The e-commerce world is changing rapidly. With the rise of AI and social media, there are a variety of platforms that can help you get your products in front of customers. In this blog post, we’ll cover what platforms will be trending for small businesses in 2022.
Facebook Ads remain the most popular
Facebook still remains an important marketing channel with over 2.14 billion of an advertising audience. This platform can be used to reach out to people of all ages, from boomers to Gen Zs. However, as competition from other social media platforms grows with the speed of light, marketers should be more creative in how they reach their target audience on the platform.
Here are top Facebook marketing trends for 2022:
Augmented Reality Ads
Augmented reality is a technology that combines the digital and real worlds. It allows users to interact with objects in their environments using virtual images imposed on a real-world view through a smartphone camera. Augmented reality ads can increase engagement and sales on Facebook and create emotional connections with your audience.
Deloitte study has identified that almost 90 % of companies with annual revenues of $100 million to $1 billion are now leveraging AR into their business.
Here is how AR ads work. When people click on your ad in the News Feed on their mobile device, they will see short instructions on how to interact with your product, brand, or effect. Add a call to action so they can easily make a purchase or visit your site. Unlike images or banners, for example, AR ads are interactive and lifelike.
Facebook Live
Facebook Video Study reveals that users interact with live videos 6 times more compared to common pre-loaded videos. That means that Facebook Live can be an excellent marketing tool to drive awareness and increase sales in 2022.
A recent study conducted by Facebook shows that businesses using Live videos for promotional or sales purposes receive at least 178% higher engagement than average posts! Why do people love live content so much? It happens because users are tired of over-polished content. They want to see a real picture of how it is, without edits and light correction. They also want to see people behind the brands and live videos are one of the best ways to interact with your audience.
Mari Smith, the Facebook Marketing Experts, says that the key to a successful live broadcast strategy is consistency and high-quality content. In order to “train” the Facebook algorithm to get the maximum organic reach, you need to go live regularly. And to make those people stay with you, you need to be interesting and give your best content to keep the audience engaged as long as possible.
Instagram becomes a powerful shopping platform
Instagram is a powerful platform for promoting your brand. In fact, there are more than 1.074 billion active monthly users on the app. That’s a lot of potential customers!
Slowly but surely Instagram turns from a photo & video sharing app into an easy-to-navigate, streamlined shopping platform. Shoppable posts, stories, and ads in reels are a great way to visually showcase products and drive more sales.
But what if you could go straight from the inspiration-to purchase without ever leaving the app? Instagram Checkout is a solution that connects brands and shoppers. With Instagram Checkout, users can now tap to view a product from shoppable posts and continue on the payment process all within the social media. All that’s required of customers is their name or email address, billing information, and shipping address the first time they check out.
Image from https://techcrunch.com/
To make your Instagram profile more appealing to customers, you need to create quality content that resonates with your followers. The best ways to do that are influencer marketing and user-generated content.
Influencer marketing is not only here to stay, but it’s also likely that we will see brands shift toward micro and nano influencers for their campaigns. Micro-influencers can generate both awareness as well as meaningful engagement.
UGC refers to photos and videos that are not taken by your brand but rather posted by users who use your products in their daily lives. Instagram is a great place to find these types of posts because they provide authenticity and give customers a behind-the-scenes look at what life would be like with your product.
Shopping on Pinterest is getting more appealing
Pinterest has become widely known as the place where users can find inspiration for home decor, recipes, weddings, style, and more. But Pinterest is much more than that. In fact, almost half of all activity on Pinterest is related to shopping. With 454 million active visitors every month, Pinterest is a great advertising channel for both big and small businesses. For example, one hundred times more people will share your pins than tweets and it can drive 3x more traffic to your website compared to other social media platforms.
Besides driving traffic to the website, you can actually sell your products directly on Pinterest. Product pins are the items available to buy from vendors. Some of the direct users to the website and some allow people to purchase products from retailers without leaving Pinterest. Once a user saves pins to his board, it is automatically added to Your Shopping List available to buy.
Pinterest is a great place for people to find and share interesting content. If you’re looking to promote your brand, there are plenty of different avenues on the platform that will allow you to do so in style! Idea pins let users know about what’s new or coming soon from an organization they follow. Collection Pins showcase favorite items found within one category while Video Pins provide informative videos with tons of engagement options like “how-tos”. Try-on Pins is a new feature that lets people virtually try on products on Pinterest using Pinterest Lens. These all work well as part of an ad campaign.
Image from https://help.pinterest.com
Google Shopping Ads – one of the best marketing opportunities for e-commerce
Google Shopping Ads is a great way to gain exposure and get more people to your site. It’s also an excellent way to boost your sales in 2022 as it’s one of the most effective platforms for driving clicks and conversions.
Shopping ads appear before any organic search results and even before Search or Text Ads on Google. These advertisements display relevant product information to shoppers such as price, seller, and can show a star rating for each item.
With Google Shopping Ads you can:
- Increase visibility with text ads that appear in search results pages on a desktop or mobile device.
- Reach customers across the world by targeting shoppers in specific countries, regions, languages and currencies.
- Drive online sales through product listing ads (PLAs) that show up alongside related products on Google shopping and other sites across the web.
- Target audiences based on gender, age group, or interest, whether they are searching for something nearby.
Google Shopping Ads is a great way for e-commerce stores to increase visibility in the SERPs and boost sales. Learn more about Shopala and see our Shoppable case study.
