When social media is used to drive sales and more personalized, authentic and targeted shopping experience it is called social e-commerce. It’s hard to deny the influence and huge benefits social e-commerce drives for any business - from increasing sales and driving website traffic to generating more authentic customer engagement.
Here are 6 reasons why social media is a new shopping mall:
1. Growing customer base
Social media is used by millions of people on a daily basis, with new users joining every hour. In March 2019, the daily active Instagram audience made 500 million users, with 87% of users are taking action after seeing products on Instagram (Hootsuit, 2019). Interestingly, every minute 400 new users join Facebook and almost 29% of them would likely follow a brand on Facebook, while 20 per cent would likely be making a purchase from social network (BigCommerce, 2019). According to statistics from Pinterest itself, 61% of consumers admit their shopping behavior is influenced by Pinterest. According to these same statistics sources, two million Pinterest users save Buyable “Pins” on their boards daily (Statista, 2019).
When using social media for selling products and services, you are exposing your business to a whole new set of customers and a captive audience that is available 24/7. Social media has turned into a new shopping mall. It’s an effective place to advertise your brand to a large number of customers, that you would never be able to reach using only ecommerce websites.
2. Higher level of customer loyalty
The use of different social media is one of the new and effective ways to maintain customer loyalty and brand awareness. 43% customers are more likely to buy a new product or use some services when learning about it on social media (AmeriCommerce, 2019). Customers become invested in your brand at a personal level – provide product reviews, share their purchase with friends, post company’s updates and etc. Through traditional e-commerce websites, this doesn’t happen as easily.
3. Perfect authentic customer engagement
Maybe one of the most brilliant benefits of social e-commerce for any business is the engagement and reach that you can get whenever you share great content. With the increasing number of likes, comments, and shares, the popularity of brand increases and speed up buying decisions. Creating good brand moments using interesting and trustworthy content creates a connection, and makes people feel like they’re part of your brand and that’s why they don't need going whenever else.
4. Data insights
Social e-commerce makes it easier to measure the success of your campaigns. Persollo's AI-powered analytical products - "Influencer Audience Insights" and "Post Analyzer" - provide extensive data about social media influencer's audiences and captures multiple data-point and measures the performance of their posts on social media.
5. Miminum investment with the highest ROI
The costs of social e-commerce strategy for business are minimal, comparing to TV and other paid media advertising. Social e-commerce can provide good ROI, including the lack of overheads, big labor or other additional costs etc. Of course if you are doing it with Persollo that offers affordable pricing and tools to sell and promote your products on social media, then the costs can be kept to minimum, while delivering maximum result.
6. Higher site's ranking
86% of all e-commerce traffic comes from social media (Absolunet, 2019). It is recommended to create regular engaging and creative content (shots, video, ratings, reviews) that will be picked up by various search engines. Make sure that each and every post is worthy of being permanently attributed to your brand, add your brand logo.
Social e-commerce opens opportunities for creativity, new sales, new consumer insights, higher website traffic and building customer loyalty through stronger digital sales methods. If you’re looking for the most effective way to apply social e-commerce trends to your business advantage, consider Persollo’s instant checkout e-commerce and influencer marketing tools.