Social Selling e-commerce trend

Social networks influence a lot in purchase decisions, consumers use several channels to search for information about brands, find other customers' opinions, how to use products, among several other necessary information before purchasing a product or service.

As it is a channel that mixes all these needs, purchases made on social networks will grow from 22% to 34% in 2020, according to a study by NuvemCommerce. Thus, we can see it is a trend that is increasingly popular among consumers and brings many advantages to a brand's e-commerce. That's why retailers should seize the opportunities that these platforms offer to gain more visibility to their audience.

In this article, we will talk a bit about what Social Selling is and how companies are using its benefits in their selling strategy.

What is Social Selling?

Using social media to connect with potential customers, expand brand presence, engage leads, and sell more is what can be called Social Selling. It goes a little further than a marketing strategy for social networks, it is in short a new way of selling through a channel that was not previously exploited to sell, only to engage the public.

The idea is to create a channel where people can generate trust by interacting with the store and sharing opinions, evaluations, and experiences with the company, giving strength to the voice of the engaged community. Recent research shows that 49% of consumers trust the recommendations of influencers when making their purchase choices, a point that has been causing companies to increase their investments in influencer marketing.

These sales-oriented social media strategies reduce the friction that can exist in the discovery and consideration phase and consequently increase conversion rates and potential customer acquisition. According to a Linqia surveysurvey, 86% of businesses already use shopping links that allow consumers to move instantly from being inspired by social networks to actually making the purchase.

Even the major social networks already have tools to connect social proof promoted by influencers to a product catalog so that the customer has immediate access to purchase it.

The Advantages of Social Selling

Like most e-commerce trends, Social Selling has its own set of benefits. As a channel for your brand, Social Selling encompasses sales processes, marketing, customer service, product display, catalog updates, linking, and many other things. With planning and a good approach, your brand can enjoy the benefits of Social Selling. Some advantages are:

• Possibility to Generate authority Possibility to generate authority and trust for consumers through Social Proof;
• Makes the brand more human brandIt makes the brand more human, since social networks promote interaction between brand and customers;
• An open space for the customer to give and have access to opinions, evaluations, promoting the promoting the credibility of your brand;
• It serves as a serves as a channel for acquiring new customersSocial networks have more or less 3 billion active users worldwide. Moreover, these users spend an average of 3h30 daily.

The sum of these advantages consequently contributes to the increase of sales and the expansion of your e-commerce visibility.

Examples of Social Platform Tools for Social Selling

To be successful in your Social Selling strategy, you need to understand which platforms have adequate technical resources to support your brand in the process of developing your Social Selling.

The major social networks have already started to develop tools for Social Selling such as:

• Facebook Shopping;
• Instagram Shopping;
• Facebook Live Shopping;
• Tiktok Shopping;
• Youtube Live Shopping;
• Twitter Shopping;

It is important to remember that Social Selling is not just about putting products on these platforms and waiting for sales to happen. It requires strategies related to the customer experience.

Social networks must maintain a channel to add value, integrate operations, and build user loyalty by selling products and/or services on social networks to promote a brand and boost sales.

Now you know how social media is an important part of your customer's buying journey and you can use these channels to increase your brand authority and sell more.