Social platforms have become more facilitating for brands. About 30% of online shoppers expressed their willingness to purchase from social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
This situation goes more into the favor of brands existing on social media with the introduction of Facebook and Instagram shops.
What is social commerce?
Social commerce uses the same concept as that of traditional eCommerce. The only difference is that it uses social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest for order placement and other transactions. A significant benefit of using social commerce for selling and buying products is that it offers greater diversity within the checkout process.
Current trends in social commerce suggest its relative infancy. However, the performance of existing products shows that the prospects of buying and selling this way are going to be a remarkable experience for both brands and shoppers.
Here is a report from eMarket:
“According to Civic Science’s trend adoption tracker, the percentage of internet users who had bought a product directly through social media channels grew each quarter between Q4 2018 and Q3 2019, rising from 13% to 21%. The biggest jump came in Q2, shortly after the launch of Instagram Checkout.”
Almost every platform plans on expanding their offerings to support commerce interaction. With credible companies jumping in, we can expect a surge in adoption rates.
As of this moment, an average customer spends more than $300 annually on the orders placed through social platforms. We can expect this number to double in the next few years.
What are the benefits of social commerce?
Social commerce promises a few significant benefits for both the brand and shoppers. For buyers, the process of placing an order will be more frictionless. Due to the ease of use, they will not hesitate to place orders through their favorite social platforms. Another factor that comes into play is the mobile-friendliness of social platforms.
For brands, social commerce is going to be a unique opportunity to increase ROI. Until now, brands have been using social media marketing as a procedure that tends to remain isolated from the product buying funnel, which is the procedure a buyer must go through to purchase a product. Social commerce will consolidate both of these prospects to make it easier for the brands to convince their customers to jump quickly into that buying funnel.
Furthermore, brands will be able to have an in-depth insight into their audiences’ activities over social platforms. It will be easy to use that insight to formulate a marketing strategy to draw in potential consumers.
