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Boost sales with f-commerce
| DATE: 11 January 2012 |
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| BY: Gillian Bloch |
As Woolworths launches a Facebook store, we discuss the benefits of using social media to boost sales.
Popular retailer Woolworths launched its f-commerce store on 10 January. Through f-commerce, customers can buy goods on Facebook. F-commerce allows companies to maximise on the power of its social media following as users can "like" and "share" products, thereby spreading awareness and boosting sales. Since Woolworths has approximately 143,328 Facebook fans, they were ideally placed to make the move. Woolworths enlisted the services of digital marketing agency Quirk to create their f-commerce offering.
Benefits of f-commerce
"F-commerce is a great opportunity for retailers to reach their target market in an environment that they trust (over 90% of all purchase decisions today are based on what our friends say) and where they are already spending most of their time (over 10% of South African’s online spend over 30 minutes on Facebook every day)," says Victoria Grulke, Quirk's Cape Town Client Service Director.
Create a compelling f-commerce offering
Grulke provides the following tips for companies looking to venture into f-commerce:
- Make sure that social media is the right environment for your brand. Is there a reason for users to engage with your brand, are you offering them something entertaining or useful? Social media is not right for all brands and you need to make sure of this upfront.
- If you decide that social media is the right platform, then spend some time researching whether your existing or potential customers are on Facebook at all. There is no point launching a Facebook store if your customers prefer to shop in other environments (in store, online or on mobile, etc).
- Make full use of the social integration options available: post to your wall, recommend to your friends, etc. It is after all the social network that is going to help drive awareness and by extension, sales.
- It’s imperative to keep the content fresh and give users reasons to keep coming back.
- Like anything digital, make sure you are tracking user behaviour and monitoring the purchase funnel from the start. It’s imperative to be able to optimise the user journey based on real time performance.
Source of statistics: socialbakers.com
