"Social Commerce" and "Conversational Commerce": Alternative Solutions Reaching a Wider Market

Shop through the platform marketplace already familiar in Indonesia. The pandemic that has been going on for the past year has prompted a more massive acceleration for the use of this platform when transacting, both by sellers and buyers.

This condition makes the competition even tighter. In order to increase the competitiveness of a merchant, social commerce and conversational commerce become two alternative strategies when selling online.

Differences in understanding

Social commerce are buying and selling activities carried out by social media. This is different from social media marketing when sellers only promote their products on social media but purchase transactions still occur in the online marketplace. Existence social commerce make it easier for consumers to not have to switch platforms.

conversational commerce is the interaction between the seller and the buyer through messages/chatting. This strategy is used to build strong relationships with consumers so that businesses can have higher customer loyalty. This strategy is still not well implemented in Indonesia, even though according to the Trends 2.0 survey conducted by Crowd DNA, 69% of Gen Z want to be able to communicate with more brands through messaging applications.

Use conversational commerce

conversational commerce can be used to support buying and selling activities on the platform marketplace. Businesses can provide information about the latest product releases or discounts through instant messaging applications.

In Indonesia itself, according to IndonesiaDigital 2021 data, the penetration rate of WhatsApp usage reaches 87%. If companies make good use of WhatsApp, they can build customer relationships easily because it uses communication media that is in accordance with what consumers use. The Mass Notification Messages feature in the WhatsApp Business API makes it easy to distribute promotional materials to many consumers.

To give more value to the conversational strategy trade, Businesses can take a personal approach through shared messages.

The easiest personalization is to mention the consumer's name in every promotional message. Through the WhatsApp Business API, companies can schedule mass notifications menggunakan template messages like:

Halo, {{nama konsumen}}!. Kami punya yang baru, nih! Untuk menyambut hari libur sekolah, kami mengadakan sale untuk semua produk!

Use social commerce

According to a study conducted by Accenture entitled Beauty Customer Journey Study, 97% of buyers makeover and Skincare use Instagram to search brand new to information about tips and tricks. To provide services to markets like this, companies can reach out and transact via Direct Message (DM) using the Messenger API for Instagram.

Social commerce on Instagram is very profitable to build Branding, because the company has its own website (using this platform) in the form of feeds beautiful and neat. Consumers will immediately see the catalog being sold and when they want to buy, they only need to send a message so that it is handled immediately.

Another advantage of using the Messenger API for Instagram is the integration with the system chatbot. chatbot to be like sales person to answer all consumer questions to accept transactions. By combining these two systems, it is very easy for consumers to ask questions about products without having to wait long. Apart from creating experience better for consumers chatbot claimed to also increase productivity and efficiency because it will automate all incoming transactions.

Well social commerce nor conversational commerce give added value for merchant compared to only selling on marketplace. Combination marketplace + conversational commerce + social commerce help businesses provide a more comprehensive service and reach a wider range of consumers.

- Disclosure: this guest article was written by 3Dolphins, a business solution provider that provides easy access to the WhatsApp Business API and Messenger API for Instagram. Further contact can be via email to info@inmotion.co.id.

Header image by DepositPhotos.