In today's fast-paced digital landscape, effective product discovery plays a crucial role in the success of any ecommerce business. With the ever-growing number of online stores and the abundance of options available to consumers, standing out and capturing their attention has become more challenging than ever. Enter social commerce and its rising importance in eCommerce product discovery.

Social commerce is almost exactly what it sounds like: commerce on social media platforms. eCommerce brands can use social media platforms to facilitate the product discovery and online sales process by leveraging the various features of social networks, such as user profiles, likes and comments, to engage customers and drive them towards making purchases. This allows businesses to engage with prospective customers at every stage of the customer journey, on their favorite platforms for a better online shopping experience.

In social commerce, the entire shopping journey happens on social media. This includes product discovery, search, click-to-purchase and post-purchase supports. As such, eCommerce brands can use social commerce to showcase their products in a more engaging way, increase visibility and generate leads for potential customers. Social commerce can also be used to measure the success of campaigns, track customer behaviors and optimize products for better performance.

Examples of Social Commerce Platforms

There are a variety of social commerce platforms available to companies, each with its own unique features and advantages. Some of the most popular social commerce platforms include:

• Facebook: With over 2 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social network in the world. Businesses can use Facebook to showcase their products, create targeted campaigns and reach out to new customers.
• Instagram: Instagram is a visual platform that allows businesses to share photos and videos of their products. Companies can leverage hashtags, stories and ads to engage customers and increase visibility.
• Pinterest: Pinterest is a platform that allows businesses to share images of products and link them back to their website. Companies can use this platform to increase traffic to their site and generate leads for potential customers.
• TikTok: You could call TikTok the rising star or breakout social channel of this group -- and you'd be correct. With 1.1 billion active monthly users worldwide, TikTok has dominated social media in the last several years and has been testing their TikTok Shop alongside other eCommerce strategies.

There are many different social commerce platforms available for companies to leverage, each with its own unique features and advantages. Companies should take advantage of the many platforms available and target customers on their favorite social platforms. The various features available will help eCommerce brands drive product discovery, sales and engagement.

Social media and social commerce can be a powerful tool for product discovery, because of its vast audiences. With billions of active users, most of whom are there for their leisure time, companies can reach new potential customers and showcase their products in a more effective way. Especially given the rise of influencers and user generated content, social media has become much more effective for user reviews and product discovery as a result of those reviews.

Other benefits include:

• Increased Visibility: Social media gives companies an opportunity to expand their reach and visibility by allowing them to broadcast their products to a larger audience. By leveraging various platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, companies can attract new customers and showcase their product offerings.
• Targeted Audience: Social media provides companies with the ability to target specific audiences by creating targeted campaigns that are tailored to a particular demographic or interest group. This allows companies to deliver more relevant content and create connections with potential customers.
• Meaningful Connections: Through social networks, companies can establish meaningful connections with their target audiences. Companies can use social media to tell stories about their products, build relationships and reach out to customers in a more personal way. This helps companies build loyalty and trust with their customers.
• Trendsetting Capabilities: Customer reviews are all well and good for moving existing products, but social commerce is also an opportunity to set trends and create popular products. By having influencers review or create social content or UGC about new products, companies have the ability to influence shopping behaviors and make a mark in the eCommerce landscape.
• Boosting Revenue and Sales: By curating closer relationships with your online shoppers and showing up on their preferred platforms with their ideal products, retailers can boost sales and revenue using social commerce. It's a great way to re-target loyal customers and get them interested in new products, while also reaching new buyers through an intuitive customer experience.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

To create an effective product discovery strategy for social media, it's crucial to have a deep understanding of your target audience. Analyze their demographics, interests, and online behaviors to discover which platforms they're shopping on, then tailor your approach to deliver relevant products that resonate with their needs and preferences on their desired platforms.

2. Harness Your Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms have revolutionized the way we connect, communicate, and discover new products. With billions of active users across various platforms, they have become a goldmine for eCommerce businesses. By establishing a strong presence on social media, you can tap into a vast pool of potential customers and create brand awareness. Many platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have shop options you can leverage. Plus innovative and funny content has been known to win customers over!

