Platforms for social media are undergoing a major transformation.
They’re no longer only a site where you may connect with your friends and family. Everyone has become a maker because to TikTok. Snapchat has expanded its reach beyond teenagers to include people of all ages and enterprises. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri confirmed in an Instagram Live video earlier this year that the company is shifting its focus away from being everyone’s favorite photo-sharing app and toward creators, video, messaging, and shopping.
The shifts we’re witnessing across the social media stratosphere are reflected in Mosseri’s statements: Users are increasingly turning to social apps for news, entertainment, and, more recently, purchasing.
The capacity to shop via social networks, known as social commerce, is fast expanding. B2C marketers and e-commerce teams are quickly realizing that connecting their social commerce initiatives to the full gamut of social marketing campaigns yields the best results. What is the use of establishing an Instagram Shop if you can’t get people to visit it?
Influencers and content creators play an important role in any social commerce strategy since they provide maximum awareness for your brand and items while also acting as a natural gateway to your online store.
Consumers can find things merely by looking at content uploaded by an influencer they follow, thanks to social commerce technologies. It’s as simple as looking, clicking, and buying. We live in a world where products find us rather than the other way around – the essence of effective marketing — and influencers make it even simpler.
What is causing the rise of influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is increasingly being used by brands as part of their social commerce strategy to expand their social media audiences and provide authenticity, resulting in higher engagement, brand exposure, and measurable ROI. In fact, the value of influencer marketing more than doubled between 2019 and 2021, rising from $6.5 billion to $13.8 billion. And as the need for content providers grows, that number will only increase.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, firms were obliged to adapt their marketing tactics at breakneck speed. As brick-and-mortar businesses lose a majority of their foot traffic overnight, digital transformation had become a top concern. To meet the pandemic’s huge hurdles, corporations raised their social media marketing budgets and reevaluated their influencer marketing initiatives.
With more people spending more time online, influencer marketing has become a powerful tool for getting the correct message to the right people in the shortest amount of time. According to a GlobalWebIndex poll conducted in July 2020, 96 percent of customers who follow influencers stated they engaged with creators more or less than before the coronavirus outbreak.
Generation Z will keep driving celebrity endorsement, especially as their purchasing power grows, because younger customers are difficult to attain through traditional media channels. According to current statistics, 40% of Gen Z and millennials already have purchased something while viewing a livestream on a social media platform.
Influencer marketing has a reputation for being difficult to track, despite its effectiveness. The excellent thing is that this form of promotion has become more statistical than ever before, allowing firms to evaluate their success with more precision. Advanced social media management solutions may now provide extensive performance views to assist marketers assess the financial effect of their cooperation.
How do you find the right influencer?
It’s no wonder that celebrity endorsement has become a popular way for companies to expand their online presence and brand. On social media, the appropriate influencers may help brands build genuine relationships with critical audiences and expand a company’s reach into new client categories.
According to a Mediakix poll, 89 percent of marketers believe influencer marketing has a greater or comparable ROI than other channels. You can’t simply contact Kylie Jenner in the hopes of gaining access to her 259 million Instagram followers.
Bigger isn’t necessarily better when it comes to influencer marketing strategies. When compared to macroinfluencers, microinfluencers have a 60 percent higher engagement rate. Microinfluencers also have a better conversion rate of over 20%, which might help a brand’s e-commerce sales.
Because consumers trust the individual, they are more inclined to remark and participate, as well as click the “buy” button, the interaction and converting of a microinfluencer’s following are often higher. According to one study, nanoinfluencers’ engagement rates on Instagram were ten times higher than those of mega- and macroinfluencers.
Making influencers a backbone of your strategy
Live commerce, often known as livestream buying, incorporates product purchasing into a live broadcast via a chat feature or response buttons. It allows for audience participation and conversation, as well as providing a platform for influencers to showcase the product in a live video setting. Customers will have a new and interesting shopping experience with a live broadcast since it provides closeness and interactivity.
Because people trust other individuals more than businesses, livestreamed shopping is an ideal way to take advantage of an influencer connection. According to a Facebook poll, about a quarter of respondents want to learn about new items through a livestream showcasing an influencer or business representative.
Livestream shopping may increase your content’s visibility, engagement rates, and other crucial analytics measures, as well as drive more purchases. For example, Tommy Hilfiger recently expanded its livestream operation to Europe and North America after seeing success in China, where one broadcast reportedly drew a 14-million-strong audience and sold 1,300 sweatshirts in two minutes.
In May, Facebook introduced “Live Shopping Fridays,” which featured shoppable live broadcasts from brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, and Sephora. Shoppers may find things, ask real-time questions about them, and make purchases all without leaving Facebook.
Using a live shopping event to promote your product or products is a vital part of any e-commerce strategy, and it will only becoming more significant as the social commerce market increases. Inviting someone to organize an event with a selected catalogue of their favorite items is one way to achieve it. Another option is to organize a televised interview with a creative in which they discuss how they tackle a specific problem while showcasing your product.
Begin your streaming shopping adventure
Users are not merely filling up the grocery cart with livestream shopping; they are participating in an experience that they would not be able to enjoy in a typical retail store.
Because of its enormous success in China, there are a few essential takeaways for making the livestream shopping experience unique. In China, Sephora, for example, has maintained its omnichannel marketing strategy. Sephora’s WeChat mini-program staged a livestreaming event on Feb. 5 to celebrate the Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day, an exclusive promotion to interact with Chinese beauty buyers.
Sephora is embracing livestreaming not only as a sales channel, but also as a way to communicate with clients in a more personal and direct way. Beauty assistants can advise consumers in selecting the best products for them, and viewers can be rewarded for sharing the broadcast link with their peers and communities.
Collaborating with an influencer or an outside host to manage your livestream event can also provide new viewpoints and enhance audience numbers. By answering questions from your audience during the livestream, you can make them feel important and heard.
Asking questions to your audience, on the other hand, can boost engagement. In some ways, communicating with your viewers encourages them to attend more of your live events. Brands can communicate directly with their customers in true and meaningful ways using livestreaming that other mediums cannot.
The food that was delivered
Using influencer marketing in your social commerce approach is critical to accomplishing your social media marketing goals, regardless of your sector or region. Only 4% of people trust marketing and advertising strategies, therefore being able to communicate with your audience through a reliable source is a crucial marketing strategy. You may establish a successful marketing plan while meeting your e-commerce goals by combining your social commerce and influencer marketing efforts.
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