Social Commerce & Fast Order Fulfillment Builds Loyal Customers & More Sales.
Selling your products and services using social media channels is called social commerce. Social Commerce highlights that shopping has always been a social experience, and now companies can provide their customers with the personalized experiences and relationships they are demanding through Social Shopping. These relationships of Social Commerce and shipping orders are vital in building a loyal community of fans that will tell everyone about your brand, which results in an exponential increase in sales.
Social feeds are quickly replacing trips to the mall, and companies need to be aware of this significant shift in the market to take advantage of the many new opportunities it has created. Success is available to businesses that invest time and resources into building loyal fans on their social media channels.
Statistics Show the Power of Social Commerce and Shipping Orders
Facebook sends about two-thirds of the visits that Shopify stores receive, making it the highest used social media platform by marketers worldwide. 93% of marketers report selling on Facebook to drive eCommerce traffic.
78% of marketers report Instagram is the second most used platform. Instagram states they have the highest average order value of $65 out of the four significant social commerce sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are the best major social platforms with a current conversion rate of over 1%.
Picking the Best Social Media Platform to Invest Your Time and Resources
Knowing which platforms to invest your time and resources in must be determined by the target market you are going after. Facebook has the largest and most diverse demographic, which is probably why it is the most used platform for eCommerce marketing. To target the female audience, many marketers use Pinterest because of its sizeable female audience base. When selling on Instagram, realize that audiences tend to be younger than Facebook. Depending on your product and what you are offering is how you will determine the best social media channels to invest time and resources.
Moving your business into the social media space can be daunting, so it is best to focus on 1 or 2 platforms that contain your target audience. Once you have established your brand on these channels and become more familiar with social media content creation, you can add on additional social media platforms one at a time to master the intricacies of each one.
Your content should show originality, be authentic, and be created for the specific platform you are posting on because certain platforms have audiences looking for particular types of content. Images drive Instagram and Pinterest traffic. Twitter drives a lot of YouTube and video content traffic. TikTok specializes in video content. These different types of content allow you to take the same information and repurpose it differently to reach a wider group of your target audience.
Building these loyal fan bases on each social media platform is critical for survival in today’s uncertain world of SEO ranking. Many times in the past, companies have started the day to find that their search ranking has changed. If that is a significant source of traffic, sales quickly drop. Training your audience to visit your site directly from the social media channels allows you to have a much greater amount of control.
Long Term Value of a Social Media Site Strategy
It takes a lot of work, time, and resources to create a solid social media presence that will build a loyal following of brand ambassadors. However, it can really pay off in the long run, so creating a solid content creation plan is key. By creating and providing quality content your users are looking for, plus being transparent about your brand goals and values, you can own the social media space and then control it. This provides a business with a growing loyal following of customers that result in an exponential rise in sales.
Controlling the social commerce space for your industry allows you an edge over the competition. For them to enter the space and surpass your efforts could cost tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. Creating this obstacle to entering the social shopping space will result in many benefits for your business.
Simple Steps to Create a Successful Social Commerce and Shipping Orders Marketing Strategy
- Set goals that are relevant to your business
- Identify your target audiences
- Decide your metrics and KPIs
- Create your content
- Have a great Fulfillment Center ready to handle orders
Figure out if brand building is your primary goal or if it is just to sell products. Are you looking for sign-ups for your email list? Does your company offer non-tangible services, which require a different type of strategy rather than a straight sale? Often sending this traffic to a webinar link before the initial sale works for a service-based business like coaching and consulting.
Some Successful Case Studies Using Social Media for eCommerce
Slate & Tell is a jewelry store that wanted to build brand awareness during its peak selling seasons. They carefully created a strategy to leverage TikTok For Business’s easy-to-use Smart Video Creative tool and optimized their campaigns to events. This time and effort resulted in many fun and engaging creatives, which ultimately reached 4 million TikTok users. This exposure brought them 1,000 single-session add-to-cart conversions, helping them achieve their goal of two times the return on their advertising spend within just six months.* What would 1,000 customers adding products to their cart mean for your business?
Nescafe created a unique social media campaign called “Really Friends,” which leveraged Facebook’s diverse audience. The campaign focused on getting their users back in touch with old friends on Facebook they had stopped talking to. This campaign was so successful because it showed Nescafe’s users they truly cared about them. This was a brilliant campaign because the emotions created when the users reconnected with old friends would now be tied to Nescafe, which they will use in future marketing campaigns to leverage higher sales.**
How to Leverage Social Commerce Sales?
Effective social eCommerce is a combination of smart strategies and proper planning. Based on the campaigns from some of today’s thriving social brands, the key takeaways for leveraging social media for sales include:
- User-generated content
- Creating a personalized shopping experience for users
- Providing unique, relevant sales-based social content
- Making sure their purchase arrives quickly
Allowing your audience the ability to be part of the buying process by creating user-generated content, like sharing their experiences with the brand, takes some of the content creation responsibilities off your shoulders. When customers generate content about your products showing how they use them, it provides the peer feedback that the marketplace demands and searches for. This type of content is invaluable.
Personalized experiences are proven to increase user engagement, resulting in higher sales. With the current advancements in technology, this is much easier to do now, so your business can easily provide users with personalized experiences. Your customer will feel more comfortable when they see you are actually using the data being collected for their benefit.
Nowadays, consumers have access to so much more information and are looking for a specialized shopping experience. Companies that plan their social media marketing strategy carefully plus implement today’s latest technology and emphasize order fulfillment can quickly become industry leaders, creating an ever-growing loyal customer base. These fans will often return for re-orders, plus drive new people to your brand.
** https://www.business-tiktok.com/ecommerce-new/
** https://www.connectmor.io/2022/01/25/social-media-marketing-strategies/
