Following 2020’s rise in Internet consumption, marketers are turning their attention to social selling — and for good reason. In the United States alone, the number of social media users is 223 million with a 70% penetration. This translates to a much larger native audience that savvy companies can convert into consumers.
But just how does this fit into your current content personalization strategy? Is it even worth it?
What is Social Selling?
Alternatively called social commerce, social selling involves the incorporation of shopping opportunities on social platforms, and in the past two years it has become increasingly popular. Later’s ultimate guide to social selling in 2021 outlined how COVID-19 has been the accelerant for social selling’s mainstream popularity. As physical shopping drastically declined, the convenient and highly visual shopping experience that social selling provided proved to be more appealing than “traditional” static shopping sites.
A survey of Americans aged 18-34 showed that 48% have made a purchase through it. Meanwhile, experts expect that 7.8% of all e-commerce sales in 2024 will be from social commerce.
So, to answer the questions posed earlier: yes, it is absolutely worth it to implement social selling! Since the main goal of a content personalization strategy is to encourage loyalty, interest, and spending from consumers, including a social platform component can prove to be a less costly but even more lucrative endeavor.
The Unique Benefits of Social Selling
Boosts follower engagement
Establishing engagement is a determining factor in the online landscape. Social selling allows you to create an online presence, while also leveraging on each social media platform’s various engagement tools such as likes, comments, and shares. This helps foster a sense of community between brands and consumers who then feel more connected and invested in your products.
A 2021 Sprout Social study has even indicated that 85% of people who follow brands on social media are more likely to buy from them often. It also helps you humanize a brand, which endears it more to consumers who are increasingly looking to support companies with similar values and beliefs.
Streamlines the shopping process
Recently, Baymard Institute’s data on cart abandonment showed an average rate of almost 70%. This is mainly due to redundant processes, hidden charges, poor interface, and lackluster engagement options in an e-commerce site. This means even if your content personalization successfully attracts audiences to your site, this doesn’t automatically translate to revenue. If anything, it could even cost you should any irate customers negatively review your site. After all, surveys show that majority of consumers read now reviews before making a purchase.
Social selling works in your favor here since each platform already has fully integrated shopping tools. This means that consumers can complete the process—from initial connection, to browsing, to shopping, to checkout—all in one platform. Since social media is also optimized for mobile use, you are better able to reduce consumer pain points whilst increasing key touchpoints.
Key Considerations in Implementing Social Selling
Assuming you’ve already ironed out your content personalization strategy, including a social selling approach is quite straightforward. You must simply think of social media platforms as a more interactive and efficient way to spread your message. To best adapt your strategy, familiarize yourself with the medium. It’s a dynamic and exciting—but also exacting—opportunity for growth.
Each social media platform caters to a different demographic and utilizes different algorithms, so it’s important that you first understand which suits you. For instance, while women’s fashion retailers will do well on Pinterest, fitness-centered services may be better suited on Instagram Stories. It will help to study how your competitors are approaching social selling, too. From here, it will be clearer which type of content personalization works best with each platform’s native tools!
Social selling may seem like just an added responsibility for already successful online companies, but if you take a moment, you’ll see that it offers many unique advantages.
Article contributed by Ava Meyer for RecoSense.
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