great statistics. 60% of people who have tried live shopping said it increased their sales experience, and well-executed programs are seeing around 30% in terms of conversion. Furthermore, live shopping is tailor-made for the experiential-seeking Gen Z and Millennials. These groups are leading the way in adoption with over 50% interested in shoppable livestreams and growing year over year,” says Elizabeth Kressel, Founder & CEO of Lizard Strategy, an e-commerce and live shopping agency.

“While launching a shopping event directly on social platforms has been a go-to for many brands, standalone live shopping platforms such as Firework or Bambuser offer additional social commerce benefits. The beauty of these standalone platforms is they allow you to host the shopping event on your own site or app while simulcasting to social media. Hosting the event from your own site allows for more brand control and the ability to own your own content and data, while still being able to leverage your audience on social. Post event, you are able to use these platforms to create shoppable video that you can trim down and repost to social media or on your own site to garner additional sales. Furthermore, the social platforms weren’t designed to natively house e-commerce but the standalone platforms are with all components of content, commerce, and community in frame,” adds Kressel.

Improve Customer Experiences

As technology has continued to advance, so have customer’s expectations. Customers expect instant gratification and quick communication – no matter which platform they utilize to reach out to a brand. This has created an environment where companies have no choice but to stay abreast of the latest tech advances and pay attention to how consumers are utilizing social media and on which platforms.

“Through testing we’ve determined that our customer is spending a lot of time on YouTube looking for bag reviews so that’s where we’ve allocated additional marketing dollars,” says Vanessa Jeswani, Co-Founder of Nomad Lane, a travel bag and accessories retailer. The company approaches everything with a test and learn approach. “Social commerce continues to grow in the US and it can be tempting to jump on every new platform or opportunity. The first step should be to identify where your target market is spending time”.