Social commerce: Navigating a $1.6 trillion trend

Social platforms – used in the past for keeping track of family and watching funny cat videos – have now evolved beyond connection and communication into powerful e-commerce tools. And forward-thinking brands are leveraging the immense potential of these platforms. 

This strategic shift, known as social commerce, was predicted by Deloitte Insights to surpass $1 trillion in 2023. Looking towards 2024, Oberlo estimates it will increase to $1.6 trillion and exceed the $2 trillion mark by 2025. 

Locate2u News looks at the data and explores how brands can cash in on a share of the social commerce sphere. 

Social commerce fact sheet

According to Deloitte Insights, “social commerce is laying the groundwork for a broader shoppable media landscape.” What does it mean? 

The social media feeds you see online now have the potential to grow into a digital storefront. But far be it from netizens just ‘virtual window shopping,’ they can actively engage and make purchases directly through these platforms. 

In November, Meta and Amazon already saw the potential this holds. They partnered to combine Amazon’s comprehensive e-commerce platform with Meta’s extensive social network reach to create a new in-app shopping experience.

Since there were five billion social media users worldwide in 2023, you can see how a social commerce strategy would benefit your business. Kelly Moran, Deloitte Digital’s sales and delivery leader in commerce and content platforms, says your winning strategy only needs three steps: 

• Embrace different social media platforms.
• Collaborate with social creators and influences. 
• Measure your strategy’s impact, but respect privacy. 

Embracing social commerce platform diversity

It might seem overwhelming to embrace platform diversity; there are hundreds of different services and apps. Instead, focus on the top six – Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok. 

The key, however, is to adapt content to the specific platform. Moran explains: “Content needs to reflect your brand ethos and campaign strategy while being flexible enough to embrace the distinctive tone and style of each platform.”

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What works on one platform may not work on another. A lengthy explainer article might work on one site, while the audience of another app prefers concise, 320-character limit content. 

Collaborating with creators

‘Content creators’ and ‘influencers’ aren’t the dirty words you were likely led to believe. Instead of seeing them as ‘influencer,’ think of them as invaluable partners to help build authentic engagement and brand presence. 

Depending on their social platform of choice, they might even have better insights as to what type of content works and what doesn’t. (Spoiler alert: they definitely have a better grasp of it.) 

How? 

Moran suggests publishing clear guidelines for creators. List your expectations and requirements, too. Before partnering with a creator, you also need to understand what your customers care about and how they spend their time on social media. 

Measuring impact while respecting privacy

Moran says: “Content only matters if it resonates with customers.” It’s unfortunately hard to quantify social commerce sales, and it’s becoming more challenging as platforms implement privacy regulations. Many consumers can opt-out of data sharing. 

“That’s why forward-thinking brands are now embracing agile, holistic measurement approaches like granular media mix modeling (granular MMM) that honor consumer privacy.” 

This can be done by “using a wider array of data types to correlate overall spending and impressions to sales and other actions, using artificial intelligence,” Moran says. 

Follow these three steps, and “you’re well on the way to ‘likes’ and, more important, to sustained engagement with customers.”

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