3. Leverage Social Media Influencers

Social media influencers hold immense sway over their followers' purchasing decisions. Collaborating with influencers who align with your brand can expose your products to their loyal and engaged audience. Influencer marketing campaigns can significantly enhance product discovery and drive sales by leveraging the influencers' credibility and reach. In fact, 90% of people are more likely to trust a brand if it's been recommended to them -- even if that recommendation is from a stranger or influencer!

4. Upgrade Your Product Discovery Experience

Social commerce, the fusion of social media and eCommerce, has transformed the way people shop online. Social platforms have become powerful product discovery channels with features like shoppable posts, product tags, and integrated shopping experiences. By optimizing your social media presence and utilizing these shopping features, you can make it easier for potential customers to discover and purchase your products.

However, you shouldn't neglect your on-site product discovery experience, either. eCommerce customer expectations are at an all-time-high for user experience. They expect seamless, omnichannel shopping journeys, so while they may be shopping on social media, they expect a similar experience when they hop over to your website. By leveraging an AI-first eCommerce search and product discovery platform you can integrate customer data from all of your social media channels to personalize their experience on your site, providing a true omnichannel experience.

5. Optimize Your Product Catalog For Search Engines

Search engines remain a vital tool for product discovery. Search is a key feature of social media platforms, so optimizing your product catalog for search is key. By implementing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you can improve your online store's visibility and rank higher in search results, both organically on Google and on social media platforms. Focus on optimizing product descriptions, titles, and metadata to ensure that your products appear when potential customers conduct relevant searches.

You can also leverage a data enrichment service to help normalize, curate and attribute your product catalog data. GroupBy's Enrich product uses a global taxonomy to accurately categorize product details. Accurate and relevant language and attributes, terms and synonyms that precisely describe your products, and rich product content all help to boost your SEO and product findability across all social media channels.

6. Hyper-Personalize The Customer Journey

Tailoring the customer journey to individual preferences can significantly impact product discovery. In fact, modern consumers expect personalized product discovery experiences, to the point where individually personalized experiences are required to stand out.

Leverage customer data, such as past purchases and browsing history, to provide personalized recommendations, search results and product suggestions. You can also implement machine learning and AI algorithms to analyze customer behavior and offer relevant product suggestions, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

7. Social Listening And Engagement

Social media platforms offer valuable insights into customer sentiments, preferences, and trends. Actively listen to conversations around your brand and industry to identify emerging patterns and consumer needs. Engage with your audience through comments, direct messages, and polls to foster a sense of community and build brand loyalty.

This social listening data can be used to inform product descriptions, attributes and even recommendations in the form of trending products. By listening to your customers you don't just better understand what they need, you learn how they speak about products and thus, the language they use to search for them. This can be leveraged to boost product discoverability across the customer lifecycle.

8. Optimize For Mobile Devices

With the widespread use of smartphones, mobile commerce has become a dominant force in eCommerce. Ensure that your online store is fully optimized for mobile devices, offering a seamless and intuitive browsing and purchasing experience. Mobile-friendly design and quick-loading pages are crucial to capturing the attention of mobile shoppers.

According to research from Forrester, inventory visibility features are becoming increasingly important as well for mobile shoppers. Many customers use their mobile phones to check stock status online before shopping in-store. And that's a simple swipe or click over from a social media platform, making it a key part of using social media to facilitate a frictionless online shopping journey.

Effective eCommerce product discovery is vital to the success of any online enterprise. Social media is no longer just a place to post ads -- it's become an important shopping channel all on its own. By harnessing the power of social commerce, implementing targeted strategies, and embracing emerging technologies, you can unlock new opportunities for product visibility, engage your target audience, and boost sales.

Make sure your social commerce strategy stays up to date with AI-first technology. GroupBy's eCommerce Search and Product Discovery platform powered by Google Cloud Vertex AI Search for Commerce, supports omnichannel shopping experiences from social media through to fulfillment and through every point of the consumer journey. Capable of delivering hyper-personalized search results, this forward-thinking eCommerce platform helps provide the streamlined experiences today's customers are looking for. Book a demo today!