Not difficult to see that the social media is growing very fast and becoming increasingly popular. Facebook, one of the most popular social networks has millions of users daily. That’s the reason why today, more and more businesses who use social media to promote their brand/products or even to selling products.
Some big social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc… have been added more features to optimize for advertising and sales. Therefore there was a new concept was born “Social Commerce” which define for integrating e-commerce into the social media platforms.
In this article, we will learn about how ecommerce businesses can leverage the power of social media. Some specific social media platforms which mentioned in this article are: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Youtube. We will discover what are the opportunities, the targets, availability and limitations of them.
Facebook has been testing a range of social commerce integrations since 2010, when select retailers including JCPenney tested Facebook store pages. While these tests were abandoned due to low sales volume, Facebook believes that it has since cracked the mobile advertising code – generating $10 billion in mobile ad revenue in the pas year. According to Facebook, therein lies the opportunity for brands.
The latest social commerce offerings from Facebook include a dedicated shopping feed and immersive ads.
Opportunity
Facebook is the most popular app for the average smartphone user, accounting for 10% of total usage time, according to a Forrester Survey.
According to BI Intelligence, Facebook accounts for 50% of all social referals and 64% of total social revenue.
Share of time spent on social apps by U.S smartphone owners.
Targeting
Thank to its huge inventory of data, Facebook arguably has the most powerful targeting of any social network.
Beyond demographic and location data, users can be targeted based on purchasing behavior and life events.
Facebook also offers “custom audiences” based on external contact lists (including email databases).
Availability
Shopping feeds will present users with a feed of products that retailers have chosen to highlight on their pages. Feeds are personalized based on things like interests, liked pages and connections.
Immersive ads, called “Canvas”, allow advertisers to show users interactive, full-screen product ads. Canvas can be used to explore product size and style variants before moving users to the vendor site to complete their transaction. The ads are intended to reduce friction on mobile between browsing and buying.
Both features are only being tested by select advertisers and shown to a small number of Facebook users.
Limitations
As both features are only in a testing phase, they may never become available to smaller retailers.
Twitter has had limited success to date in rolling out social shopping – including Amazon Cart integration and a partnership with American Express. Twitter launched a buy button in 2014, and in summer of 2015 added product collections from brands in influencers. Early collections included Nike’s “Lebron Elite Collection” and a shop for The Ellen Show.
Opportunity
Twitter users have an even more favorable demographic breakdown than typical social shoppers.
Targeting
Users can be targeted by username, keyword groups, interests and geolocation.
Availability
Buyalbe pins are available to companies working with specific ecommerce engines such as: Bigcommerce, demandware, shopify. Payment is made on Twitter via Stripe.
Limitations
Buy buttons are only available to U.S retailers.
Pinterest rolled out “Buyable Pins” in June of 2015, where a blue “Buy It” button can be clicked to buy an item directly via Pinterest. Payment is made via Apple Pay for a credit card stored on a user’s Pinterest account.
Opportunity
Pinterest has around 100 million users, including 42% of all adult female internet users in U.S.
93% of Pinterest users use the platform to research purchases, and 87% have purchased an item because of Pinterest.
Shopify has reported that the conversion rates for buyable pins are 2x higher than those for other pins.
Targeting
Users can discover pins either through traditional text search, or Pinterest’s newly launched visual search feature.
Availability
Buyalbe pins are available to companies working with specific ecommerce engines such as: bigcommerce, magento, demanware, shopify and IBM commerce. Pinterest claimed to have around 30 million buyable pins at launch, from brands including Macy’s, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. That has since doubled to 60 million.
Limitations
Buyalbe pins only are available in the U.S on Iphone and Ipad.
With the launch of its new API in summer 2015, Instagram added direct-response functionality for certain advertisements. Buttons can prompt users to “show now”, “learn more” and “download now” (in the case of advertising for apps).
Opportunity
Instagram reached 400 million monthly active users in September, surpassing Twitter in the process.
Instagram is projected to reach 33.6% market penetration among U.S internet users by 2019.
A Forrester study found that fan engagement rates on Instagram were 58% and 120x higher than on Facebook and Twitter, respectively.
Targeting
Advertisers are able to target users not only based on demographic information, but also through Facebook data.
Availability
Instagram ads are only available to select brands. To date, brands including Disney, Electronic Arts, The Gap and Taco Bell have run Instagram ad campaigns. However, Instagram has said it plans to bring advertising to smaller brands soon.
Limitations
Ads keep users within the Instagram ecosystem by opening a mini-browser within the app. Brands like The Gap use third-party services including Like2Buy to drive users to its website.
YouTube began rolling out dynamic ads in TrueView pre-roll videos in May of 2015. The ads can display products related to the content of the video being viewed.
Opportunity
According to Google, in 2015 product review videos jumped 50% compared to 2014.
Wayfair found that revenue per impression tripled compared to past campaigns.
Sephora saw an average view time of nearly two minutes, 80% lift in consideration and 54% lift in ad recall.
Targeting
Products are dynamically added to in-stream videos based on demographic and contextual information also can be used for remarketing.
Availability
Available to AdWords advertisers via Google Merchant Center
Limitations
The rollout of cards also led Youtube to change how it charges advertisers for TrueView ads. If people click on any card elements, Youtube will charge the advertiser – even if they choose to skip the ad after doing so. Previously, marketers have only had to pay if people watched their full ad, or at least 30 seconds of a longer video.
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