E-COMMERCE Social-marketers, instagram and tik tok expand their market

E-COMMERCE

Social-marketers, instagram and tik tok expand their market

By Matteo Melani

The two most popular social media networks for young people (after Facebook) have opened their platforms to companies that want to advertise and sell their products. This represents a natural evolution of online sales of new content in step with the times.

Social media networks have become a key element in any serious digital sales strategy. Given its strong growth and importance, in recent years social media outlets have created their own marketplaces to allow buyers to advertise their products through content creators such as influencers, photographers and video creators. In fact, making use of well-known faces on the web makes it possible to reach an exact target audience, whatever the product being sold. Social networks work with algorithms that show users personalized posts based on interests, time spent online and interactions.Today, themost popularsocial marketplace is Instagram Shop, the sales platform of the popular photo social network, which is also the creator of Tik Tok, the global platform for smallformat mobile videos.

According to a recent study, around 90% of people who have a profile on Instagram follow specific companies with 130 million monthly users discovering product tags in the post, with a purchase option. There are around 160 million companies worldwide that already use the Facebook – Whatsapp - Instagram ecosystem. Even Tik Tok, the Chinese social network, has more than 33 million active users, with a growth of 2.8% compared to 32.07 million in December 2019. It is a very fertile land of opportunities to quickly reach potential customers and which are destined to grow in the near future.

INSTAGRAM SHOP: ONLINE SALES IN ONE CLICK

Until a few years ago advertising on social networks was limited to ads or fanpages, but with the explosion ofInstagram, pictures and stories have become an integral part of the sales strategy. Among the social platforms, Instagram is the one that lends itself most to digital marketing. In fact, in addition to recording strong growth both for

users and interactions, it is the defacto home of influencers. International brands such as Adidas and Abercrombie & Fitch commission social media celebrities to promote their products on their profiles, and also attract their preferred audience with benefits like discount codes. This technique is also used by smaller brands and retailers. Given the growing success of this business model, Mark Zuckerberg will also open a Facebook marketplace. The name couldn’t be more evocative: Shop. It is an online space where new and trending products are shown based on user preferences and which entices people to shop when they are most inspired. To display you must click on the icon in the shape of the bag that is located in the app and, by clicking on the product, the user is directed to the profile of the company or the influencer. Brands that use multiple tags in posts are more likely to appear in the Shop.

TIK TOK CREATOR, MARKETING TO THE RHYTHM OF MUSIC

It has now been proven that quality videos on the web attract a large number of audiences. And if they are well done or accompanied by a song, then there is a high probability that it will go viral. Tik Tok, which in two years has become superpopular across the globe, has followed in the footsteps of Instagram by opening its own marketplace. The difference with Tik Tok, besides the content, lies in the recruitment of authors. By using the “Creator Search”, a company can search for acreator using customized filters such as nationality, sex, age and type of video; the audience can also be filtered. Compared to Instagram Shop, Shop is a service

that puts the client in direct contact

with the author and helps the brand with its promotion strategy. To date, the hottest creator has been Charli D’Amelio, a sixteen-year-old American girl who has won over 72 million followers with her dance videos in just a few months. Because of this success, D’Amelio was chosen by Prada to participate in its fall/winter 20- 21 fashion show. Launched in February 2020, the marketplace is seeing an increase in registered authors. Given the number of authors, Tik Tok launched a tender for a 60 million euro fund last summer (which will increase to 255 million within the next three years), for the most promising creators around the world. All the selected young authors will be put under contract by TikTok and can be contacted by big or small brands to promote their products.