How Social Commerce Can Help Your eCommerce Store Grow
As usual, there were the normal announcements of platform changes, interviews with partner developers, and spotlights on brands who have achieved impressive growth through or with Facebook.
But there was something this year that was a little out of the ordinary.
There was a strong focus on a marketing tactic that’s currently growing from strength to strength and generating thousands for brands across the globe.
Social commerce.
We saw Facebook-led talks about how to grow your brand through Messenger and panels featuring brand partners from social commerce brands.
Conversational commerce, social marketing, and social commerce are now jumping to the mainstream. They’re deemed important enough by Facebook to make up a huge part of their developer conference.
Facebook, the largest social network in the world, thinks social commerce is important enough that all of their partners need to know about it. And thus, we think you should know more about them too.
But here’s the thing.
Even in its brief lifetime, conversational marketing has exploded. It’s become a potential revenue generator for brands of every different size and has branched out into several different disciplines.
There’s a ton of different conversational methods of marketing out there.
Drift is a B2B conversational marketing platform helping large brands close other large brands as clients.
Intercom offers a slew of live chat solutions ideal for software business that need to offer round the clock help.
ManyChat and MobileMonkey are great tools for automated chatbots that keep your users engaged by minimizing response time.
These are all great methods of engaging users. But they’re not specifically focused on eCommerce sales.
Sure, you can bend some of them to help out, but without that native functionality, you’re going to waste more time figuring it out. And as a busy store owner, you don’t have that time.
You need results and you need them ASAP.
So today, I’m going to run you through the only conversational marketing method that’s specifically focused on making ecommerce sales.
I’m going to run you through the awesome power of social commerce.
What is Social Commerce?
Quite simply, it’s the sales of products directly through social media. It differs from regular social media marketing because you don’t need to redirect users to your store or product page.
They’re able to purchase directly from your social post or even Instagram stories.
You’ll have seen this in action already. Facebook Marketplace is a good example. And then you’ve got the recent (limited rollout) introduction of Instagram Checkouts that take this to the next level.
These solutions are great, but they’re limited in a number of ways:
Facebook Marketplaceisn’t really great for brands operating a professional business. It’s geared more towards individuals selling single items.
Instagram checkout is currently only available to select brands and influencers
All similar solutions are available only on their parent network
In short, they might help make a couple more sales, but they’re not great for brands wanting to roll out an integrated, omnichannel approach
Fortunately, there are a few services out there that will help you achieve thi
But first, let’s look at why you should care beyond the hyp
Why You Should Care About Social Commer
Picture this. You’re out at the mall with friends.
You stumble across a small store. In the window is a pair of shoes you’d love to buy so you go in and ask for a little more detail. The assistant runs you through the shoes’ features and really highlights those benefit
You’re ready to bu
But, as you reach for your wallet, the assistant stops you and says “if you want to buy these, head to our store”. This is only a display model. To buy them you’ve got to drive 15 minutes away to their primary storefron
Would you g
No, righ
It sounds stupid, but this is the purchase journey most brands offer with their social marketing. They’re engaging consumers on social, but to actually buy something, you'd have to switch to a browser window and search again for the shoes, or navigate their webpage. Consumers who aren’t on the platform to shop, but to connect with friends. And yet they still try and force a lengthy purchase journey on people who aren’t actively looking to buy.
