From shopping in brick and mortar locations, ordering items from 1-800 numbers to be able to purchase with one click on Amazon, e-commerce has made its journey from platform to platform and continues to make the shopping experience more convenient. With the help of social media advertising, the latest transformation is the shift from e-commerce to social-commerce.
The newest opportunity for e-commerce is right in our hands, living on social media. Instead of window shopping, users are window scrolling. Instead of driving to a store, users are driving traffic to their favorite brands with a simple follow. As Seen on TV has become As Seen on IG. Rather than passing paper advertisements and billboards, beautiful streams of sponsored content are seamlessly integrated into these social platforms.
Always ahead of the curve, Facebook has begun to invest more heavily in Business profiles on Facebook and Instagram. In 2018 alone, we’ve seen a slew of new opportunities for social media advertising with features such as shopping tags on posts, filters in messages so brands can communicate more easily with shoppers, shopping stickers on stories, the ability to create a highlight on your profile, and the rollout of IGTV.
We know, we know, it’s hard to keep up! But there is one more major change coming to Instagram—IG Shopping. According to The Verge, Instagram is developing a completely separate app for shopping. With one billion monthly active users, will they be able to shift all of them to a completely separate app? After the launch of IGTV, I’m not sure if they can. With 25 million active Instagram business profiles and 2 million of them being advertisers, this will absolutely be a game changer to follow.
There are not many details out yet about this new standalone app. It is rumored to be in developmental stages. However, we’ve heard that it will let users browse content from brands they already follow and purchase directly in the app. Brands could potentially use this to feature their latest products and monitor direct sales while using the regular Instagram app to focus on brand awareness. In short, using IG Shopping strictly for sales and Instagram for fostering a community. With the rate e-commerce is growing on social, we see a lot of potential for IG Shopping as a new medium for social media advertising. But at this stage, it is too early to know.
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