If you are a digital marketer, a social media manager, or simply a brand owner! We’re sure that you have been battling with other rivals and other brands for your social media presence, as we all know how social media is crucial for promoting and advertising. Every brand online has been battling digital for their presence in this digital market regardless of what business they are into already, nonetheless of several advertisement mediums that there are to date.
Be it engagements, likes, exposure, or competitive analyses, all this information are necessary to understand where your brand is placed in the digital market. Every digital market or brand owner realizes that social media and social media campaigns are the most effective and the best means to reach out to their targeted audiences. Hence to get the most out of this digital competition, a brand must observe and analyze what rivals are doing and make the appropriate adjustments and improvements.
By learning digital marketing you can build your eCommerce brand on any social media platforms easily!
If you haven’t looked into the numerous advantages of social media platforms for eCommerce businesses, you’re missing out on valuable clients, income, and sales. Effective sales and communication have always resulted in appealing to valuable customers to stay loyal to your brand in the future, and social media platforms help a brand in generating fresh leads and pushing its intended audiences to check and tick all the boxes in the offers brand provides. Of course, this takes a lot of effort, dedication, and an effective social media strategy to gain this on a regular basis.
So it is obvious to assume that the eCommerce sector has been flourishing lately, as now more and more users and customers are being attracted due to recommendations (and also after the covid pandemic). At the very same time, the fun fact is that every brand, be it a small business, a reputed brand, or a newly established firm, all are now online and trying to advertise and promote themselves.
Whether you’re a well-established eCommerce behemoth or a fledgling startup, social media networks are an excellent method to expand your brand. Hence, for eCommerce store owners, becoming digital and digitally competitive is a must to survive this cut-throat competition in the market.
In this comprehensive article, we will learn the best social media platforms for eCommerce are the best with a few basics and fundamentals that are necessary for the same.
So let’s get into it!
What Are Social Media Platforms?
As the name implies, social media platforms are nothing but a digital community wherein people with their distinctive and similar ideas, thoughts, opinions, and information come and share them with others. It acts as a virtual sense of belonging for people to stay updated about the outer world. As of 2021, there were more than 4.5 billion people on social media platforms (we will get into the crucial statistics later in this article). Social media platforms are totally internet based and require digital devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets to be operated. People generally here come ahead and like, share, react and comment on several contents such as pictures, captions, and videos.
Social media platforms in today’s time have become the first source of news and awareness about the other international territories. These platforms, at the same time, are the best digital marketplace places for customers and clients. Reputed and small brands now provide their products and services via several social media platforms available. Digital marketers and social media managers create and develop an effective social media strategy, which is later executed on social media platforms in order to retain their existing customers, reach their segments of the audience, and generate fresh leads.
Users like me and you utilize social media platforms to communicate and share our thoughts with friends and families. We take it as our second world wherein we are all connected constantly, 24/7. Most of the people out there use social media to create networking for job purposes and locate theirs with their same interests and preferences.
Reputed brands, such as Digital Scholar, utilize social media platforms for advertising, promoting, and retaining their customers. Such brands take social media platforms to interact and discover new customers, increase their engagements and sales, analyze the market and consumer behaviour, and perform better as compared to their rivals in this digital market.
Benefits of Social Media Platforms for eCommerce
Here are the 7 benefits of social media platforms for eCommerce,
1. You Can Curate & Develop Your Brand
Being active and present on social media is the most effective way to increase your brand’s loyalty. Brands who actively most and promote their products and services on social media platforms are likely to retain better customers and maintain/build their brand’s credibility. With social media platforms, you display your brand’s transparency in front of your customers, and this itself increases leads.
As customers start getting more familiar with your brand and get habituated with your online presence, you as a brand stay in their minds for future requirements. The best way here is they make use of both paid and organic content to make sure you are always a step ahead of your rivals. The best content receives the most interactions and engagements – And this is all you need.
2. You Reach Out to a Vast Number of People
If there are more than 4.5 billion users out there on social media platforms, it is obvious that the eCommerce sector will reach and connect to a vast number of users and customers. For your social media campaigns and strategies, social media platforms are one of the most effective ways to reach out to your targeted audience.
Especially after the covid-19 pandemic, people have stopped shopping in the old and traditional way. Customers and clients now have more faith and confidence in brands operating and staying active on social media platforms. As per our research, Facebook and Instagram have been the most chosen platforms for shopping and customer service.
