Online shopping is slowly tipping the scales and becoming consumers’ favorite way to buy. By 2023, .
As online shopping becomes increasingly popular, retail brands are looking at ways they can better connect with their audiences – and social media is coming out on top. In fact, one survey revealed that 50% of brands are working hard to merge their social and ecommerce strategies.
With this in mind, it’s important for brands that want to stand the test of time to jump on the bandwagon and leverage social media. After all, it makes sense to reach buyers where they’re already hanging out.
As the tables turn, the line between social platforms and online marketplaces will slowly start to blur. Get social commerce ready with these powerful tactics that aim to get you more brand visibility and more sales.
1. Identify Your Top Social Channels
Trying to spread yourself too thin across every social media channel is a recipe for disaster. Instead, focus on the platforms that your customers use and engage with the most. This will make your job much easier.
The social platform that serves you best will vary depending on your audience and what you’re selling. For example, clothes and accessories do particularly well on Instagram, while gadgets and tech products might get better reception on Facebook or Twitter.
There are a couple of ways you can find out which platforms are most popular with your audience:
- Check your social media analytics to see where the majority of engagement is happening
- Survey your audience
2. Tap Into Social Checkout Features
It’s easier than ever for customers to buy directly from their favorite social platforms. This eliminates the choppy shopping process of the past, where customers had to go on an online expedition to find a product they like. Once they’d seen the product in their social feed, they’d have to go to the brand’s profile to get a link to their site, and then they had to search the brand’s site for the product.
Social checkout features neatly tie up this process by allowing customers to buy in their chosen social media app.
Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have all begun to test checkout features that let brands sell directly from their social posts, dramatically cutting down on the number of steps shoppers have to go through to buy.
3. Leverage Social Proof
Social proof not only increases brand visibility, but it also builds trust and ensures potential customers feel comfortable before they buy. Knowing that other shoppers have gone before them and have been happy with their purchases is a huge incentive for future buyers.
Reviews, testimonials, customer-generated visuals, and customer stories all fall under the umbrella of social proof. The key is using them in the right way throughout the customer journey. When used correctly, – particularly if the social proof includes pictures from social media.
4. Join Forces With Influencers
Influencers already have a built-in audience that trust and value what they have to say. By teaming up with relevant social accounts in your niche, you can tap into those audiences to increase your reach and generate more sales.
The key is to identify highly relevant influencers. These often aren’t big-name celebrities and are instead what’s known as micro-influencers – people with laser-focused accounts and a tight-knit audience.
You can even get your customers on board as influencers. Encourage them to share content about your brand or products through a hashtag campaign, a rewards point program, or for the opportunity to get featured on your site. Studies show that customers love to participate in programs like this.
5. Create a Seamless Customer Service Experience
Social media has increasingly taken over as a key point of customer service. Research shows that 60% of customers who complain on social media expect a response in less than an hour, while 54% of customers actually prefer to use social media for customer service rather than phone or email.
When a customer is in buy mode on social media, they want as little as possible to stand in their way. As a result, brands are turning to social features that let them provide enjoyable in-the-moment customer service experiences.
Chatbots have become a common way to do this. Customers are able to type out a pressing question they have about a purchase and get an almost-instant result. This means the buying cycle isn’t disrupted and they can continue on their shopping journey.
6. Personalize as Much as Possible
Customers today crave personal interactions with brands. They want to feel special and have the shopping process made easy for them through personalized recommendations.
when they personalize customer experiences based on past shopping behavior and social actions.
The simplest way to do this is by serving up product suggestions based on past purchases. Recommendations like this have driven .
This tactic can be particularly useful for social media ads. You can use retargeting tools to serve ads to consumers that visited a certain page, a certain product, or who abandoned their cart.
The Goal is to Create Engaging Social Media Experiences That Are Shoppable
Social commerce should be an addition to your current marketing strategy. As more consumers turn to their favorite social platforms to make purchases, brands are having to keep up if they want to gain a competitive edge.
The goal of a social commerce strategy is to create enjoyable shopping experiences on social media. This is becoming increasingly easy to do thanks to the slew of new shoppable features the top social media platforms are launching.
Start by exploring where your customers hang out online the most and create an experience for them with the help of social proof, shoppable features, and “in-the-moment” customer service, and bring onboard organic influencers to spread the word about your brand.
This article was originally published at Optimonk.com, by Optimonk. Original article >>
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