“I’d like to do your job, too — making Facebook posts!” That’s the phrase I hear most often from friends when we tell each other how our workday went. And just as they are saying it, I see them carefree “scrolling” through a product showcase on Facebook or Instagram.
Then I find myself thinking ⎯ satisfied to myself ⎯ that this is really the greatest thing about my job: doing web marketing without making the user perceive that you are doing web marketing. Through your campaigns, you manage to get people to find brands and products in the place where they usually hang out, almost unnoticed and in a natural way. Like “making a Facebook post,” in fact!
What is social commerce
It is now clear how social media has radically influenced the way we purchase goods and services, especially during the global pandemic situation. And it is in this world of perfectly interconnected consumers, where interaction, exchange of information and opinions are the order of the day, that social commerce was born.
Social commerce is that mode of online sales that uses social media as real storefronts to showcase products. In this way, whenever a product is tagged on a post or story, the user will be able to click on the tag and be redirected directly within the e-commerce to proceed to browse or purchase.
Social commerce vs. e-commerce
The main factor that distinguishes social commerce from e-commerce are the interactions between connected users: social media, in fact, are par excellence places where users can publicly share product information or shopping experiences with a particular brand. This cooperation between users in the buying process has given rise to a phenomenon called, precisely, “social shopping.” And so, by influencing each other, users cooperate to research and recommend the best purchase choice.
This does not happen in “traditional” e-commerce, where the shopping experience is “lonely” and more static: users do not have the opportunity to confront each other about a particular product, nor do they have room to interact on the platform, only being able to click to proceed or not to proceed with the various steps to get to the purchase. What at most they can do is to consult ⎯ if available ⎯ the reviews of other users who have already tried to purchase that product/service.
From here, we identify another important difference between, for example, Facebook commerce and a “traditional” e-commerce. In the first case, since the user is an active protagonist in the purchasing process, it also performs the function of promoting products, becoming a reference point for the community of potential buyers.
Indeed, those who do social commerce in Italy, as well as around the world, must keep this general rule of thumb in mind: positive comments from users telling about their experience and recommending the product have the power to give a huge boost to sales. Similarly, negative experience comments are capable of undoing any web marketing efforts to sell products online.
It thus becomes easy to see how having a good social commerce strategy at the foundation of one’s online business is critical. On the one hand, to build community loyalty by motivating them to participate in marketing efforts to spread product information to their friends, and on the other hand, to take care of them and act promptly in case of dissatisfaction… before it goes viral!
Social commerce and e-commerce: alternatives or integrated channels?
At this point you may be saying to yourself, “But then, who makes me open a traditional e-commerce, which, among other complexities, also requires high costs, extended timelines and constant maintenance, when I can easily and for free (!) open a social commerce, such as Facebook and Instagram Shop?”
The answer is “True, but only partially.” At present, social commerce cannot fully replace traditional e-commerce, for several reasons. The first, and most important, is that Facebook/Instagram Shops do not yet allow the user to complete the purchase (payment) internally, but upon clicking, the user is necessarily referred to an external endorsement, thus to an e-commerce or messaging channel.
Furthermore, while it is true that Facebook is a place where people can inform themselves about products and brands, it is also true that this social was created with the primary function of entertaining the user, offering them different stimuli such as videos, articles, and images with which to interact and entertain themselves. All of this creates interference and distraction within the buying process, which is not the case on an e-commerce platform with a well-designed UX, where the focus is exclusively on selling, avoiding distractions for the user at the time of the buying process.
Other important aspects ⎯ and very dear especially to advertisers! ⎯ are: first, all browsing metrics remain in the possession of the Social and not the brand, second, social commerce does not include the active user at all (the one looking for a product or service… who is also the one who has a better CR!), but is focused only on the display concept, thus more aimed at stimulating/attracting the user, more than converting him/her with a purchase.
Social commerce and e-commerce: a complete strategy!
So we see that, rather than talking about the substitutability of one shop for the other, social media and traditional e-commerce are closely related and should always work in extreme synergy: the former incentivize user interaction and help to drive quality traffic within the e-commerce, the latter accompany the user to the purchase through structured navigation.
In addition, having a product catalog on Facebook allows targeted retargeting campaigns to push users to purchase, automatically proposing to them the products for which they have shown interest on the e-commerce.
One of the most important entrepreneurial challenges, as well as a great marketing opportunity, has become precisely the integrated brand management between social networks and e-commerce, where social networks aim to stimulate consumers to interact with each other through opinions, comments, suggestions so that the same consumers can in turn become supporters of the company and products. On the other hand, e-commerce, benefiting from the positive effects of social and the traffic generated by clicks to products from the Shop, has the key role of actually closing the sale.
This is why Facebook Shop (and other social commerce) are not a substitute for a traditional e-commerce for the time being; rather, they are a powerful lever for expanding reach and strengthening consumer loyalty. They are definitely, therefore, a tool to be leveraged alongside traditional e-commerce to increase online sales.
