Social Shopping: Effortlessly Blend eCommerce with Your Digital Marketing Strategy

As eCommerce sales dominated Black Friday and Cyber Monday, social shopping gained widespread acceptance as a new methodology for driving digital sales. In the online world, having a website is no longer enough heading into 2023.

For many businesses, large and small, incorporating a consistent social media presence proved invaluable throughout the holiday season. Critically, the effortless blend of social media and eCommerce keeps businesses on the cutting edge from both a competitive standpoint and the actual user experience.

Adjusting Your Digital Strategy for Social Shopping and Modern eCommerce

As technology evolves at its fastest pace in history, new online tools and features roll out daily. For eCommerce brands, this means planning for quick adaptation and constant updates.

Ultimately, the goal is simple: create the smoothest purchase experience possible. By taking advantage of social shopping and other virtual tactics, brands lock in customers for years to come.

Build Your Social Shopping Experience

For eCommerce, social media represents the new frontier. Currently, every major social media platform, offers a social shopping component. For instance, Instagram contains product-specific posts. Instagram lets you build a unique shop to showcase your products, including product tags, create product detail pages, and then allows consumers to buy it straight from the app. Meanwhile, Facebook showcases an entire storefront built-in to the platform.

Other platforms, like Twitter and Pinterest, let you create product-specific posts, but the purchase itself must be made on your own site. Making effective use of your social channels can be a boon for your eCommerce strategy if you take advantage of all the tools at your disposal.

Within each of these social media platforms, influencer marketing grew quite lucrative for major brands. Essentially, influencers tap into their massive online followings, creating a “product-placement” experience. Initially, many think of influencers with millions of followers. However, microinfluencers hold just as much weight with their niche markets.

Whether you need a niche audience interested in a specific topic or just want as many eyeballs as possible, enlisting the help of an influencer is a more genuine way to advertise your product online. With influencers and social shopping, social media is a powerful eCommerce tool for businesses large and small if handled correctly.

Incorporating Personalization into Social Shopping

Community takes on a great deal of importance in the social media realm. For those building their social shopping experience, incorporating personalized elements helps to drive stronger engagement. As a matter of fact, 78% of consumers choose brands that offer more personalized experiences. Additionally, 60% of consumers attribute personalization to helping them become repeat customers.

The key to successful personalization lies in your data and how you use it! Most personalization starts with segmenting your audience into subgroups in order to send more intentional emails. From there, brands curate specific batches of content, adjust landing pages with more appropriate copy and design, and much more. Your audience knows what it wants and now, with data and creativity, you have the power to give it to them.

Drive SEO and User Engagement Through Content Marketing

While designing a social shopping experience, implement a consistent content marketing schedule. If you’re actively making videos, writing blogs, publishing social posts, and creating graphics, use them! Send blogs via email, share videos on social and on your website, and use all of your content to promote your products, inform your audience, and showcase your brand in a new light.

If you’re not creating content, consider it! Publishing blogs or videos even semi-regularly gives your website a big boost with search engine optimization. As one of the primary drivers on search engines, “authoritativeness” indicates to platforms like Google that your brand concentrates on a certain subject matter.

Over time, content compounds to further strengthen that brand’s gravity over said subject. For example, a brand that posts about fashion over and over again will be more likely to rank competitively for fashion related keywords than one that mentions it once in a blue moon.

Optimize Digital Channels for Maximum Effectiveness

It’s important to remember that you have multiple channels to use to connect with your audience. Emails, SMS messaging, social media, and your website demonstrate viable options. Interweaving each of these channels helps to increase memorability with your audience.

Though your website is an obvious channel for eCommerce, also remember that a huge portion of purchases are made via a mobile phone. Ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is critical to make it easy to purchase your products and to provide a good experience for shoppers whether they buy or not.

eCommerce is always changing and consumers’ expectations for their shopping experience change with it. Make sure you’re doing everything you can to provide the easiest, more enjoyable experience for your customers by optimizing your eCommerce marketing.

To launch your digital marketing strategy in 2023, schedule an Intro Conversation with the advertising and branding specialists at Rizzo Young Marketing.