Navigating the future of retail
The emergence of social selling in the digital era
Step into the world of social selling, a.k.a. virtual selling, where sellers don’t just make sales - they forge connections, build relationships and occasionally peddle products on social media platforms. This dynamic industry is experiencing rapid growth and continuous evolution, with global sales via social media reaching an impressive estimated $992 billion in 2022. Change is happening, and it’s time you try your hand at social selling.
The second type of social selling deals with brands, rather than individual influencers or salespeople. This version occurs when brands create and share product listings through Amazon storefronts or social media shopping integrations, like TikTok Shop. Additionally, brand accounts can take a more indirect selling approach by organizing virtual events and webinars, plus actively engaging with their audience through social media messaging and comments.
Social selling is a versatile strategy accessible to any business or individual, regardless of their product or service. It’s similar to lead generation in that it involves time, strategy and long-term relationship building to form a connection with the audience.
Builds trust: By engaging with the audience, posting relevant content, answering questions and providing information and entertainment, brands build social credibility that allows them to become a trusted resource throughout the buying process.
Boosts revenue: Social media is another channel to boost revenue and pull marketers closer to their sales goals. Organic social media requires zero advertising dollars but has the potential to reach wider audiences. Plus, your competitors are already on these platforms. If you don’t fight for your share of the audience’s attention, you risk losing out on valuable revenue and long-term relationships.
Caters to the always-online: Especially for individuals, social media can replace in-person events like trade shows and conferences. Post-pandemic, online sales are the new norm.
Jives with existing consumer behavior: Consumers already use social media to research brands and products during the buying process. By having a presence on these platforms, brands can control their own narrative.
Facilitates the buying process: Social selling makes your brand available to your audience via real-time exchanges and, in some cases, 24/7 interaction with products via an integrated storefront.
Allows for specific targeting: Brands that choose to use paid social media advertising to sell products or services have specific targeting options available that leverage social insights for better personalization.
Between 2014 and 2023, e-commerce sales grew from $1.3 billion to $5.7 billion, partially bolstered by an online shopping boom during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, e-commerce’s share of total retail sales grew 3.3x larger in the U.S. By 2025, projections expect almost one-quarter of every sale globally will be made online.
Social selling is the next logical step in the e-commerce avalanche. Out of 4.57 billion internet users globally, 84% are active on social media. Where consumers' attention spans lay, brands will play.
Social selling has undergone a transformative evolution, expanding its reach to encompass an organization's multi-channel social media presence, website and sales technology stack. The platforms themselves have played a pivotal role in propelling the industry forward by introducing innovative selling features.
The earliest adopter of social selling for brands was Pinterest, which rolled out shopping features in 2015. It took five more years for Meta to catch up by launching Facebook Shop and Instagram Shop in 2020. While Meta axed live shopping features in 2023, users often still use Instagram to window shop and make purchases. According to Hootsuite’s insights, half of people use Instagram to shop on a weekly basis, and 70% of users look for their next purchase on Instagram.
Today, however, Meta continues to lag behind TikTok Shop, the current behemoth of social selling. TikTok Shop launched in September 2023 alongside a Creator Marketplace to connect brands and platform influencers.
Unsurprisingly, TikTok has a lot going for it. Users open the app an average of eight times per day and spend roughly 45 minutes looking at content every single day. That’s a lot of eyeballs - and purchasing power.
Via TikTok Shop, users can find and buy products featured in live videos, tagged in posted content, pinned in brand profiles or sold in the new shop tab.
Some videos showcasing products now have a “Shop” button above the creator’s name that takes users directly to the listing to make a purchase. Business accounts can also make their product portfolio available from their profiles on the Shop tab.
However, while we’ve come a long way in the past five years, no social media app has been able to fully crack the code on e-commerce in the United States. In other markets, like China, TikTok’s country of origin, social selling is booming. Still, Americans tend to prefer traditional e-commerce experiences.
Fueling TikTok's growth in the U.S. are fulfillment centers owned by the company. Plus, an army of loyal Gen Z and Gen Alpha shoppers following an even stronger army of affiliate creators constantly pumping out content keeps the fire burning. The platform is also very visual in nature in a way that’s more engaging than Instagram’s static, silent images, making it an ideal setting for selling.
