Social media platforms have evolved rapidly as the never-ending search for additional monetisation options continues. Facebook and Twitter have long since emerged from the days of simply being sharing platforms without any real strategies for making money. Currently, both companies are considering a new monetisation strategy with the testing of “Buy Now” buttons. These changes could potentially offer significant benefits to online retailers in terms of converting more social media traffic to sales.
Facebook and Twitter are well aware that many of their users are online retailers that are looking to use their platforms to promote products and services. The new monetisation feature known as the “Buy Now” button app, makes it possible to purchase items directly from pages on Facebook and Twitter without having to click through to visit outside links. E-commerce retailers have always been aware of the need to advertise on sites that have highly targeted audiences in order to successfully convert traffic.
This new strategy is a boom for e-commerce retailers because they now will be able attribute sales directly to the pages on their social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter. As the number of mobile users continues to skyrocket, successful channel integration is an important part of a successful e-commerce marketing strategy.
Currently for e-commerce companies, returns from social media marketing campaigns can be difficult to measure in terms of actions that directly result in sales. The “Buy Now” button could eliminate the fuzz regarding which pages of the retailer’s social media profile resulted in the user making the decision to purchase from that retailer.
Many consumers also like the convenience of online shopping and want to eliminate as many steps as possible when it comes to searching for and purchasing a product. The “Buy Now” option can allow retailers to create better-targeted content by being able to track which content results in the best conversions rates. This also could allow retailers to also send users directly to shopping cart pages instead of having to link out of the social media site to a targeted pre-sell landing page.
The idea of the “Buy Now” button sounds sensible and could be a potentially profitable marketing option for online retailers. However, currently Facebook and Twitter are both rolling out this feature in beta testing mode only. Currently, the test candidates have been limited to small and medium-sized businesses that have been pre-selected.