Making the Most of Social Commerce
March 21, 2023
If you are an e-commerce business owner and looking to expand your audience, utilizing social media is a must.
The fast-growing trend of “social shopping” allows consumers to shop the products they love directly via social media. The experience is designed to be engaging and community-driven – and the potential revenue for prospective sellers is huge. Social shopping hit over $45 billion in sales in 2022 and is expected to boom in coming years, with analysts predicting sales to reach nearly $80 billion by 2025.
So, what can you do to make the most of this opportunity?
Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Amazon Sellers
66% of e-commerce shoppers start their buying experience on Amazon, that means 34% of e-consumers still need to be accounted for. It is essential to recognize where these shoppers are coming from in order to expand audiences and maximize sales potential.
This is where advertising on social media is essential, especially if your target audience includes Millennials or Gen Zers who are more likely to begin their shopping experience on social media channels.
First, you need to know your audience. Fortunately, Amazon makes understanding which external channels are generating the most sales through their in-house analytics tool, Amazon Attributions.
For Amazon sellers, casting as wide of a net as possible is important. Once you gather key information on your customers, you can decide which social media platforms you want to focus on using.
Marketing on social media can help you understand your audience by giving you a direct, intimate, and engaging platform to interact with your customers.
When your business has a social media presence, your customers can easily leave feedback or highlight what they love about your product – which not only gives you key insights, but can also catalyze marketing campaigns by guiding your outreach to specific communities and trends that are relevant to your product.
By engaging with your customers, you can help build a level of trust with them which will keep them loyal, increase the likelihood of a good review, and help spread the word to reach more consumers.
The community aspect of social media can help your brand refine your image and values by understanding who your customers are and what they care about.
Social Media Strategies for Amazon
When it comes to social media, you don’t need to go at it alone. In fact, identifying and collaborating with relevant social media influencers is a great strategy for companies with little social presence that want to quickly expand their outreach.
Reach out to these social media influencers, give them a free sample of your product with the hopes that they will feature it on their channel. “TikTok made me buy it” is a real trend and the benefits of your product going viral cannot be overstated.
TikTok has over a billion users, and data shows that 20% of online shoppers start on TikTok. On TikTok, #amazonfinds, which highlights trending Amazon products, generated over 40 billion views in 2022 alone. These quick, bite sized pieces of content quickly showcase your product – and is the perfect avenue for engaging with a community.
Other social platforms are also experiencing serious social shopping growth. 81% of shoppers research products on Instagram and Facebook, and shopping is a top priority for 48% of Pinterest users, making multi-channel outreach essential.
Successful social media marketing requires both quality content and regular input, which can be overwhelming for small businesses. Thankfully, there are several tools that can help streamline the process.
Using a content calendar can help keep the process from becoming overwhelming. For posting, using social media management tools like Hootsuite will ensure your posts are synchronized across channels, significantly saving you time.
Utilizing Amazon’s built-in marketing toolkit “Amazon Advertisements” is another way to quickly generate simple advertising content that displays your Amazon listing on external websites, including socials like Facebook. These ads follow a pay-per-click scheme so they are cost effective for many companies.
How ZQUARED Can Help
Having a comprehensive social media marketing strategy is important, but outreach only matters if you successfully convert those clicks to sales – which means optimizing your Amazon presence is essential.
ZQUARED provides complete Amazon listing optimization for our Brand Partners, which maximizes the chances of converting the lead once you’ve hooked your customer’s attention. We optimize listings to include cutting-edge copywriting, lean and engaging layout including A+ sections, and ensure that your minimum advertised price (MAP) is competitive and profitable.
All listings are search engine optimized to boost your products’ Amazon search page rankings. Despite the surge in social shopping, the majority of shoppers still begin their shopping experience using the Amazon search bar and don’t look past the first page.
By working with ZQUARED, you can rest assured that the Amazon side of your e-commerce business is in trusted hands, allowing you and your team to dedicate time to external traffic, capitalizing on trends like social shopping, and maximizing your profits.
To see how ZQUARED can help your brand email us at partners@zquared.com to receive a complementary channel audit.