Social shopping in 2023 is the new-age result-driven marketing strategy that brands are focusing heavily on.
And why shouldn’t they when customers are becoming more comfortable with the concept of exploring social media for fulfilling their shopping desires?
Millions of people explore social media platforms daily to get inspiration about what they can shop, trends, & more. And for this reason, brands have transformed their social profiles into lavish brand stores for online sales.
This strategy is a must for all brands selling products (or even services) digitally. Remember – “Time and Tide wait for none.”
Explore the concept of social media shopping, its benefits, popular social shopping platforms, and some famous examples to get started with or optimize your social shopping strategy.
What Is Social Shopping?
Tagshop defines Social shopping definition as the unification of “Social Media” and “Ecommerce.”
Instead of marketing the products on social media to drive more traffic, the entire selling process takes place on social media platforms.
“Social shopping is when brands tag products to their social content and allow users to shop the products directly from the content”
Important – Not just on these platforms, social media shopping also means leveraging shoppable content on your eCommerce site/online brand store to drive sales, engagement, & brand trust.
Instagram Shoppable feed, Shoppable UGC galleries, Shoppable Visual galleries – all of these are some examples of social shopping through websites.
Shopping always sounds lucrative! Especially when you can do it from the comfort of your home while scrolling through social media or brand websites (which is a hobby now).
With selling on social media, you can experience exactly what you imagined. It is the perfect way to get the desires fulfilled with an effortless and smooth shopping journey.
Top Five Strategies To Leverage Social Media Shopping
1. Be Consistent With Your Content
Awareness and engagement play a massive role in achieving success with your social media shopping strategy. If users won’t be aware of you, then how would you sell your products.
To expand reach, awareness, and engagement on social media, content is the best strategy. Being consistent with your content will bring in new users and engage the existing followers regularly.
This is how you will attract maximum traffic to your social media shopping, or shoppable content feeds.
2. Turn Users’ Content Into Shoppable UGC
Just remember, your shopping profile is just for the customers. So, why not showcase to them what their companions are saying about the brand. This is where user-generated content comes into play.
It’s a good practice to integrate your user’s photos into your social shop. Easily collect relevant UGC from social profiles, make it shoppable, and share it on your social profiles or publish the shoppable UGC gallery on the website.
It’s also worth considering adding a QR code to your shoppable UGC gallery for easy access to product information or promotions.” *The text in italic requested to be added for natural context and the words in bold is the anchor.
It is a perfect way to merge points of inspiration with points of sale. Users’ content works as a trust-building factor, showcases social proof, builds credibility, and inspires more purchases.
3. Strategize your social Shopping workflow
Having a social media account is not the limit. You need to go beyond the line and ask yourself what are you using the platform for? Daily uploads, commenting, and following back is just like going on a ride without the map. You will never reach the destination, for sure.
Focus on these points to get started
- Know your targeted audience and choose the social platform wisely.
- Determine your goal (audience engagement, sales, etc.)
- Create a plan that aligns with your goal.
- Analyze your performance.
4. Mobile-First Approach
Social media is meant for mobile devices. If you want to leverage social media selling successfully, you need to take a mobile-first approach.
The Mobile-first approach means sharing content with premium quality that is optimized for mobile screens.
Especially for social selling on websites, you must make sure that your social media shopping gallery is optimized with proper layouts & design to be mobile-responsive.
5. Showcase Your Products Naturally
Social media is meant for leisure – Users do not want content aimed at increasing sales & promotions. So, you must stay away from sharing content with the agenda of tagging products.
If your content doesn’t add any value to the users, they won’t even engage with it.
Instead, share content that has a purpose provides value, showcases your products featuring naturally as part of the scene so that consumers feel curious about it.
Natural tagging of your products in your social content will also help your content perform better. You will be able to attract more users, engage them, and ultimately sell more through social eCommerce.
How Social Shopping Works For Different Platforms?
Different platforms enable social media selling differently. The only similarity is the opportunity they offer for both the brands and the customers.
Let us understand how social shopping platforms can help you leverage this for your brand growth and get more sales.
