Social commerce brings social media platforms and technologies together to make shopping online easier. It enables users to buy products directly through social networks or to share, recommend, and discuss products with their connections.
Where can ecommerce businesses find billions of potential customers any day, any time? On social media platforms. That’s why social commerce is quickly becoming the shopping norm and reaching new heights every day. These staggering statistics help make the case for the importance of social commerce:
Social commerce brings the entire shopping experience — from browsing to checkout — to social media. Customers can discover products as they scroll through their social feeds, browse your brand’s social posts for products that match their needs, then make a purchase directly on a social platform. For customers, social commerce is a convenient, easy way to find and purchase products. For businesses, it’s a great way to quickly expand your reach and your customer base.
Social commerce allows even the smallest players to tap into global audiences, gain massive followings, and drive online revenue. And customers have come to expect social media to be a part of their shopping journeys. Social channels are now table stakes when it comes to delivering a personalized, unified shopping experience — one that helps shoppers connect with their favorite brands, discover new products, and access convenient customer support.
Social commerce is about engaging with potential customers during micromoments — short periods of time when shoppers reach for their mobile devices to fill moments in their day — giving them opportunities to interact with your brand on social media and buy your products in just a few clicks.
Here’s why social commerce matters for your brand and how to roll it into your omni-channel strategy to boost sales and win the hearts of your customers.
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Social commerce presents a huge opportunity for businesses to understand today’s shoppers and curate personalized content. A smart social ecommerce strategy will boost brand recognition, generate traffic, drive online sales, and be an important part of a unified shopping experience.
Social commerce empowers brands to:
These are just a few of the benefits of incorporating social ecommerce into your omni-channel strategy. Ready to reap the benefits? Let’s start with the basics.
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Social commerce is still a relatively new channel, but it has changed significantly over the last two decades — and it will continue to evolve quickly. The term “social commerce” was first introduced on Yahoo in 2005 with the company’s Shoposphere — a place where users could create lists of products and provide their personal thoughts and ratings.
Since then, social commerce has grown to encompass much more than that, and it now refers to the activity of selling or buying products on all native social media platforms — such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, to name a few. Brands use social media to promote their products and services, and shoppers search for and engage with them directly from their social feeds. Essentially, brands are meeting their customers where they are.
Shoppers are quickly and easily introduced to new brands, can buy products and services directly through platforms in just a few clicks, read and write reviews, and more. Convenience is click-worthy. Now that customers have come to expect the ability to transact on social platforms, brands are hyperfocused on differentiating their social media presence, shoppable content, and social commerce strategies. This has brought on an emergence of new social ecommerce tools that help brands personalize the social shopping experience, highlight the importance of social engagement, and create a new culture of social media influencers. This investment in the customer experience is further driving social commerce growth.
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Most brands and consumers know the heavy hitters when it comes to social ecommerce: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Here’s a breakdown of the platforms currently dominating the social commerce space — and how they can help you grow your business.
Social commerce sales for TikTok grew 34.4% this year to $53.10 billion. It’s safe to say that TikTok has entered the social commerce chat.
With TikTok social commerce, brands can:
TikTok has become even more shoppable with the inclusion of new ad formats, its Shop feature, and commerce partnerships that elevate the customer experience. And, the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag has stood out as a popular social commerce strategy, which continues to generate billions of views.
Instagram is one of the most popular channels for social commerce. Its highly visual and interactive platform makes it the perfect place for social shopping. Consumers can follow their favorite brands and influencers, discover new products through Instagram ads, and share their brand experiences with their own followers.
Plus, with the Swipe Up feature on Instagram Stories, shoppers simply swipe up to see brands and influencers promoting the latest products to be taken directly to the product page. Instead of going to their web browser to search for the product, they can add it to their cart in just a few clicks. Fewer clicks = higher conversion.
You can also integrate a commerce solution to your Instagram Shopping account. This allows you to upload your product catalog directly into Instagram so you can tag products in your posts for faster purchasing.
With social commerce on Instagram, brands can:
If you’re looking to connect with a younger, highly engaged demographic, consider making Snapchat a part of your social commerce strategy. In more than 20 countries, Snapchat reaches 90% of the Gen Z population. It’s also worth noting that users are more likely to share their shopping experiences
and favorite purchases on Snapchat more than any other platform.
With social commerce on Snapchat, businesses can:
Facebook is a staple in social shopping and has continuously ramped up its shoppable content capabilities.
