3 Ways You Can Incorporate Social Commerce Into Your Strategy
The future of shopping is here, and it’s called social commerce.
The shift from e-commerce into social commerce is being driven by social media and content creation platforms (such as Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok) adding new shopping capabilities. These tech-enabled features allow platforms to process transactions and, in doing so, gain access to first-party customer data and expand their ability to offer value to advertisers. Instead of merely targeting consumers with top-of-the-funnel awareness campaigns, social media platforms can now draw a much more direct line between advertising impressions and verified sales. By 2025, social commerce revenue is expected to rise to nearly $80 billion, or 5 percent of total US e-commerce.
Here are 3 ways you can tap into social commerce for your DTC brand
TIP 1: Instagram shopping
Launched in 2019, Instagram checkout allows users to checkout directly in-app. Product catalogs and product tagging let you drive users from post-to-cart more quickly than e-commerce. Meta Ads Manager even allows you to send a portion of your ad traffic to Instagram Checkout, boosting conversion and revenue. The potential to boost your conversion and signal is there as you can avoid relying on your pixel. But take note, you will sacrifice your first party data. As with all strategies, test, gather data, and determine which strategy drives the most revenue.
TIP 2: live commerce
Live commerce popped up in 2019, and took off during the pandemic. Instagram, Tiktok and Amazon have all “entered the chat” on live commerce and its popularity shows no signs of slowing. Going live allows brands to set the stage and collab with influencers on product drops, product demos. While each platform works differently, all three allow you to integrate your product catalog into the live to drive sales in real time. According to Amazon, tens of millions of customers viewed its Prime Day 2021 live streams.
TIP 3: whitelisting
Paired with the right influencer outreach strategy, whitelisting can yield huge results. Whitelisting allows brands to gain access to the influencers account for the purpose of running ads. These ads typically feature a strong testimonial and act as social proof for curious prospects. Combine ads with Instagram Shopping, live commerce or affiliate marketing for best results.
Social commerce is your new secret weapon. Brands that fail to understand this transformation of the customer journey or acknowledge the reduced relevance of their traditional, website-based channel could be devastated by both competitors and smaller brands taking share. To adapt, brands will need a holistic strategy for influencer partnerships and for social-first content. The time for brands to act on social commerce is now.
