A poorly planned social commerce strategy is unlikely to attract customers or boost engagement. However, if you’re aware of common pitfalls in the industry, you should be better equipped to leverage your platform, generate leads, and drive sales.
In this post, we’ll explain how social commerce works and how it can benefit your business. We’ll then discuss three mistakes to avoid in order to create a successful strategy. Let’s get started!
What Social Commerce Is (And How It Can Benefit Your Business)
Social commerce is the process by which companies use social media to promote and sell products. This strategy has become very popular in the last few years.
In fact, a recent study found that social commerce generates approximately 728 billion dollars worldwide. Furthermore, the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) is expected to rise over 31% by 2030 to $6.2 trillion.
As you can see, selling your products on social media can be a sensible decision. Plus, social commerce involves fewer steps than e-commerce and is generally a much faster process.
For example, a social media user can see your product in their feed, click on it, and buy it almost instantly:
This streamlined approach means customers will have less time to change their minds. Therefore, it can help you reduce your cart abandonment rate and drive more sales.
Moreover, social commerce is more interactive than standard e-commerce. Along with purchasing products, customers can read reviews and ask questions in the comments sections or send direct messages.
This also makes it easier for brands to interact with followers and manage their reputation:
Furthermore, social commerce enables brands to reach a wider audience through hashtags and reposts. It can also help you save money by serving content to the right customers.
3 Social Commerce Mistakes to Avoid
When done right, social commerce can help you reach more customers and boost sales. Let’s take a look at a few common social commerce mistakes mistakes to avoid when planning your strategy.
1. Under-Researching Your Audience
For your social commerce strategy to work, it is critical that you use the right platform to get the right message to the right audience. Otherwise, you will likely waste precious time and money trying to gain traction and improve sales.
Researching your audience can help you develop a solid strategy. You can start by using analytics tools to identify your customers and understand their demographics. You can look for characteristics like age, gender, and location. Then, you can choose your social platform and tailor your message based on your findings.
For example, studies show that Pinterest users are predominantly women between the ages of 18 and 34. If your audience aligns with this demographic, you might want to consider marketing your products on Pinterest.
2. Having Poor Social SEO
Ignoring Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices is another mistake some businesses make when selling products via social media. Social SEO is the process of optimizing your posts in order to increase their rankings and visibility in search results.
Optimized posts can lead to more people seeing your content. This means your products will likely reach a wider audience.
Keywords are critical for social SEO. You can use them in your captions, profile bios, descriptions, and hashtags.
For example, if you sell beauty products in recyclable packaging, or “vegan and cruelty-free” is your main selling point, you’ll want to use these keywords on your social media page:
This way, anyone looking for ethical products like cruelty-free and vegan body creams will likely stumble upon your page.
Geotagging your content can also aid in social SEO. It enables customers to find you by location. This can be particularly effective if you want to grow your local base.
3. Posting Lackluster Content
Social media platforms are flooded with ads and promotions. This can make it difficult to stand out in people’s feeds.
You can avoid this by creating interesting and fresh content. More importantly, your posts should strike a chord with your audience. They should appeal to their pain points and needs.
If you’re struggling to develop effective content, you can use social media analytics to learn how different posts perform. For example, you might try a mixture of product videos or eye-catching graphics.
Then, you can create similar content based on your findings. If the reports show that videos generate more engagement and clicks, you might use them as your preferred medium.
You could even try different types of videos to see which ones are most effective. For instance, you might post product demos, interviews with happy customers, and animated videos.
What’s more, you can encourage your followers to post user-generated content (UGC). For example, you might ask them to film themselves using your products, then post those clips on your own page.
Creating an affiliate program is another effective way to encourage UGC. You can partner with influencers and bloggers to reach more customers and make more sales:
Don’t forget to like, comment, and reshare when customers post your products. Creating a dialogue and answering questions can help build trust and loyalty.
Conclusion
Social commerce enables customers to shop directly on your social media platforms. However, only a robust strategy will help you attract customers and drive sales. You’ll want to start by researching your audience, then work on optimizing your profile and posting engaging content.
Do you have any questions about avoiding social commerce mistakes? Let us know in the comments section below!
Image credit: Pexels.