As with most types of inbound marketing, firms have begun to develop tools and platforms to make social commerce easier for both buyers and sellers. These provide solutions to brands looking for ways to make social promotions and sell through social media. The social commerce platforms also make the social shopping experience more user-friendly and palatable for consumers.
Top 12 Social Commerce Platforms:
What are the Benefits of Social Commerce?
There are quite a few benefits for firms engaging in social commerce. For a start, social commerce provides a ready-made audience for brands wanting consistent audience growth. Each day, new users join Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other social networks. Each new user becomes a potential new customer for brands engaging in social commerce. Sure, to be valuable, the “clients” need to be relevant to the firm – new teenagers joining TikTok are hardly likely to benefit sellers of stairlifts, for instance – however, brands are still likely to encounter potential new clients every day. Brand engagement on social media is proven to help search rankings too. Even if you sell directly within a social site, some of these people will follow through to your website to look at your products and other items you stock. Google will take note of this additional traffic and is likely to adjust its search rankings accordingly. Social commerce encourages communication with potential customers. Social media is two-way, so you have the opportunity for feedback from your customers. Social media word of mouth can also increase your contact with new people. Social commerce helps you build new relationships with people that you can continue to cultivate and improve over time. Happy customers are likely to make further purchases.
What is a Social Commerce Platform?
Unlike most of the other platform types we cover, there is no consistent definition of what a social platform is and what kind of services it offers. Probably the best way to look at a social platform is being a tool that enables social commerce to occur. While we include some of the leading social networks in this list, they aren’t social commerce platforms in their entirety. Instead, they now incorporate social commerce elements that allow social selling to occur, often without people having to leave their app. Some have effectively become self-contained marketplaces. Of course, social commerce is more than just buying and selling. It encapsulates the entire sales process – from research through to after-sales service. That means it includes activities such as brands communicating with customers via Facebook Messenger as much as it does enable the use of Buy Now buttons directly on sales posts. You might notice the absence of Twitter from this list, which is somewhat ironic because it was the first major social network to trial social commerce capabilities. Between 2014 and 2017, Twitter let some brands add a Buy button to their posts, allowing direct selling from tweets. However, in 2017 Twitter decided social commerce wasn’t for them, and they moved away from the idea. Perhaps they were just too ahead of their time.
Social Commerce on Social Media
Creator.co focuses on social commerce and uses advanced data and analytics, high-level reporting, continuous assistance on campaigns, and more. Its soon-to-come Marketplace+ will facilitate social commerce by enabling brands to sell their products and services across various social media platforms through creators, influencers, and publishers. Key Features: Content Amplification, Search/Discovery, Influencer Lifecycle Management, Influencer Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, Exportable reports, Channels: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok Nowadays, the primary way that Instagram acts as a social commerce platform is with its “Shoppable Posts” feature. Instagram has always had an advantage over many of its social competitors because of its inherently visual nature. It has always been the ideal social platform to display products, particularly if you make an effort to make your images enticing. It is the perfect medium for visual storytelling. Initially, Instagram didn’t allow for pure social commerce. When somebody clicked on one of your Shoppable Posts, they followed a link to the appropriate page on your online store, rather than making the sale entirely on Instagram itself. However, Instagram has since upgraded the capabilities of Shoppable Posts, and they now include an in-app checkout feature, so the customer never has to leave Instagram to make their purchase. With Facebook Shops, merchants can create a customizable store from which consumers can shop within Facebook and Instagram. Facebook Shops have dedicated places on the platform for consumers to browse and make purchases. Facebook Shops have a messaging button so consumers can communicate with sellers through Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Facebook also encourages brands to livestream and is looking at allowing consumers to purchase directly from a livestream. Pinterest also offers Shop the Look ads that allow traders to feature multiple products in a single ad. Pinners can discover great products related to a Pin’s image and click to check out on the retailer’s site. Sellers can tag up to 25 items in a photo. Snapchat reports that more than 170 million users engage with AR on the platform daily. At this stage, while you can try on products within Snapchat, using its AR lenses, you still need to click outside Snapchat to make the purchase, however. Shopify merchants can create, run, and optimize TikTok marketing campaigns directly from the Shopify dashboard by installing a new TikTok channel app from the Shopify App Store. Merchants can create native, shareable content that turns their products into In-Feed shoppable video ads. Shopify and TikTok have also trialed a new shopping button that allowed TikTok creators to link their Shopify storefront from their videos. Companies have created marketplaces using WeChat mini programs. Probably the best known is Pinduoduo, which sells to users, giving them steep discounts if they team up with other users to make bulk purchases. The real advantage of WeChat mini programs is that users can make purchases and communicate with sellers from within WeChat. They can share the products they like with their friends and family. In fact, they can participate in all phases of the buying process without leaving WeChat.
Social Commerce on Websites
An active, open discussion forum facilitates brand trust and leads to organic conversions through shared real-life experiences and interactions. Discussion and Q&A forums can be fully customized visually, as well as utilizing modern, responsive UX for ease-of-use. Pinduoduo includes two prices for each product it sells. One is the “single buyer” price. However, there is a second cheaper price shown that the buyer can pay if he/she can find someone else to buy the good (the second person also gets the lower price). You can use it to introduce shoppers to your products and provide them with the information they need to make confident purchase decisions. You can also use live streams to inform audiences on product features, benefits, and special offers in an interactive environment with live product demonstrations.
