By Kimberley Graham, Head of Demand Generation at Knexus
Worldwide social media sales are exploding in 2022, and they’re expected to triple by 2025. And it’s no wonder: about 59% of American adults use Instagram every day, while 38% of those are logging in multiple times a day.
Many marketers spend lots of money and time chasing those sales using social media advertising. They pump money into celebrity endorsements, influencer partnerships, and owned content creation, but rarely are they able to demonstrate a clear return on investment (ROI) on those expenses.
This is where social commerce can make all the difference.
In this post, we’re going to cover the following topics:
- What is social commerce?
- The power of content
- Challenges brands face when turning followers into customers
- How Knexus for Social Commerce fosters product discovery and confidence to buy
What is social commerce?
Social commerce is a type of ecommerce that allows customers to browse and buy products through social media platforms. Branded content, such as Instagram posts, links directly to the retailer’s product page where the customer can finalize their purchase.
Savvy marketers know that social commerce is the way of the future. Generally, buying through social media is considered an easy and quick experience for the customer, and it also taps into the holy grail of social proof. Brands can create an influential feedback loop of comments, likes, follows, and shares, all of which tends to keep customers engaged and curious.
The power of content
53% of social media users in the US said that posts by influencers played a big role in their purchasing decisions in 2021, while 63% said that posts by brands had the same effect.
This illustrates the outsized impact of social media content on conversions, especially visual content that helps build brand awareness and social proof.
Social commerce increases audience engagement and conversions in 5 important ways:
- Makes shopping a social experience, offering trusted endorsements and social proof
- Provides highly targeted and engaged audiences directly to brands
- Offers instant feedback for brands in the form of likes and comments
- Removes friction for conversions with in-platform solutions
- Reaches Millennials and Gen Z, who are well represented on social media platforms and are over 60% more likely to purchase over socials when given the option, according to Grandview Research
Challenges brands face when turning followers into customers
With all of these great benefits, it’s no wonder marketers might pour money into celebrity and influencer endorsements on social media at such an unprecedented rate, in addition to their brand-created content.
Unfortunately, the ROI on social media content can be frustratingly hard to quantify. While brands can measure engagement relatively easily on these platforms, conversions are much more difficult to calculate.
Even if a brand has achieved excellent engagement on social media, it may still struggle to:
- Get followers to visit its eCommerce site
- Convert followers into buying customers
- Make content shoppable so that it’s not only driving engagement but generating conversion and sales uplift
- Measure the performance of social content beyond engagement to understand how lucrative each partnership and content asset is
- Scale social content across eCommerce journeys, as it is expensive (in both time and money) to do this manually
- Show the most relevant earned and owned social content to each shopper along their buying journey
An issue at the heart of these challenges could be the brand’s failure to properly invest in social commerce. If the buyer’s journey isn’t smartly managed and analysed from start to finish, customers might not remain engaged, and conversion rates could fall.
One of the biggest drop-off points for potential customers is the jump between social media and the eCommerce site. Many brands link to static product pages, which often don’t reflect the highly personalized social media feed the customer was just interacting with. This breaks the flow of precious social proof that brands spend so much money investing in.
LiketoShop, the missing link between traffic & revenue
Knexus for Social Commerce bridges the gap between social media and your brand’s eCommerce site by automatically generating personalized galleries for every single social visitor. These unique, shoppable galleries provide continuous social proof by displaying hyper relevant UGC, influencer, and brand content.
Turn your followers into customers with LiketoShop, the link in bio solution. LiketoShop takes social visitors to a personalized & shoppable gallery displaying hyper-relevant UGC, influencer & brand content – fostering product discovery & inspiring confidence to buy.
Book a demo to see Knexus for Social Commerce in action and learn how personalized & shoppable galleries can turn your social media followers into paying customers.
Published 26/09/2022
