Social Commerce and Video Marketing for Startups

Social Commerce

One of your main concerns as the entrepreneur behind a startup business is how you can tackle the issue of attracting new customers to your brand and scaling up your business. What many startup entrepreneurs do not know, however, is that they already have the solution right in their pockets: social media. 

Today, social media is one of the primary means by which businesses and brands are advertising their products and reaching their target markets. It is a core part of any modern brand’s digital marketing strategy and it is something you cannot afford to ignore.

History shows as much. Adidas, being the official sponsor of the games, ignored it in the London Olympics and Nike blew them out of the water with ingenious social marketing that generated a tremendous following. But the real beauty of social media commerce is that you don’t have to be a behemoth with an endless budget to benefit from it. There are many ways to take an advantage of platforms that are already highly suitable for marketing.

Indeed, many leading brands use social media to advertise and promote their products and to interact with their target market. But, how exactly do they do this?

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Before social media was a thing, brands used advertisements placed on websites and message boards to drive up traffic to their websites. Now we are far into the social media age and businesses are now using social platforms to market their brand and build up brand loyalty. There are lots of different ways businesses can market their brands. Let’s look at Facebook as an example; here are three key ways:

  1. Promote your discounts and promotions

Consumers often visit a brand or company’s Facebook page to see if it has any offers running. If you do, don’t forget to publish them on your Facebook page – this is almost guaranteed to increase sales. eBay is well known for doing this and advertises its daily deals often through Facebook.

  2. Interact with your audience

Consumers follow their favourite brands on Facebook because they like interacting with them. If you’ve got a page which you rarely post on and never reply to messages, you are wasting your time. You should constantly be publishing high-quality posts which are engaging and promote reactions from your followers.

  3. Target your advertisements

If you sell women’s clothing, there’s little point in your ads showing to males. Using Facebook’s targeted advertisement tools, you can ensure that your posts only reach people who matter to you: those who are likely to buy your product or use your service. 

Social commerce is an absolute must for today’s businesses and if you are starting out in the world of business, it is something you need to know about and operate in. Social commerce enables consumers to share their shopping experience with friends, or shop with their favourite brands without even having to leave their favourite social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram.

Nowadays, the majority of young people and even most middle aged people have at least two different social media accounts and spend several hours per week (or per day in some cases) scrolling through their newsfeeds, engaging with their favourite brands and looking for stuff to buy. This is why social commerce has taken such a dominant role on the modern internet; consumers are always demanding things to be more seamless and what is more seamless and intuitive than being able to shop for everything in one place?

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest now all have inbuilt functionality for businesses to sell their products through their social media pages. As a brand new startup, social commerce is something which you must take advantage of – there is no escaping it. It has the potential to be truly revolutionary for brands and can be the difference between success and failure in the modern commercial world. 

Social commerce brings you (the seller) together with your customers (the buyers) in one place. Before purchasing, buyers can learn everything they need to know about you through your social media page and then make a purchase without having to go to an external website, browse through it and then have to input all their details.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is also a great way to drive new customers towards your social media page and grow your business through increased sales. An introductory video to your new startup brand is a great way to persuade new customers to invest in your product. A well-made video makes it super easy to explain your brand and your product to customers and entices purchases more than an image.

If you produce a video which explains your startup, its background, its values, its story and its products, you go a long way in helping potential customers understand and relate with your brand which can very quickly translate into sales. Place this video on both your social media accounts and your website’s main homepage so it is the first thing new people see.

Plus, explaining what your business does in an easy to digest video is much more effective than writing lots of paragraphs which are then placed on your social media pages and website. You may be wondering how a video ties into social commerce. Well, it is very simple; a video can be published and then promoted on social media platforms which target your potential customers. This video is then seen by these people who may then engage with your brand.

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A detailed introductory video can go a long way to build up trust with potential customers, which is something you need to do as a new startup because you have not established your name or built any brand recognition or loyalty. 

Video marketing can go a long way to boost conversion rates. When potential customers watch your video, they become immediately engaged and can better relate with its audio and visual effects.

As a result of this, they become more interested in your brand and are more likely to go away from the video, do more research and possibly make a sale.

For startups, building brand loyalty and a name for yourself is crucial; the best way to do this is through the right marketing techniques which build you a small pool of loyal customers who can spread the word.