It’s true that connecting digital commerce with your social media makes for a successful combination. But why? Consumers are using social channels more than ever to engage with brands and most importantly, as a way to buy their products.

Integrating your eCommerce site with the social side of Magento can open your doors up to new opportunities. Venture into the basics of Magento Social and beyond to learn what’s in store for the future of social commerce.

How Technology Has Shaped Retail

As businesses explore new digital horizons, we’ve seen a decline in the importance of bricks-and-mortar stores, with an increase in the need for an online presence. Due to social usage expansion, online retailers are able to gain a competitive advantage when it comes to embracing the new features of social media. Here’s how.

Social sites aren’t just places to hang out anymore. Although the original functionality of social still exists, for example, posting funny videos, sending birthday wishes and updating your status, it’s also a way for users to interact with businesses.

Good To Know: According to a study, 86% of people follow brands on social media and 75% of them have purchased a product because they saw it on a social channel.

With social sites such as Facebook boasting a community of over 1.5 billion, for businesses, it’s a massive pool of prospective customers waiting to be converted. By implementing the “shop” feature, brands can swiftly transform their social profiles into digital storefronts. This gives customers ease of accessibility, browsing convenience and familiar styles of navigation, helping them to quickly buy products. By making the most of these features you can get ahead of your competitors and be sure to place your brand directly before eager buyers, who are ready to snap up your products.

Why Are Businesses Seeking Magento Social commerce?

Magento Social Commerce | Magento Commerce

Magento Social is exclusively a Magento 2 feature. It’s giving brands functionality to flourish and take their eCommerce sites to the next level, socially. This is without the complications that usually come with it. Let’s take a look at just a handful of benefits it’s brought to the popular social platform, Facebook.

1. Facebook-Specific Advantages

Together Magento Social commerce and Facebook has merged users into a world of super quick social shopping experiences. Here you can:

  • Easily set up a Facebook shop by directly integrating with Magento Commerce
  • Start selling through your Facebook profile with just two clicks
  • Create a branded social storefront that automatically generates the correct product information including pricing, photos and descriptions
  • Automatically update your product listings on a regular basis to consistently show the user relevant details
  • Highlight your latest products and promotions to give users the most current deals and ongoings in your store
  • Help attract more customers to like and share their favourite products by keeping your content fresh
  • Enable use of icons in your Facebook store to make cross-promoting products on various social feeds simple

Facebook Advantages of Magento Social Commerce | Magento Commerce

Not only this but you’re also able to create compelling and optimised paid adverts in real-time. By automatically taking the product information directly from your “Facebook shop” you speed up the process to get your paid content displayed at the time it matters.

2. Strengthen Your Brand Recognition

It’s critical that as a merchant, you’re promoting your products to the type of people most likely to be seeking them out. That’s why social media is a go-to channel for many retailers looking to increase their sales. Learning that having the monopoly on just one channel no longer seals the deal, brands are striving for multi-channel domination in order to get in front of the eyes of more potential buyers.

Did you know? 86 percent of social media users want to follow brands on social platforms.

Don’t let the opportunity to expand your reach and connect with more users surpass you as a consequence of ditching social commerce.

3. Easily Reach Your Target Audience

When taking your eCommerce store to social media you’ll first want to boost brand awareness by aiming to reach lots of (and perhaps generic) users. However, for established brands, your goal may alter slightly.

Instead of trying to increase noise around your products, you’ll want to maximise your conversions and secure more sales. Thankfully Magento social commerce allows you to utilise precision targeting tools that help you identify the people most interested in your products. This will help drive higher conversion rates and allow you to allocate spending towards your best-performing products and categories, as well as targeting specific groups of buyers.

Having created a buzz around your brand alongside converting the right users, it’s time to employ them as your very own marketers (not literally)!

4. Make Your Customers Brand Advocates

As Magento rightfully say, “Social evangelism is real”. We know that customer reviews can help encourage sales and in our eyes, social sharing is perhaps an easier, alternate way of recommending products to people.

Magento Social Commerce | Magento Commerce

Through social commerce, your goods can quickly be promoted by your buyers to improve reach and increase sales opportunities. By targeting Facebook Ads specifically to returning customers, you’re increasing the chance of your content journeying to new territories i.e. new customer profiles. That’s because loyal customers usually feel more inclined to share the great products they’ve bought with you.

Good To Know: Watch out for users who may have had a bad experience with you. Don’t think that because they didn’t like your products, they won’t turn to social sharing.

Sometimes, users will leap at the chance to “throw shade” on your brand. Monitor all shares and reviews to timely resolve any issues.

At The End Of The Day…

eCommerce needs to be convenient for customers by making purchasing and sharing products a quick, continuous process. Merchants that invest in delivering simple and integrated social commerce experiences will then no doubt achieve success.

From up-to-date product listings and flexible targeted advertisements to impactful sharing, Magento Social helps merchants turn their social media initiatives into an engine for growth.” – Magento

To find out more, check out this Magento Social section.