🗞️ Social Commerce is Dead, Long Live Social Commerce
Western social platforms have been dreaming of WeChat for ages and the first step was supposed to be social commerce—discover, shop, and buy all without leaving the app. A platform’s wet dream. Especially since they’d collect a cut on both ends, selling the ad that drives the purchase that gets them a processing percentage. But it’s never caught on in the West (at least not yet, TikTok may still have the last word).
Side note: this is why I’m bearish on everything apps in “the West.” If you can’t even get users to finish the purchase process in your app how are you going to get them to do everything else?
What’s next for social commerce? A return to basics. And the basics are ads.
The No. 2 biggest reason for US social media buyers to purchase is in response to seeing an ad
So what should marketers do? This advice is solid all around, even if you remove the social specifics:
Meet consumers where they are (on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook) with content they’ll respond to (ads and influencer posts).