Of the many inventions and discoveries that have changed the way the world functions over the course of time, there are some that have stood out more than the others. Take the invention of modern electricity, for example, or the internet. These inventions haven’t just made life easier, but have become fundamentally integrated in the way we live and function on a daily basis.
E-commerce is a product of the internet that has grown exponentially in the past few years. Selling online is a major market, apparently valued at $29 trillion globally. And believe it or not, that number is expected to rise even further in the years to come. The e-commerce industry is surely taking over the traditional avenues for selling, and there are many reasons for this.
Advantages of e-commerce?
- Larger reach in a shorter time span
- Comparatively less expensive
- Higher rate of response
- Enhanced visibility worldwide
- Greater opportunity for expansion
The largest wing of e-commerce: Social Selling
Social selling is the term given to selling online through social media. There are millions of people actively using social media every day. Social media’s biggest platform today is Instagram, which is home to a billion active accounts. Instagram has massive traffic and thousands of brands all over the world use it to promote their brand and create specific brand campaigns. On a platform like this, the biggest driving forces are followers and engagement numbers. More followers and more engagement equals a higher success rate of social selling.
When a brand is specifically looking to boost these numbers and improve viewership on Instagram, there are special packages being offered by websites like iDigic.net. Whether it’s to improve likes and comments, or simply help a brand’s page have more real accounts as followers, iDigic has a number of options that provide value for money and most definitely increase the ROI.
E-commerce is digital, yes, but that doesn’t mean it requires any less promotion when compared to offline selling. Digital marketing is again a very fast-growing wing of advertisement, and every single brand is keeping a handsome budget aside to facilitate it. Many companies today focus primarily on digital media and marketing, and any other form of promotion is secondary. Can you blame them though?
Social media allows brands access to a massive database, all over the world, and with a potential to completely change the game for them overnight. And while this may not hold true for every single brand, there’s always an open chance. If a brand can strategize and give more importance to social selling, a lot can be achieved, and e-commerce becomes a smooth process.
Strategizing for Social Media
Keeping all the statistics about social media in mind, it’s quite clear that a social media marketing strategy isn’t just a smart option, but also a necessary one. Without proper planning, marketing on social platforms can either get lost at sea or receive backlash, both of which aren’t favorable for any brand’s growth.
Let’s look at 5 important reasons why marketing on social media can be powerful and beneficial:
1. Spend less for more
Employing ad spends on social media isn’t as expensive as many other forms of offline marketing, which is why it doesn’t seem like a stretch while budgeting for social media. Marketers say that even if a big brand decides to spend 50% of their offline ad spends for social media they tend to have better and more effective coverage in comparison. Sponsored ads on both Instagram and Facebook bring a lot of traffic for web pages and websites, and they don’t drill a hole in the marketing budget either.
2. Increase the customer database
Every brand has the potential chance to reach as many as hundreds of new people every day, based on how well they’re targeting their marketing campaigns. Such an opportunity cannot be expected of offline marketing, because physically reaching those many new people is quite cumbersome. A few clicks and swipes and a new customer can be directed to a brand’s desired destination, and that’s why social selling is becoming a quick favorite for most.
3. More opportunity for promotion
Since there are so many innovative ways of marketing on social media, it presents brands with more new ways to increase their brand presence. Creating campaigns on social media is a much quicker process once you have all the nitty-gritty details down to the T. When there’s a new viral trend in the market, it’s fairly convenient for brands to hop on the wagon and join in on the action, and hence also become more relatable and relevant for larger audiences.
4. Best place to network
Social media started off as a great new way for people all over the world to network and communicate. That still holds true as marketers and salespersons use various platforms to maintain one-on-one communication with existing and potential customers. Social selling is, after all, all creating relationships through communicating with people, for the purpose of improving and increasing sales. This way a single idea can turn into a well-known preference. A brand that is talked about in good light can start building on its customer base. This is how brands reach more ears and minds – through effective networking.
5. The future of marketing
Many experts believe that offline marketing might even become obsolete in the decades to come and that social media is going to hold a dominant position as the most powerful marketplace. If this is to be believed, then now is the perfect time for brands to establish their stronghold online. Digital marketing is the vehicle that’s going to effortlessly carry the future of brand marketing in the years to come. Provided brand know how to get the most out of social media platforms. A recent survey shows that by 2020, nearly 150 million accounts on social platforms will belong to brands, businesses, and entrepreneurs who are going to market themselves to people.
In Conclusion
Social selling is the future! There’s really no doubting the potential of social selling and why it makes such a positive impact on e-commerce. Communication that happens digitally reaches far and wide in a matter of minutes, and it’s the ultimate boon for brands that want to reach more people. Whether it will completely take over the marketing scene is yet to be determined but, at the rate that digital media is growing, we might as well prepare for the new wave heading our way!
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