The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the e-commerce industry because the growth that was predicated over a five year period happened in less than six months. No industries were ready for the rise in e-commerce, and for most part, they were ready for the decline in sales. However, COVID-19 has shown us that online sales are critical to all companies especially during COVID-19. 

In a matter of months, the United States grossed over $340B in online sales. This is a 30 percent increase from last year during these months. This doesn’t even include the online ordering from restaurants, takeout options and delivery services such as GrubHub and others. 

The height of the coronavirus shows a correlation between consumers’ purchasing habits based on their emotions and mental fears and anxiety. However, online sales did slow down again in July, but online stores with a strong social media presence continue to sell their products online and keep their sales going. 

With the possibility of another wave of COVID-19 in the midst of the holiday season, how can social media drive e-commerce sales? 

What is social ecommerce? 

There is no doubt that social media has changed the way e-commerce companies sell and promote their products to consumers. Social media provides companies with a plethora of possibilities to connect with consumers from advertising to blogging. 

With this in mind, the rise of social media and e-commerce means that these two notions need to be working together to achieve the success a company is searching for. This is called social e-commerce in our industry, also known as social media commerce. 

Social e-commerce uses social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to promote products and services. The success of each different campaign depends on the campaign itself, but for some, it could be selling X amount of products from social media or gaining new followers. 

The main notion behind social media commerce is the promotion and selling of the said products that are being promoted on the Internet, specifically social channels. 

The campaign 

The best way to show that social media ecommerce is one of the driving forces for sales is to create an example campaign. The first step is to create an e-commerce site. A great example of a large corporation that has their website and social media commerce set in place is Kay Jewelers. 

Recently, the company released a new promotion for a limited timeframe. The promotion was released on their website. 

From there, a promotion on Facebook was sent out with the direct link that takes you to the above button that says “Shop Now.” 

From there, an Instagram post was made that explained the promotion! 

This is the perfect example of how social commerce can drive e-commerce sales. While we do not know how many sales were made, a company should have some type of CRM or tracking analytics in place such as Google Analytics. 

If Kay Jewelers were to run a paid advertising campaign they could grab the UTM code and put that inside their Google Analytics- Goal Tracking portion of their account. This would show how many people come from each social media channel, if they purchased the product and what other marketing worked or didn’t work! 

This is a great example of how social media can drive e-commerce sales. This is because not only does this reach Facebook followers and Instagram followers and the website shows in search engine results. This provides three outlets that consumers can find the sale and possibly purchase the product. 

Social media provides an e-commerce company with the opportunity to promote their products to customers on a number of platforms while reaching a new audience who currently does not follow their social media channels.