Understanding Social Commerce

What is community retail?

The 21st Century is significantly evolving digital landscapes. This leads to consistent changes in how we as individuals connect and consume products and services. To keep up with changing times, it is crucial to understand the importance of community selling and the transformational impact it has had on the evolving trends within the online shopping journey.

In simple words, this concept can be understood as an organisational practice that focuses on leveraging elements of both digital media and components of e-commerce in order to enable a smooth and unique encounter for customers shopping online. Community retail approaches often tend to prioritize on the utilisation of different digital media tools or platforms in order to ensure that organisations not only have the ability to connect with their potential buyers but also note a rise in income revenue through showcasing their products and services. Thus, allowing you to leverage community trends and build a community fostered through online interactions with your e-commerce store, as well as make room for an enhanced shopping journey.

3 Tips to build your community led business

Tip 1 - Media Arsenal

Your journey as a digital commerce expert begins with identifying the right digital media platform. In order to have a successful community retail approach, understanding the unique selling points of each of the platforms is critical in order to understand the best fit for your organisation. These social platforms include, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Pinterest and many more.

Tip 2 - Harness the power of User Generated Content and Influencer Collaborations

The second step towards an effective digital commerce approach is understanding the importance of encouraging customers to post, tag, and share media from your site relevant to your brand.

Tip 3 - Analytical Optimisation

Maximise your success through data-driven insights. The final step is to develop an understanding of Key performance indicators in order to not only be able to analyse brand ROI based on implemented social commerce tactics but also use these analytics to make data-driven decisions in order to boost organisational revenue.

Social Commerce in Action

The current drawback with existing marketing approaches within the industry is the fact that they don't allow shoppers to engage directly with their sellers. Through successfully implemented digital commerce methods such as influencer marketing, creation and implementation of visually appealing content, etc., all have a immediate impact on the companies growth in relation to the relations they share with their customers. This, in turn, further leads to a significant growth in not only brand loyalty but also develops a sense of trust within the seller's ecosystem of buyers.

What are the benefits of community retail for shoppers

As mentioned above, digital commerce approaches when implemented the right way can have numerous impacts on your businesses efforts. Alongside a sense of reliance and brand loyalty, a trend is seen where a growth in community engagement between the consumer and the seller, positively impacts the organisational Return On Investment.

Reasons supporting this rise in Return On Investment are essentially due to the sole reason that digital commerce approaches lead to an additional immediate sales channel, reducing the friction on your site in the buying process through eliminating the need for consumers to shop on external platforms, thus growing the conversion rates significantly.

Top 2 social selling platforms

Instagram Shopping : Instagram is one of the most commonly used selling platforms for e-commerce stores. This unique feature allows for companies to showcase their product catalog directly on their digital profiles allowing businesses to promote content through which usesrs can directly interact with and make purchases. The features on this platform are inclusive of clickable labels on posts that allow users to view the details of the product and make purchases directly without having to leave the app. What makes instagram shopping stand out is the fact that brands cane seamlessly streamline the buying process in addition to using Instagram's algorithm to push your products to like minded users with the intention of increasing the chances of making a sale.

Tik-Tok Shopping: Thriving on UGC, Tik-tok too has a unique set of shopping features that businesses can leverage off. The most utilised feature on this platform is Tik-tok ads and hashtag challenges. Through the implementation of in-feed ads as well as branded hashtag challenges, users on tiktok can directly click on ads in order to visit the product page and buy products without having to find the product/company themselves on the internet.

Social Commerce Frequently Asked Questions

What is the importance of community retail?

With catalysts such as Covid-19, leading to significant changes, within the online shopping landscape, there is an unclear line drawn between digital media and the way e-commerce users consume products and services on these digital platforms. In order to adapt effectively, community retail creates room for a growth in buyers engagement and brand awareness through enhanced accessibility and convenience and community empowerment.

Case Study : Example of social commerce

In order to understand the specifics behind community commerce, it is important to review different case studies reflecting the impact it had on their real time product sales. Burberry is one of the few first movers to implement such an approach, this luxury fashion brand is known for the iconic impact its campaigns had on its sales, engagement, conversion boosts and brand visibility. Their key tactics revolved around two easy principles: Virtual runway shows and AR try on features.

