Social Commerce: Why It Began and How It Works In The Kenyan Economy.

The Kenyan Economy has not discovered the immense power held by social commerce. Being an outgoing experiment that many Micro, Small, and Medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have already dug into has been influenced by the massive revolution in the whole social media landscape.

As a user, have you ever clicked on a social media post or ad, and when you see that you have exited, for example, Facebook, you’d have abandoned the purchase? Most of the time we all don’t want to leave the platforms.

For MSMEs, this can be an ultimate solution to acquire and convert buyers who want to continue scrolling but not leave their social platforms – In this case, we can say these are shoppable contents that your audiences interact with. This is social commerce.

As we have seen, social media has much more potential not only for feeds and stories for content creators and News but also for entrepreneurs and advertisers. In this snippet, we want to discover Why social commerce began, and how it works by answering a few FAQs that will lighten up your approach towards it.

How and Why Did social Commerce emerge?

Should we have a taste of history a little bit? Yes.

Well, as we all know in our world today almost everyone is dependent on social media and sometimes, we go the extra mile of making purchases while interacting with some of the feeds on the social wall. This should be attributed to the rapid growth of the internet in Kenya.

With the country’s mobile penetration going at more than 109% and social media appreciation corresponding to at least three hours and thirty-four minutes per person, it will go without saying that social commerce arose as a solution to turn the user’s social engagement into purchases.

Taking ourselves a little bit into history, we find that actually, Facebook became the first platform to have a pilot investigation on social commerce in the year 2007. Unsurprisingly, in 2014, anyone could make a purchase on Facebook with the introduction of the buy button.

It was through these efforts that developers had to extend the power of social commerce by running the first test of shoppable Ads in 2015, and in 2018 we all began having an experience of the Facebook Marketplace – This looked like a Social E-commerce site.

While developments on Facebook continued the now Meta Company had to stretch the experience to Instagram which by that time had more potential. With Instagram, Users enjoyed sharing pictures and funny videos it was certainly easier to turn engagement into sales.

Social commerce in Kenya took a great turn when the younger audiences whom we can define as the “masters of Craving immediacy” embraced Instagram and Facebook. The pandemic elaborated these groups of individuals as digital content creators.

With social commerce, such kind of immediacy and engagement is what is really important. This was the main objective for even having shoppable posts and promotion of shoppable ads.

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How Does Social Commerce in Kenya Work?

While talking about social commerce, content creators, and you who are a social media content consumer, what comes to your mind?

Unlike the previous ways where you could engage with a product on only one platform, social commerce allows entrepreneurs to sell on multiple platforms with an array of thousands of resellers promoting for you.

Let’s have a look at these case scenarios, you are selling Product A on any of your social media platforms either Facebook or Instagram. The engagements are relatively low because either your packaging was poor or the consistency has been withheld hence you experience limited conversions.

However, with social commerce and resellers in mind, product A might be picked by at least a thousand resellers who will in turn push it on their different social platforms banking on their engagements, they will automatically drive conversions for your product A.

This would mean that Product A will be visible to an unlimited number of resellers and social shops who have the right engagements with their users and in turn influence the number of sales too.

Summary: Social Commerce Has More Sales Potential for MSMEs Today Than Ever Before.

Social commerce and social shopping are now being appreciated by many businesses in Kenya today, However, this doesn’t mean you need to appreciate them too.

If you have a purpose and desire to explore the many advantages of social commerce in Kenya, you need to do more qualitative and quantitative research to get to know the possibilities with your brand. As we have seen, our country now enjoys better internet connectivity, therefore the experiences on social media should be more relaxed and adventurous.

Such advantages should inform your product and brand as an entrepreneur on focusing more on resellers and influencers – Most times as we have seen they form the younger audiences that use social media more often, which means, they’re more likely to engage with shoppable Ads and Posts.

If you are a small and local business with a presence on social media, it will be favorable to try and switch to social commerce as it proves to be of the greatest potential now. As you aim to scale on social media usage and accelerate conversions, then you’re free to try social commerce in Kenya.

So, how do you find social commerce fit for your business? Talk to us now.