Social Commerce

What is social commerce?

With Millennial shoppers leading the charge and people of all ages spending hours each day on social platforms, brands that don’t have a social commerce strategy are missing out on on engaged, high-intent traffic.

Although social platforms began as a place for content consumption, over the last couple of years, they’ve morphed into the ideal space for product discovery. Users see their friends and influencers who they follow posting aspirational photos on Instagram featuring products they love; or they read about experiences at restaurants or vacation spots from friends on Facebook.

Since consumers are hyper-connected through social, posts like these serve as an intensified, incredibly fast, and overwhelmingly powerful form of social commerce. The consumers who come to your site from social have already gained familiarity with your brand on their own terms, making them primed for purchase. The trick is having content that is engaging enough to attract them in the first place.

How Social Commerce Works

Too many eCommerce stores misunderstand how to harness the power of social. Changing algorithms and a reduction of organic reach has led many to assume social isn’t selling. But this just isn’t true.

Social commerce does contribute to conversions, just maybe not in the way you think of. In other words, it’s not always direct, but that definitely does not mean that social doesn’t matter.

Social media is your number one way to reach new potential customers. No other marketing channel allows you to reach so many people.

In addition to boosting conversions, adding reviews helps multiply the power of social commerce by adding social proof to your marketing efforts.

1. Referrals are one of the fastest growing sources of traffic for eCommerce stores.
2. Social referrals drive word-of-mouth to attract valuable customers with higher lifetime value and less churn.
3. Authentic and verified reviews shared on social significantly increase brand trust.
4. Reviews shared as social referrals naturally target to reach customers in similar target audiences and demographics as current customers.

Why social commerce matters

Today’s shoppers are mobile, social and multi-tasking. You can no longer ask expect them to come to your site. Instead, you have to meet them where they are — and that is on social. Social commerce is the arena for building a brand community.

Part of becoming a brand that thrives at the same pace of the modern shopper is nurturing an online community that seeks you out on social for everything from product searches to purchase. User-generated content, like customer photos, videos, and reviews, allows you to relate to your customers and to post in a personal and authentic way. When your customers see people like them posting on your social pages, it grows the connection they have with your brand and it’s values.

Social commerce strategy with Yotpo

As commonplace as social platforms have become in our lives, we still use them primarily to communicate with friends and family. Keeping this in mind for every aspect of your social commerce strategy — from ads, to influencer posts, and bots — will allow you to communicate authentically with your customers and to build an engaged community based on trust and shared brand values.

Yotpo helps brands maximize the marketing potential of social commerce to find new customers, improve their online shopping experience, and grow online sales. With a suite of tools to leverage more out of your user-generated content, you can create an engaging and exciting customer experience for your shoppers that will keep them coming back.

Yotpo Ads

As effective as social is for product discovery, getting the right attention for your ads is a challenge. Millennials and other digital native users no longer trust brands or branded content. They are in control of their on-platform journey and are quick to ignore and unfollow brands that spam their feeds with ads.

Yotpo ads leverage reviews as content for your Facebook & Instagram ad campaigns, in order to blend into your shoppers’ feeds. Sharing ads with user-generated content — like customer photos and reviews —  gives branded ads the same appeal as genuine social posts, building trust with shoppers. It also allows your marketing efforts to stand out from the noise of the traditional ads that overcrowd the social space.

Not only that, but UGC in ads is also scalable across multiple channels, devices, and intent levels, which helps brands keep up with the pace of social media. For brands that sell non-utility items, user-generated content allows past customers to communicate the experience behind the product – which is the very essence of social commerce.

Traffic that comes from reviews posted to Twitter spend 35% more time on site than traffic coming from regular posts, and adding reviews to Facebook boosts time on site by 9.9%.

• Regular ads for Facebook and Instagram

Yotpo Ads for Facebook and Instagram helps business owners easily create beautiful and effective Facebook ads using reviews from Verified Buyers.

• Retargeting Ads

Yotpo’s retargeting ads help you promote relevant products to shoppers according to products they have already looked at on your website.

• Dynamic Ads

Yotpo’s dynamic Facebook ads for Facebook and Instagram show potential customers who have visited your site 5-star reviews for products they have seen on your website.

Social Push with AI

This feature lets you post your favorite reviews and customer photos to your business’ Facebook and Twitter pages. This enables you to show off 5 star reviews of your best products, or boost engagement with your brand. Since many of your followers are already your customers, this is a great way to build a brand community and let your customers speak for themselves.

Social Share

Social share with Yotpo allows shoppers to share their reviews of your products and site to Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter. Using this tool, customers’ pages turn into forums to advocate for your brand. Friends and followers can then click on the review and be taken right to your site. Social share harnesses the communal nature of social commerce, using your best customers’ endorsements as a catalyst to get more people to your store.