A Marketer’s Guide to Social Commerce

The social commerce landscape is relatively new and still evolving, but it’s easy to see what makes it so enticing for online sellers. However, its potential is accompanied by pitfalls, and the brands that stand out most will be the ones to tweak their strategies to account for nuance, new trends, or price competition from marketplaces like Temu, Shein, and TikTok Shop.

Perks of Selling on Social

Social channels hold immense potential in reaching new audience demographics, with algorithms showing users the content they’re most likely to be interested in. Paid promotion can further correlate a user’s viewing habits with the right products, using data on behaviors to identify interests and delineate customer personas.

These channels also give brands an ability to tailor ad content to specific platforms, whether image, video or text-based. This leaves room for both creativity and consistency, with the capacity to share the same brand and product messages in different ways.

Increased control over promotional costs is another benefit, giving brands the ability to focus on organic content and build a natural audience. Social platforms also allow for third-party data collection, as dashboards track visibility, conversions, and paid ad performance, supplementing owned data and giving further insights into how to adjust selling strategies.

Finally, with platforms like TikTok often the birthplace of new trends and influencers, social presence is an ideal way for brands to stay attuned to relevant changes and capitalize on them. Organic social posts can be turned around quickly in response, while strategic influencer or ambassador partnerships can forge more personal buying relationships with the end consumer.

Pitfalls to Be Aware of

Despite clear benefits, new channels may also give consumers pause for security reasons. Brand imitation and bots are a rising issue on X (formerly Twitter), as advertisers continue to pull promotion, leading to risks around trust and reputation. Users may also be hesitant to put personal or payment information into checkout pages they don’t typically engage with.

Conversely, there’s a downside to performance being sensitive to algorithms, and brands don’t have perfect clarity when it comes to what drives visibility on third-party platforms. A social-heavy selling strategy therefore cedes a level of control that not all brands will be comfortable with.

The potential of social commerce is still not fully understood either, and impression statistics don’t tell the whole story. These platforms are dynamic, and the way to advertise will change as new iterations ebb and flow in popularity. Take TikTok’s emergence: while text- or image-based platforms had historically been the most popular, TikTok forced a shift to video, with other social apps then following suit.

Lastly, users have short attention spans and aren’t necessarily looking to shop when they engage with social platforms. This intuitively makes the selling proposition more difficult. A consumer who visits an online store is going there to shop or at least browse, while they may swipe past a social ad without a second thought. This is another reason why impression stats are misleading, as they don’t indicate intent.

How to Get the Most Out of Social Commerce

When it comes to maximizing social commerce, knowledge of the audience goes a long way. Targeting is the key to any type of marketing, but in a social setting there’s the added complexity of aligning customer demographics with behaviors. An intimate knowledge of the core customer base goes a long way in informing that, and brands can expect missteps if they’re simply guessing.

Social selling also empowers brands to stay attuned to new trends and understand the changing marketplace. A strong, agile presence shows intentionality in the approach to product marketing and aligns a brand with the content most likely to appear on potential customers’ feeds.

Brands would also be wise to reduce friction where possible by taking the appropriate steps to verify accounts (with X/Twitter as a notable exception due to its new check system) and alleviate fears of brand impersonation. This should be accompanied by giving users paths to the brand website with links in profile bios just in case they’re uncomfortable checking out via social.

All of these considerations, both good and bad, underscore the importance of a brand having its own direct-to-consumer experience. Prioritizing owned channels and supplementing them with third-party options like social commerce represents a vote of confidence in a business’s own knowledge of its customers and streamlines the overall purchase ecosystem.

Ted Rogers is the chief marketing officer at Digital River, an experienced global commerce enabler directly connecting brands and buyers.