However, working against it, TikTok Shop has already received criticism for its sometimes low-quality products. It also continues to face opposition from the U.S. government for privacy concerns. And while live shopping is huge in China, it hasn’t quite caught on in the United States yet.
While Shop faces its share of uphill battles, TikTok is still the most popular social media app. Brands looking to break into social selling may want to start here to see fast results.
Like TikTok, Amazon has a loyal following of people who already use the app with purchasing in mind. However, while TikTok Shop took an existing social media audience and added a purchasing element, Amazon Inspire aims to do the opposite: turn a shopping app into a social experience.
At the same time Inspire was announced, Amazon rolled out its new “Consult-a-Friend” program, where users considering purchasing can click the “Share” button and send the product listing to selected friends. These friends will receive a message on their preferred app where they can view the product and select an emoji reaction from three options - positive, negative and neutral. They also have the option to add commentary, which is sent back to the original user, along with their emoji review.
So far, Amazon reports customers have most often used Consult-a-Friend for apparel, electronics, shoes and furniture. It also has a promising use case in gift selection. Before buying a gift for a mutual friend, users can run it by a group of mutual friends and crowdsource opinions.
While wary brands may want to watch the social selling machine play itself out before making any moves, let’s be honest. Where’s the fun in that?
Social selling can take many different forms. It may start as simple as optimizing social media profiles, working to increase audience engagement or starting a small influencer marketing program. If the time is right, marketers can look into TikTok Shop or brainstorm strategies for getting products onto a user’s Amazon Inspire feed.
The social media world is your oyster. Embrace this opportunity for growth - and let us know if our social media team can help you along the way.
What is social selling?
There are two avenues of social selling, with the first involving individual salespeople or influencers taking the lead. For example, a salesperson who finds prospects and generates leads within their own LinkedIn network is engaging in social media selling. An influencer sharing a discount code and product link with her audience is another effective approach to social selling.The second type of social selling deals with brands, rather than individual influencers or salespeople. This version occurs when brands create and share product listings through Amazon storefronts or social media shopping integrations, like TikTok Shop. Additionally, brand accounts can take a more indirect selling approach by organizing virtual events and webinars, plus actively engaging with their audience through social media messaging and comments.
Social selling is a versatile strategy accessible to any business or individual, regardless of their product or service. It’s similar to lead generation in that it involves time, strategy and long-term relationship building to form a connection with the audience.
The Benefits of Social Selling for Brands
So, what can social selling do for your brand?Builds trust: By engaging with the audience, posting relevant content, answering questions and providing information and entertainment, brands build social credibility that allows them to become a trusted resource throughout the buying process.
Boosts revenue: Social media is another channel to boost revenue and pull marketers closer to their sales goals. Organic social media requires zero advertising dollars but has the potential to reach wider audiences. Plus, your competitors are already on these platforms. If you don’t fight for your share of the audience’s attention, you risk losing out on valuable revenue and long-term relationships.
Caters to the always-online: Especially for individuals, social media can replace in-person events like trade shows and conferences. Post-pandemic, online sales are the new norm.
Jives with existing consumer behavior: Consumers already use social media to research brands and products during the buying process. By having a presence on these platforms, brands can control their own narrative.
Facilitates the buying process: Social selling makes your brand available to your audience via real-time exchanges and, in some cases, 24/7 interaction with products via an integrated storefront.
Allows for specific targeting: Brands that choose to use paid social media advertising to sell products or services have specific targeting options available that leverage social insights for better personalization.
From e-commerce to social commerce: a transition
E-commerce has been around for a minute now. In fact, the first e-commerce purchase, a Sting CD sold between friends, was made in 1994 for $12.48 plus shipping. This opened the floodgates to an entirely new way of selling. Suddenly, we really were walking through Fields of Gold.Between 2014 and 2023, e-commerce sales grew from $1.3 billion to $5.7 billion, partially bolstered by an online shopping boom during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, e-commerce’s share of total retail sales grew 3.3x larger in the U.S. By 2025, projections expect almost one-quarter of every sale globally will be made online.
