You’ve probably heard the conventional wisdom: For businesses, a social media presence is like a storefront, a virtual representation of your brand, and a place where you can engage potential customers and shape how they view your brand.
One thing social media hasn’t been in the past? A point-of-sale. No matter how many likes, comments, and shares your post garnered, no matter how devotedly engaged your audience or how popular your content, a customer would ultimately have to navigate somewhere else to make an actual purchase, such as to your website or a store.
Although recent research has found that 78% of consumers are more willing to buy from a brand after a positive experience on social media, the path from Point A to Point B to point-of-sale can often be slightly disjointed. And any additional friction along a buyer journey is another chance for that potential customer to change their mind.
But that’s all starting to change with the rise of social commerce.
Thanks to two new integrations recently unveiled by Sprout Social, brands now have powerful, easy, and scalable tools to turn their social media from an awareness channel to a direct driver of revenue.
Read on to learn more about how you can take advantage of this opportunity and accelerate your business growth.
How Sprout’s New Social Commerce Solutions Will Grow Your Business
What Is Social Commerce, and How Does It Work?
Social commerce, or the process of engaging online customers to shop directly through social media platforms, is the fastest-growing segment of e-commerce. In fact, forecasts indicate that social commerce will triple the growth of traditional e-commerce by 2025, with U.S. sales expected to reach $45.74 billion in 2022 alone.
So what does this mean for your brand? If you’re not utilizing social media to drive added revenue, it’s time to start.
Today’s consumers expect uncomplicated, seamless digital experiences, and in a social media landscape increasingly cluttered with distractions, it benefits businesses to make the purchase process as quick and easy as possible.
That’s where social commerce comes in. By selling products directly through social media, instead of requiring buyers to navigate elsewhere, retailers can simplify the process and boost sales essentially turning their social channels into sales channels.
That’s a critical distinction between social commerce and e-commerce in general — simplicity. A dedicated e-commerce platform, like Amazon, may use social media as a top-of-funnel tactic to convince consumers to visit their online store. On the other hand, social commerce eliminates the extra steps by allowing the user to complete their transaction right then and there on the social media platform without having to navigate anywhere else
With global users spending over a third of their daily internet usage time on social media, it’s clear: Social media is where your customers are. Furthermore, most social media platforms are built to be mobile-friendly, making them incredibly convenient places to reach potential customers.
How Does Sprout Social Integrate for Social Commerce?
Sprout Social, the industry-leading social media management software and Sociality Squared’s go-to, recently announced two new, first-of-their-kind integrations with social commerce leaders Shopify and Facebook Shops.
These integrations enable brands to leverage Sprout’s management and reporting capabilities and other CRM and help desk integrations to deepen and streamline transactions, interactions, and insights.
It is also worth noting that this integration builds on existing Sprout functionality, such as the ability to create Instagram Product Tags through Sprout’s publishing tool. This is especially useful considering that Instagram is becoming more and more of a shopping destination.
According to a recent Instagram Trends Research Study, 44% of survey respondents use Instagram to shop weekly, using features like Product Tags, and about 1 in 2 people surveyed have used the platform to discover new brands, products, or services.
With Shopify and Facebook Shops added to your social profiles through Sprout, you can access a rich toolbox of functionality. For example, you can:
- Create shoppable content and direct product links
- Get immediate customer context, such as order history and details, conversation history, and more — all in one place so you can deliver tailored assistance.
- Easily retrieve tracking or fulfillment information to provide accurate information to customers directly from Sprout.
- Validate ROI by measuring and matching purchases to the social posts that drove those sales.
- Drive purchases with integrated catalogs
- Unify your social media and e-commerce workflows within Sprout Social
Both new integrations eliminate the need to juggle multiple tools to find the information you need. From product details and shipping status to customer information and social post performance analytics, Sprout brings it all together in one place to improve ease of use, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.
Taken in combination with Sprout’s industry leadership and robust dashboard of publishing, scheduling, reporting, listening, and analytics features, it’s easy to see how these new integrations provide a valuable benefit to any brand that sells products or services online.
Although it is comparatively new and still burgeoning at this time, social commerce is not just a trend. Capitalizing on this model now can transform your business, increase your bottom line, and position your brand at the front of the next wave of retail evolution.
As a Sprout Social Agency Partner, Sociality Squared can help you harness this powerful and comprehensive suite of social media management tools to achieve measurable, meaningful results for your business.
Connect with us here to discover more today.
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