Facebook commerce, or F-Comm, helps brands reach customers with targeted Facebook ad campaigns, enables businesses to create Shop Now stores to drive sales, and provides a support channel with automated Messenger bots.
With social commerce on Facebook, brands can:
Brands can tap into the power of Facebook by optimizing their existing business profile, experimenting with paid ads, promoting products, responding to customer comments, and generating customer reviews.
Twitter gives brands and influencers a platform for building partnerships and for publishing #sponsored posts and tagging other brands to expand their reach. It’s also a great platform for riding the latest trends, launching flash sales, and offering speedy customer support.
Twitter has teamed up with a variety of ecommerce businesses and partners to make online selling simple and seamless, even for brands who are new to social commerce. It’s a highly interactive platform and offers that quick, short-form content today’s consumers love.
With social commerce on Twitter, brands can:
Plus, brands can show shoppers a sneak peek of products before they officially launch with Product Drops. Twitter is a solid approach to trendy shoppable content and can produce a niche group of commerce sales for your brand.
Shopping is no longer linear. Customers bounce from channel to channel, shopping in spurts throughout the day based on when they feel motivated and inspired. To win mindshare and stay relevant, brands need to create compelling content for the micromoments people spend social shopping. These micromoments are critical for conversion.
For example, shoppers may be waiting in line for their morning coffee, scrolling through Facebook, when they see an ad for a filtered showerhead. But their order’s up, so they quickly close out of Facebook, grab their cup of joe, and go along with their day. At lunch, they see an Instagram post from the same company, which leads them to the brand’s website where they take a deeper look at the product’s skin and hair benefits. A few days later, the shopper sees a targeted ad on Instagram, this time with a discount code. The customer clicks the “Buy Now” button, and by the end of the week, the showerhead arrives at their doorstep. This is how social ecommerce attracts attention during micromoments and turns scroll sessions into purchases.
Micromoments happen at every stage the entire customer journey, including:
With social commerce, online sellers can proactively engage with existing and prospective customers wherever they are, at every stage of the buying journey. Interacting with customers on their terms increases loyalty, boosts sales, and provides personalized customer service when consumers need it most.
Creative ways to boost social media engagement:
By encouraging follower engagement, you can generate momentum and sales for your brand.
Global sales through social media platforms were estimated at $992 billion in 2022. Forecasts suggest the value of social commerce sales will reach around $2.9 trillion by 2026. So, how do brands create winning content that makes customers stop scrolling and start shopping? Short-form content is becoming the norm. Today’s consumers have less patience for slow load times, spammy marketing tactics, or flashy ads. They want quick, entertaining content that’s authentic, tailored to their interests, and stems from brands they trust.
The takeaway? Get to the point quickly and make it count. That’s where ecommerce merchandisers and marketers come in. They’re the unsung heroes of social shopping and the driving force behind what makes your brand stand out — quickly — in a sea of content.
Twitter gives brands and influencers a platform for building partnerships and for publishing #sponsored posts and tagging other brands to expand their reach. It’s also a great platform for riding the latest #trends, launching flash sales, and offering fast customer support.
Twitter has teamed up with a variety of ecommerce businesses and partners to make online selling simple and seamless, even for sellers who are new to social commerce. It’s a highly interactive platform and offers that quick, short-form content today’s consumers love.
Plus, Twitter also offers the option to run paid ads if you want to expand your reach at a pay-per-click cost. You can fine-tune your ads to target a niche audience, and encourage users to follow your profile and buy your latest products.
The world of social commerce moves pretty fast. It seems like new innovations crop up every day to help brands improve the social shopping experience. Over the years, a few key features have made social commerce the megahit it is today.
Facebook launches Ads and Pages for brands.
Facebook introduces the “like” button, paving the way for tracking consumer engagement and influencing as a profession.
Instagram adds a “shopping” tab to the Explore page, introduces product tagging, and begins testing shoppable stories.
Instagram launches in-app checkout for shoppable posts.
TikTok unleashes the ability to purchase in-app with the TikTok Shop feature.
So, what will the future of social commerce bring? We’ve got a few ideas:
Augmented reality in ecommerce is here, so strap on your head gear. AR is tech that enhances the world around your customer — creating a layer of computer-generated personalization over their entire shopping experience. Over 16% of people in the U.S.
already use AR on social media and, by 2025, that figure is expected to be almost 20%.