Reaching a vast number of users and customers is what the eCommerce sector wants. It has become a quick and cost-efficient method to gain new leads and reach out to new segments of audiences.
3. Social Media Platforms Provide You With Paid Advertisements
For newly established brands and businesses, growing fast and gaining leads will always be a goal to increase their brand’s awareness and image. And being on social media is the best place to be offered paid advertisements to boost your sales and interactions. Organic postings are a must and the best way to gain followers and customers organically. But at the same time, this might not be the goal for a firm that is newly established.
Every social media platform offers its own paid advertisements, which will help you reach out to large segments of audiences. By using paid advertisements, you are advertising your products and services 24/7 to customers to have unaware of your firm’s existence. Paid advertisements on social media offer you to customize your advertisement according to your budget and decide what sort of audiences you want your advertisements to reach. This becomes the best way for a firm to broaden its reach and generate quality leads and engagements.
4. You Virtually Touch Your Audiences
Customers now have raised their expectations for brands and companies online. They want to be offered the right thing at the very same time they need it. Social media platforms enable you and your eCommerce sector to directly communicate and touch your customer’s buying behaviour. This can be a lot fruitful if done right.
Social media platforms give you a better understanding of your audiences. As you are always connected to them, you gain a thorough understanding of what they want and how they want. This teaches you to offer them what they are expecting. You make changes and customize the content to their preferences, which in return will increase your interactions and engagements. It is always very necessary to know what people think about your brand. Maintaining a brand’s image is a must for every brand wanting to be successful in this digital market. With social media platform, unlike traditional marketing, you can gain better insights and knowledge about what customers and people think about your brand. This also helps you to work on your content strategy and alter their beliefs and image for your brand.
By staying directly connected to your audiences, you offer the best customer service. A brand can understand the problems faced by the customers faster and resolve what they are struggling with. This increases customer satisfaction and your brand’s credibility to be available for their audiences 24/7.
5. You Have The Ability To Produce Natural Content
One of the benefits that social media platforms give you as a brand is that you have the ability to post the best and most effective content on social media for FREE! This indeed enables you to interact with your targeted audiences and quality prospects without spending a huge amount of money.
Posting natural and organic content is the best way for a brand to stay connected to its audiences via social media platforms. This is the best way to perform well as compared to your other rivals and offers what’s needed for your customers. Be it images, videos, or any type of other content, you can make sure of all these on social media in a way that increases your interactions and followers.
The best example here is zomato’s Instagram account. Their witty and humorous posts excite their customers. People share their posts on their stories and wait for them to come up with something more interesting. This is how a brand competes and performs better as compared to other rivals.
6. You Can Increase Traffic To Your Website
Of course. This benefit goes without saying. Whenever a brand has a huge number of people following them on social media platforms, it works as a catalyst for driving traffic to your website. Brands may upload their links in their posts or bio and expect your traffic to increase from time to time.
By providing great offers, you can convince your targeted customers to reach your website for more information as they may learn more about your products and services, and tempt them to buy. This always helps in increasing sales and overall return on investment (ROI)
7. Social Media Platforms Help You Analyze Your Performance
Social media offers the best advantage of examining one’s performance for brands out there. For example, Instagram helps you learn about your interactions, engagements, and total reach per post. This is very essential as a brand can understand if they are performing well as compared to their rivals or not.
By understanding and analyzing your performance on social media, you as a brand can rework or revise your current social media strategy and modify it with whatever requirements are presently necessary. Brands can control the sort of audiences they want their products and services to be exposed to, and understand the necessary analytics such as impressions, conversations, and clicks.
Now that we have understood what social media platforms and their several in-depth benefits for eCommerce are, let us now dive into the crucial part of this article – Which Social Media Platforms Are The Best for eCommerce?
Which Social Media Platforms for eCommerce Are The Best?
After the covid-19 pandemic, eCommerce has been the fastest developing segment in this digital market. Consumers now prefer to buy things online. Online and eCommerce shopping being easy and quick, this sector has seen high growth in the past couple of years. As these sectors are online and active, they provide a 24/7 service of providing products and customer assistance.
Below mentioned are the social media platforms best for eCommerce;
1. Facebook
We’re certain that you surely have a Facebook account or might have multiple Facebook accounts once in your lifetime. Be it friends, families, or relatives. Facebook had everybody we knew.