Through live-streaming their fashion shows on social media, they reported a 20% growth in sales for the displayed collections while the interactive Augmented Reality strategy made room for a whooping 30% rise in their conversion rates.

The key take backs from this case study is that they implemented elements such as storytelling, technological innovation which allowed them to enhance their ROI through a boost in their global reach with the help of e-commerce through social media.

Tips to implement these strategies successfully

Optimisation

This is one of the most crucial strategies to keep in mind when trying to boost product sales. With all digital media platforms primarily accessed through mobile friendly platforms, it's essential to implement responsive features that can provide users with a seamless shopping experience that makes purchasing accessible through mobile phones.

Data Analytics

With the utilisation of community retail tools and strategies it is essential to ensure that implemented methods are analysed through the collection of data points, which can further be interpreted in order to constantly identify what works and what needs to be tweaked in order to further grow ROI without plateauing.

Leverage your consumer

Once a consumer purchases a product, organisations often lack the ability to turn that purchase into a marketing asset. When a shopper purchases a product from your website, other consumers and non consumers are often unaware of real-product experiences. Through leveraging off your consumers with the right digital media approaches, be it consumers posting videos, feedback on the product or sharing a promotional code, can significantly encourage a potential buyer to take action and purchase your products.

Impact on organisational Brand Loyalty:

Through engaging and interactive interactions created on digital media creates a consistent environment for communication, in turn strengthening brand affinity with loyal shoppers.

Growth in Trust

Through user curated content, and reviews non consumers develop a sense of trustworthiness which further stimulates a boost in transactions as non buyers now have the ability to make informed shopping decisions.

Boost in Customer Relation Management

Direct and personalised interactions through data analytics and focused advertising fosters a sense of community amongst customers even beyond the point of checkout.

Creating a unique social media experience for your customers

What is a social journey?

Now that we have an understanding of these ecommerce approaches, the next step is understanding the elements that create a unique social media experience for your audience. A community experience in simple words is understood as the unique engagement experience through digital media that is offered between customers and a brands products/services which is likely to boost the connect between user and brand. This idea encompasses the interactive and dynamic journey that people experience and can actively participate in.

A digital experience entails the following aspects:

Engagement through interaction

In order to further engage your target audience, create room for comments, and reviews of your products via digital media platforms and address any queries and feedback actively. This establishes an open line between you and your customers, allowing you to meet their demands more effectively.

Community Building

Community building is another KPI of focus when it comes to being successful with your approaches. As an organisation, when you nurture and foster a sense of belonging amongst individuals, they tend to relate to your brand as well as always make them feel like they are part of a larger picture through connecting with like-minded individuals.

Personalisation

When it comes to connecting with your ideal market segment, personalised content is more appealing and often has a positive impact on conversion rates. Additionally, this can be implemented in order to target new products to existing customers. Thus, increasing product discovery.

Exclusive offers and Rewards

Through personalised content and engagement with customers on digital platforms organisations can increase their interactions and profits through offering exclusive offers and discounts to recurring customers, in return boosting brand loyalty.

Feedback and its importance in shaping your approach

When it comes to shaping approach, planning and implementation are crucial; the backbone of a successful plan strongly relies on feedback. Through feedback mechanisms, not only do customers feel like they are part of a larger community, but at the same time establishes room for improvement in order to further personalise new approaches and successfully target a larger segment of their target audience.

Now that you understand the dynamics behind a successful strategy, Start by including these 5 tips below into your approach, and watch the tides turn.

Conclusion

In conclusion, community retail promotes a smooth blend between digital media and retail commerce. As we navigate this revolutionary landscape that is reshaping the way potential customers as well as existing buyers interact with your brand here are the key

Through the diversification of these digital platforms you as a retailer are able to shift away from its storefront and accelerate transactions through various apps. Additionally through successful harnessing of community generated content your brand is able to leave the traditional marketing efforts behind and instead tap into a community focused approach to enhance your organization's visibility and reach.

Through the successful implementation of these community driven approaches, not only is there an opportunity for significant growth in turnover and retained loyal shoppers but also leaves room for a dynamic and personalised shopping journey to sell products efficiently while discovering new buyers via these unique social networks.

‍