Major brands like L’Oréal
are leading the way with experiences like AR-powered makeup try-on. AR helps bridge the gap between in-store and online shopping by creating moments that offer more than just a product description or an image. This can help decrease return rates, boost sales, and drive customer loyalty.
Quality over quantity is the name of the micro-influencer game. Micro-influencers are people who act as brand ambassadors, reviewers, and promoters. They typically have between 10,000 and 50,000 followers of trusted fans.
With tight-knit communities, their followers are loyal and engaged. They offer more transparency and authenticity with highly specific, targeted niches to tap into. For brands trying to break into the social shopping scene, micro-influencers are an ideal way to test the waters without breaking the bank on a full-fledged, all-in strategy. Their authenticity shines in product or service trade-offs and shout-outs.
Today’s consumers expect a unified and personalized shopping experience, with top-quality service when and where they need it. As social ecommerce grows — and brands grow with it — there will be an even greater need for automation and AI-enabled selling.
To tailor experiences to shoppers’ individual needs at scale, brands need ecommerce tools that enable automated, intelligent product recommendations and tailored site search results. This eliminates the need for time-consuming tasks like manual merchandising, segmenting, and product sorting.
Automation and AI help companies reach and serve more customers. You’ll save time by automating manual tasks, and you’ll increase sales by presenting customers with products that suit their interests.
Social commerce isn’t just for direct-to-consumer brands. In fact, B2B companies are investing heavily in developing a social presence and selling on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. More than half (55%) of B2B brands are investing in social media (and that’s a larger investment than any other channel — including websites and third-party marketplaces). B2B buyers expect to discover, engage, and transact with businesses the same way they do when they’re off the job and at home: conveniently and quickly on social media.
Social shopping is only one part of a broader customer journey. Even as shoppers browse social media, you need to consider how this is connected to the rest of their experience — from in-store shopping to how they find you on the web to the post-purchase experience. Simply put: your social commerce experience shouldn’t feel separate from the rest of your selling channels.
To ensure a consistent, seamless experience, consider these questions when developing your omni-channel strategy:
The key is understanding where and how your audience shops. You can gain these insights by looking into past sales and social data to determine where your customers are, what they buy, and how they engage with your brand.
This provides an insightful blueprint for where you need to focus your attention when it comes to your omni-channel strategy.
Much like “choose your own adventure,” you’ll need to choose the right platforms, content, and content format for your unique brand audience. What works for one business might not be right for the next. For example, products that require storytelling and a lot of explanation might thrive with long-form, lean-in video content. But lengthy videos won’t keep all audiences engaged.
Collect data every step of the way to help inform your decisions and learn what really resonates with your shoppers. This will ensure that you keep your focus on the platforms and strategies that are most likely to generate the highest ROI for your business. Once you lay the groundwork, you can expand and experiment with additional platforms or add new strategies into the mix.
For example, if you’re already seeing success on Instagram with your custom graphics, Instagram Live videos, and user-generated content, you might consider expanding this to TikTok.
Today, you can get smarter about presenting the perfect offers to the right audience at the right time, on autopilot. Smart selling tools like social media automation, AI, and CRM software make managing your social commerce platforms easy. You can create content that’s tailored to your audience, automate your marketing posts, move customers along your funnel, and manage your contacts all in one place. This results in increased cart sizes, AOV, and significant lifts in sales.
Good news: You don’t need to be a data scientist to apply data to your commerce strategy. With the right commerce reporting tool, your data will automatically inform your social selling strategy and marketing campaigns. You’ll save time while boosting merchandiser productivity and eliminating guesswork, automating tasks, and making profitable decisions with deep insights.
Find the right solution to integrate with your website for intelligent search recommendations, predictive sort, and product recommendations for smarter merchandising. With the right tool, your unified selling experience will go far beyond social, creating a personalized experience for your shoppers across multiple channels.
Now that you’ve considered the history and benefits of social commerce, platform options, and an omni-channel approach, it’s important to remember what makes social commerce so different from other channels: the social aspect and community focus. Social commerce is more of a conversation, and users expect these experiences to be a two-way street.
A successful social commerce strategy depends on brand-customer interactions. Encourage your followers, fans, and friends to join the conversation, but always be available and ready to respond when necessary.
Successful social commerce strategies take into account the conversational nature of social media. Social commerce is more than just a way to sell your products — it’s a way to communicate, build relationships, and understand your customers.
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