There are several business sectors, such as entertainment, eCommerce, consumer goods and services, financial services, gaming, and retail are all popularly posted and promoted on their respective Facebook accounts and pages. Facebook is seen among the best social media platforms to encounter interaction and engagement. It is indeed a fact that if you wish your audience to take action on your posts, Facebook is the best place to achieve that.
As an eCommerce business, it is a prerequisite for you to open a Facebook business page if you don’t have one. Facebook can help you with both organic posts and paid posts. If you are a newly established eCommerce business, we recommend you start posting your product photographs, offers, sales announcements, contests, and intriguing content on your website. You could use both paid advertisements to reach out to a vast number of audience, and post organically to maintain your brand’s credibility. Make sure you post high-quality content only.
Facebook can result if one of the most powerful and effective marketing strategies for your eCommerce business. Facebook ads are pretty much powerful and have the potential to generate new leads and engagements. In reality, Facebook offers over 500 distinct customer targeting possibilities and a wide range of suitable ad layouts for your brand
It has been observed that visual materials and posts on Facebook reach and excite wider audiences as they perform the best when compared to text-only posts. Hence try posting photographs and images that are of high quality and of relevance. This is the most terrific and effective way for your eCommerce business to showcase the highlights of your products and gain better customers.
Owners: Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes
Launch: 2004
Revenue: $86 billion (2022)
A Few Facebook Statistics
- The total number of Facebook users (monthly active users) is 2.936 billion (April 2022)
- 1.960 billion people use Facebook on a daily basis (DAU) (April 2022)
- 67 percent of Facebook’s monthly active users log in every day (April 2022)
- The global advertising audience of Facebook is 2.141 billion people* (April 2022)
- The worldwide advertising audience on Facebook is 72.9 percent of the platform’s overall active user population (April 2022)
- 119.0 million users between the ages of 13 and 17 (5.6 percent of the entire Facebook ad audience)
- Users aged 18 to 24 account for 481.1 million users (22.4 percent of Facebook’s overall ad audience).
- Users aged 25 to 34 account for 643.2 million users (30.1 percent of Facebook’s overall ad audience).
- 401.5 million users between the ages of 35 and 44 (18.7 percent of Facebook’s overall ad audience)
- Users aged 45 to 54 account for 237.0 million users (11.0 percent of Facebook’s overall ad audience).
2. Instagram
Be it influencers, products, consumer goods, or instructors, Instagram is the best digital marketplace to advertise and promote your eCommerce business. Since the inception of their shoppable posts, product and consumer-based products have seen an overall increase in their return on investment (ROI). Everyone is on Instagram, whether it’s well-known brands and enterprises, well-known influencers, freshly created company owners, or friends and family.
Instagram content often includes stunning photography, stunning aesthetics, one-of-a-kind crafts, and selfie-style video that talks directly to the audience.
In today’s time, Instagram has become the most favoured and chosen means of advertising and promoting products and services. Brands approach famous influencers in order to increase their brand awareness and followers on their Instagram accounts. Instagram acts as a virtual shop for eCommerce businesses to showcase their products and highlight the best features. Businesses can also make sure of Instagram stories, posts, and reels to reach out to their audiences and maintain the trend that’s on air.
Try out the Instagram reel mastery course offered by Digital Scholar. Learn how to create reels that would win the heart of your audiences.
Launched: 2010
Founders: Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger
Revenue: $24 billion (2022)
A few Instagram Statistics
- Instagram has at least 1.452 billion users worldwide in April 2022, according to its global advertising audience reach estimates.
- According to the above data, 23.4 percent of all persons in the globe aged 13 and above use Instagram now.
- If we exclude users in this age range who live in China, where Instagram is still restricted, the platform’s eligible adoption rate rises to 29.2 percent.
- In India, there are at least 253.5 million Instagram users.
- Females make up 48.1 percent of Instagram’s global users.
- Males make up 51.9 percent of Instagram’s global users.
- 128.3 million users between the ages of 13 and 17 (or 8.9 percent of Instagram’s overall ad audience)
- Users aged 18 to 24 make up 30.1 percent of Instagram’s overall ad viewership.
- 31.6 percent of Instagram’s entire ad audience is made up of 462.8 million users aged 25 to 34.
- Users aged 35 to 44 account for 232.3 million (15.8 percent of Instagram’s overall ad viewership.