Social selling is the next logical step in the e-commerce avalanche. Out of 4.57 billion internet users globally, 84% are active on social media. Where consumers' attention spans lay, brands will play.
Social selling has undergone a transformative evolution, expanding its reach to encompass an organization's multi-channel social media presence, website and sales technology stack. The platforms themselves have played a pivotal role in propelling the industry forward by introducing innovative selling features.
The earliest adopter of social selling for brands was Pinterest, which rolled out shopping features in 2015. It took five more years for Meta to catch up by launching Facebook Shop and Instagram Shop in 2020. While Meta axed live shopping features in 2023, users often still use Instagram to window shop and make purchases. According to Hootsuite’s insights, half of people use Instagram to shop on a weekly basis, and 70% of users look for their next purchase on Instagram.
Enter TikTok Shop
Unsurprisingly, TikTok has a lot going for it. Users open the app an average of eight times per day and spend roughly 45 minutes looking at content every single day. That’s a lot of eyeballs - and purchasing power.
Via TikTok Shop, users can find and buy products featured in live videos, tagged in posted content, pinned in brand profiles or sold in the new shop tab.
Some videos showcasing products now have a “Shop” button above the creator’s name that takes users directly to the listing to make a purchase. Business accounts can also make their product portfolio available from their profiles on the Shop tab.
However, while we’ve come a long way in the past five years, no social media app has been able to fully crack the code on e-commerce in the United States. In other markets, like China, TikTok’s country of origin, social selling is booming. Still, Americans tend to prefer traditional e-commerce experiences.
Fueling TikTok's growth in the U.S. are fulfillment centers owned by the company. Plus, an army of loyal Gen Z and Gen Alpha shoppers following an even stronger army of affiliate creators constantly pumping out content keeps the fire burning. The platform is also very visual in nature in a way that’s more engaging than Instagram’s static, silent images, making it an ideal setting for selling.
However, working against it, TikTok Shop has already received criticism for its sometimes low-quality products. It also continues to face opposition from the U.S. government for privacy concerns. And while live shopping is huge in China, it hasn’t quite caught on in the United States yet.
While Shop faces its share of uphill battles, TikTok is still the most popular social media app. Brands looking to break into social selling may want to start here to see fast results.
Here Comes Amazon: Inspire and Consult-a-Friend
Not to be outplayed, Amazon also launched its foray into social selling in October 2023 with Amazon Inspire. Available in the Amazon app, Inspire is a social media-style feed where anyone can share their favorite products with a wider audience. Users can take a photo or video of a purchased product, tag its listing and share their review for others to “heart” in a public feed.Like TikTok, Amazon has a loyal following of people who already use the app with purchasing in mind. However, while TikTok Shop took an existing social media audience and added a purchasing element, Amazon Inspire aims to do the opposite: turn a shopping app into a social experience.
At the same time Inspire was announced, Amazon rolled out its new “Consult-a-Friend” program, where users considering purchasing can click the “Share” button and send the product listing to selected friends. These friends will receive a message on their preferred app where they can view the product and select an emoji reaction from three options - positive, negative and neutral. They also have the option to add commentary, which is sent back to the original user, along with their emoji review.
So far, Amazon reports customers have most often used Consult-a-Friend for apparel, electronics, shoes and furniture. It also has a promising use case in gift selection. Before buying a gift for a mutual friend, users can run it by a group of mutual friends and crowdsource opinions.
Moving forward
All three of these social selling platforms, TikTok Shop, Amazon Inspire and Consult-a-Friend, need a bit more time before marketers can judge their success. The social selling industry is still evolving as we type, and it’s not a stretch to assume this landscape will look completely different just one year from now.While wary brands may want to watch the social selling machine play itself out before making any moves, let’s be honest. Where’s the fun in that?
Social selling can take many different forms. It may start as simple as optimizing social media profiles, working to increase audience engagement or starting a small influencer marketing program. If the time is right, marketers can look into TikTok Shop or brainstorm strategies for getting products onto a user’s Amazon Inspire feed.
The social media world is your oyster. Embrace this opportunity for growth - and let us know if our social media team can help you along the way.
