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Social Commerce: Challenges and Opportunities Explained

Social Commerce: Challenges and Opportunities Explained

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In the last ten years, the world of marketing and commerce has significantly changed. 

As access to technology and the internet continues to rise post-COVID, more businesses and companies have been making the switch from traditional e-commerce platforms to social media platforms to drive sales, create brand awareness and tap into customers trends. 

This trend has also led to a rise in entrepreneurship. It is not uncommon for individuals to “set up shop” online and create a steady source of income.

Customers’ shopping behavior has also evolved as people use social media daily to play, shop, learn, earn, and share experiences.

This is why brands and businesses all scramble for the attention of consumers on the digital playground – social media. 

This won’t stop. 

“The potential for social commerce today is infinite, every ecommerce site will have to adapt” – Billy Gordon

Technology will continue to innovate to ensure users can browse, shop and purchase seamlessly and entirely within one connected social media experience. 

While this is great, it may be overwhelming for everyone to keep pace with the changes that innovation brings. 

For example social marketers may suffer burnout as the volume of social interactions and the demands on messaging increase because people are shopping online. While customers ensuring payment reaches a merchant successfully can be frustrating

If you fall into any of the categories, you are not alone. 

If you struggle (and the struggle is real) with the anxiety of running a virtual empire, you would find this article useful.  

We will outline some common challenges online entrepreneurs like you have faced. We shall also provide solutions that will help you to build a successful online business.  

Challenges Online Entrepreneurs Face

When we asked online business owners about the challenges they face, we whittled the list to 4 common ones:

Difficulty Trying to Find What Works

There is so much information!

 It is easy to get overwhelmed, trying to consume it all. Doing that will only lead to one thing – anxiety. So relax and follow these steps: 

First, choose a market and narrow your market down to a niche. A niche is simply a viable audience of customers whom your products are targeted at.

 

Second, research their pain points. Make sure your products should solve their pain points.

Finding answers to these points will help you to make certain decisions and find out what works for your business and your customers. This may feel tedious and time consuming but the extra effort will help your business in the long run.

What You Can Do

  • Study what your competitors are doing.

Once you figure out what competitors are doing, and how they are doing it, find the gap in their offerings and improve upon it. This  can be your unique selling proposition. 

  • Study your target market and segment them.
  • Create User-Personas and consider the geography, psychographic, demography of your ideal personas.
  • Lastly, test things out and see how best they work. In the end, your audience gets to decide what they like or dislike.

Not Knowing the Right Marketing Tactics 

It takes a certain amount of skill to get people to buy your products. 

What is the best way to carry out your marketing campaign? There is no one-size-fits-all approach. What you need is an understanding of what moves your target market to action. Your ultimate goal is to make them buy.

What you can do

Track your numbers. Many people do not like numbers but incorporating data to help you track your performance is a great idea. Data will give you insights into how customers view your business. 

Tracking performance achieves two things:

  1. Helps you know what marketing tactic to use (ad or content) and what advantages each tactic has. You can then determine how best to engage your audience.
  2. Helps you to focus on your business growth so that you know what to prioritize.

While Facebook and Twitter Analytics can help you on each of their platforms, Credo is a great tool that helps you sell your products and get paid immediately right from your social media platforms. It has an intelligent dashboard that tells you how your existing and potential customers behave and buy when they are on social media. 

The best part is, you get to do all these in one place.

Leverage Technology

As an online entrepreneur in the social commerce space, you need to effectively use your social media platforms. 

While many social merchants are content to understand elementary drivers like posting and replying to enquiries, learning to go beyond these basics will greatly help your business. 

As a social merchant, you have to be in control ALL the time. Working hard will not count here, only working smart

From posting your merchandise to keeping records, engaging your customers, making shopping easier, selling and getting paid, you must be able to do it all by leveraging tools that will help your business succeed.

For example, Credo is an effective tool that helps social merchants do ALL of the above while making shopping easier for your customers.

What You Can Do

See technology as your friend and learn how to use it efficiently. 

You need to leverage tools that will help you make more sales, get paid easily, reply to customers faster and keep you in control on the go.

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Also, you must understand the best times to post, use clear story-telling images, write catchy captions, practice social listening and use insights to create a strategic social media plan. 

Payment Challenge

Most, if not all online merchants in social commerce would tell you that payment is a real problem. Shoppers have to resort to bank transfers to complete a purchase. Sellers give their bank information out which makes them vulnerable to fraud.

The payment process is a big part of the customer experience. It is a good way to engage with customers and turn their shopping experience into a delightful one. 

Tools like Credo allow your customers to shop, buy and pay by just using an identifiable keyword in your comment section! 

When you post your products on any of your social media pages,  Customers can pay directly without the back and forth of sending account details. This can be done by using an identifiable keyword provided by you in your page bio. 

With this, your customer’s buying journey has been reduced by half! For you, it means more sales, faster payments and happier customers. 

What You Can Do

Social commerce platforms like Credo empowers you to be in control of your business right on your social media handle. 

On Credo, you can sell, get paid, reply to enquiries, keep records and run ads from one place! 

What better way to delight your customers( and be happy too)? 

Your customers can buy your products by typing out just one identifiable keyword in the comment section and you get paid immediately! 

Pro Tip: Include keywords in your bio and “loud” it! Let your customers know you are on Credo and tell them to sign up too. 

The dream of online sellers is to delight their customers in their buying journey; this is possible with the right tools. 

When your customers are happy, they will not only come back, they will refer your business to others.

Credo does more than can fit into one article. To learn more about what Credo does and how this would be useful to you, click here

Let’s be friends! Say hello to us on our social media handles!

Credo on Twitter , Credo on Instagram, Credo on Linkedin, Credo on Facebook ,  

 

Top Keywords: social commerce, social commerce platforms, social shopping platforms, social marketing strategy, marketing strategy

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