- Users aged 45 to 54 account for 112.1 million users (7.8 percent of Instagram’s overall ad audience).
- Users aged 55 to 64 make up 53.9 million (3.7 percent) of Instagram’s overall ad viewership.
3. Snapchat
For eCommerce businesses, Snapchat could be just ‘another social media account’ to reach out to their targeted audience. Snapchat lately has seen a lot of celebrities coming over and promoting their own businesses and brands. They have an option of augmented reality(AR), which can be fruitful for your social media marketing strategy.
Despite the fact that Snapchat isn’t always identifiable in the social media platform game, it’s still one of the most popular.
The vast majority of users are under 25 years old. People here communicate using brief movies and photos, which allows you to maintain a streak.
Launched: 2011
Founders: Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, Daniel Smith, David Kravitz, Leo Noah Katz
Revenue: $1.06 billion (2022)
A few Snapchat Statistics
- In April 2022, Snapchat had 332 million daily active users all around the world.
- According to the company’s most recent advertising audience data, 9.5 percent of all people aged 13 and up use Snapchat now.
- When persons in this age range who live in China, where Snapchat is still restricted, are excluded, the platform’s eligible adoption rate jumps to 11.9 percent.
- In India, there are at least 253.5 million Instagram users.
- Females make up 48.1 percent of Instagram’s global users.
- Males make up 51.9 percent of Instagram’s global users.
- 128.3 million users between the ages of 13 and 17 (or 8.9 percent of Instagram’s overall ad audience)
- Users aged 18 to 24 make up 30.1 percent of Instagram’s overall ad viewership.
- 31.6 percent of Instagram’s entire ad audience is made up of 462.8 million users aged 25 to 34.
- Users aged 35 to 44 account for 232.3 million (15.8 percent of Instagram’s overall ad viewership.
- Users aged 45 to 54 account for 112.1 million users (7.8 percent of Instagram’s overall ad audience).
- Users aged 55 to 64 make up 53.9 million (3.7 percent) of Instagram’s overall ad viewership.
4. Youtube
Youtube is a fantastic video-sharing social media platform. Ecommerce owners here can focus totally on video ads and promotions of their brand. With consistent postings and updates, a brand and gain subscribers and views that would generate another source of income. Youtube has become the most chosen medium for exchanging information and advertising products and services. Video lessons, product details, promotion of products with celebrities, everything video-related can take place here effectively.
For the most part, Youtube has turned into a second career for most musicians. It gives a lot of exposure to people all around the world because it is the second most popular internet platform on the planet. A few more video examples include interview questions, movie trailers, music videos, behind-the-scenes videos, lectures, product information, instructional films, and so on.
Launched: 2005
Founders: Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley
Revenue: $28.8 billion (2022)
A few Youtube Statistics
- YouTube has at least 2.562 billion users worldwide in January 2022, according to its global advertising audience reach estimates.
- YouTube’s advertising tools only provide demographic data for viewers aged 18 and over, and according to the most recent statistics available, YouTube has 2.094 billion users in this age bracket.
- According to this number, 37.7 percent of all persons aged 18 and above throughout the world utilize YouTube nowadays.
- If we exclude those in this age range who live in China, where YouTube is still prohibited, the platform’s eligible adoption rate jumps to 47.5 percent.
- There are 467.0 million active YouTube users in India.
- Females account for 46.1 percent of all YouTube users worldwide.
- Males account for 53.9 percent of all YouTube users worldwide.
- Users aged 18 to 24 account for 372.1 million users (14.5 percent of YouTube’s overall ad viewership).
- Users aged 25 to 34 account for 518.5 million (20.2 percent) of YouTube’s overall ad viewership.
- Users aged 35 to 44 account for 422.2 million users (16.5 percent of YouTube’s total ad viewership).
- 304.7 million viewers (or 11.9 percent of YouTube’s overall ad audience) are between the ages of 45 and 54.
- 227.4 million people between the ages of 55 and 64 (8.9 percent of YouTube’s overall ad viewership)
Conclusion
It is true that when an eCommerce business is indulged in several social media strategies, it helps you understand your performance and helps you improve for your enhanced future. It indeed helps you in maintaining your brand’s credibility and increases your overall ROI.
Enroll in an online digital marketing course you can learn in-depth about digital marketing, social media, and a lot more.
What social media platforms would you prefer for your eCommerce business? Do let us know on any of your social media platforms in the comments section below!