Tagshop
Tagshop is one of the best & unique social shopping platforms for brands to their brand content & UGC into shoppable galleries. This unique platform helps you collect content (especially UGC) from multiple social channels and convert them into shoppable social galleries.
With Tagshop, you can create your own social shop by curating content from Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc., and publish shoppable galleries on the website.
Key features include UGC rights management, insightful analytics, creative themes, and many more.
Moreover, you can create custom posts, personalize your social shop and moderate it using Tagshop. Therefore, this platform enables you to create distinctive social shops and leverage them on websites, email, social ads, social media, and more.
Inspire Your Visitors For Social Shopping & Boost Conversions With Tagshop
Facebook Shops
With the majority of marketers already bracing up their presence on Facebook to boost growth, the networking channel has a lot to offer to these marketers, including the Facebook Shop.
These social shopping platforms allow the brands to create their online shop on Facebook as well as Instagram. All you need is access to the Facebook business account. You can create your own well-customized Facebook shop to upload the catalog of products that you want to display.
Instagram Shopping
Instagram, the second home for all social media users. Marketers have been expanding their Social shopping Instagram marketing base but were restricted only to engaging customers because of the absence of shop links.
With the introduction of Shoppable Instagram, the trending social shopping platforms, brands have provided the customers an opportunity to shop directly from the post without even leaving the platform.
To create your Instagram shoppable feed, you need to fulfill the certain conditions that follow
- You must be located in either of the countries (US, UK, Canada, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia)
- Your account must be an Instagram business account.
- Your profile should be linked with the Facebook product catalog.
Once you have satisfied all the prerequisites, you are a step ahead towards creating your social shopping Instagram.
Pinterest Buyable Pins
The traditional DIY platform has raised its bar and has transformed into social shopping platforms to introduce “Pinterest Shoppable Pins.”
The pins that earlier used to attract them now provide them with an option to purchase them directly, i.e., converting point of attraction into point of sales.
Now since we know the major social shopping platforms and the tips to get going, let us learn about the benefits of social media eCommerce.
Social Shopping Examples
Here we have curated some of the best social shopping examples to help you get inspiration and leverage social media shopping.
1. Eureka Street Furniture
The online furniture shop that displays an exclusive collection of unique furniture utilizes the power of Social media shopping to connect with their clients and provide them with a smooth shop experience.
With shoppable Posts Instagram and user-generated content, Eureka street furniture is a perfect social shopping example that has made a long-lasting impact on its clients and experienced a steep high in the performance graph.
2. Burberry
Another one of the famous social shopping examples is from Burberry. Making Facebook as the selling channel, Burberry, the luxury fashion house, has gripped its presence on the social network.
With shoppable videos and Facebook live as social commerce examples, Burberry has captured its customers’ attention and has escalated its sales to a great extent.
3. Jordan
Jordan, the brand for the iconic shoes, capitalized on Snapchat to grease the wheels of sale. With a short snapcode, Jordan brought its customers into the selling arena and offered them the opportunity to shop immediately with social media.
Best Social Shopping Benefits
Social media selling has been trending in recent years and is evolving with time. Modern-day shoppers flock to these social shopping platforms giving brands a remarkable hike in the growth and conversion rate for eCommerce.
Apart from this, this concept of social media eCommerce provides brands with ample opportunities and benefits that include
- Maximize online sales and revenue growth opportunities
- Diversify and multiply the customer footprint
- Creates Distinguished & distinct brand image
- Displays social proof with User-generated content
- Reduce the purchase path for the customers
- Unparalleled customer engagement with the brand
- Swift and speedy checkout process
Boost Your Online Sales By Integrating Social Shopping Experiences Through Tagshop
Closing Words
Whether you are encouraging the display of user-generated content or providing the users with eye-catching offers to choose your brand, social media selling is still the ace of the space.
Social Shopping is an act of stepping into the social platform to gather more reviews and recommendations about the product and then use them to guide you to the path of purchase.
This, therefore, helps the brands to streamline the buying process and enhance the efficacy of their social media presence.
Social commerce is the key to expand your brand beyond the established e-commerce channels and enhance customer’s experience. This marketing trend is the gem of the marketing system and has paved the way for increased sales and conversions.
