With the advent of social media, opportunities for brands to interact with their consumers and for individuals to consume curated information from their favourite brands, run galore. As technology has progressed, the access to consumers’ tastes has allowed brands to customise their offerings through an unlimited amount of content on myriad social media platforms.
Social commerce is the sale of products directly through social media networks. The emergence of these new ‘marketplaces’ has provided a unique window of opportunity as new research demonstrates that consumers are increasingly turning to these platforms. The reason being that the social commerce purchase journey massively outperforms the purchase journey of regular e-commerce. As the blur between content and commerce intensifies, social-media platforms are working overtime to create opportunities for brands to turn consumers’ obsession and time spent with images and video into seamless, frictionless shopping moments.
A research by Shopify states, “30 per cent of online shoppers say they would likely make a purchase from social media networks like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat.” In the US alone, the average order value for customers referred from Facebook is US $ 55 and there are over 5,00,000 businesses which make use of Instagram as an advertising platform. This relays the impact that these channels impart to the consumers’ buying behaviour with the survey also suggesting that 84 per cent of online shoppers review at least one social media site before making a purchase.
Avenues to ace the market
The power of social media is well established in the modern world with an average of 1.45 billion active social media users divided over different platforms. The efficacy of different channels is debatable but it is for a brand to choose which form of media will foster their identity through.
Facebook, for example, may not be as dedicated to social shopping, but the platform’s dominance of the social media landscape, along with retail brands’ usage of targeted ads for acquisition of customers, makes it a key sales driver for e-commerce platforms. According to Adobe, Facebook drove 80.4 per cent of all US social referrals to retail sites in Q1 of 2019, followed by Instagram (10.7 per cent) and Pinterest (8.2 per cent).
On the other hand, Instagram has a more distinctive aesthetic that attracts younger demographic and lifestyle brands, particularly in the fashion and beauty industry. The platform offers a unique combination of scale and contextual relevance that has made it the first choice for many brands in these categories for social commerce. Recently Instagram unveiled Checkout, a function that enables people to browse images and videos of items in their feed and purchase directly from the app, without being redirected to another website, thereby enhancing the ease of shopping. Brands now using Checkout include Nike, Revolve, MAC Cosmetics, Michael Kors, Kylie Jenner Cosmetics and Zara, among others.
Post the launch of the Checkout feature this year, Adidas saw online sales jump 40 per cent in Q1 of 2019, compared to 24 per cent growth in the same period the previous fiscal. Kasper Rorsted, CEO spoke very highly of the feature, “There was no doubt that Instagram had a positive impact on our online business in Q1. The 40 per cent rise was driven by a number of factors, but product launches and Instagram’s Checkout tool were probably the two most relevant.” Products such as the brand’s 4D Futurecraft shoes, for example, have sold particularly well on Instagram
To celebrate its 30th birthday, Allbirds, an environmentally- friendly sneaker brand, created a special edition birthday collection available only on Instagram. By doing so, it was able to reach out to Instagram’s wide audience without putting its entire product catalogue on the site, and this created a sense of exclusivity because the collection never appeared on its own website.
Pinterest is another key player in social commerce, as it offers users a venue for creative and aspirational pursuits that aligns particularly well with shopping content. However, much of Pinterest’s user experience still revolves around curation of the product content pertaining to an aspirational mindset, but it lacks the capabilities of definite conversion, all the more incapacitated by the inability to buy within the platform.
“Pinterest is a really popular platform for planning your wedding, and you’re doing that over a year,” Rachel Tipograph, Founder and CEO of MikMak, told marketing research website, eMarketer. “But if you’re a performance marketer, you look at e-commerce sales through a 24-hour and seven-day lookback window. In that universe, Pinterest often doesn’t get credit for the sale.”
Snapchat has its loyal audience and has been hailed as the most fluid and intuitive e-commerce process and experience for customers. That means it’s a good option for retailers looking to incorporate social shopping as an add-on to events in their stores. Snapchat has been one of the most effective platforms for location-based marketing, too, and the fleeting nature of Snapchat content makes it ideal for building exclusivity and urgency.
Although the past years have seen a decline in the app’s popularity, there are examples of brands capitalising on it. Jordan, the brand that was behind the iconic Air Jordan shoes, partnered with Snapchat earlier in 2018 to capitalise on the NBA All-Star game. Consumers within a certain radius of the arena where the game was played were able to gain access via a special code to an exclusive launch sale of the special edition Air Jordan III ‘Tinker’ shoe.
Tools of the trade
The Buy Button
The transformation of social media platforms into sales channels has been brought about by the ‘buy now’ button. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest all harbour it as a call-to-action on a brand’s social media ads or posts and it typically links users to the brand’s website to complete the sale. Providing individual links for different products or the brand’s bio containing the link for the website, this is a means to ensure conversion and greater visibility for the website.
Shoppable Posts and Stories
Shoppable posts and stories allow brands and users to tag specific products wherever they are within posts or ‘stories’. This type of social shopping is relatively new, but with Instagram and Snapchat both launching their own version of the feature, it’s taken off quickly. Brands urge users to ‘Swipe up’ within stories. Nearly 41 per cent of consumers have given this tool a go-ahead, according to Shopify. It enables a smoother shopping experience for the consumers where they do not have to interrupt what they’re doing and can also enjoy a seamless experience.
Social Commerce Plug-ins and Apps
While the big social networks have been experimenting with new technology and inventing the most effective ways to implement social commerce for brands, third party ventures have developed their own plug-ins and apps to facilitate social shopping in the meantime.
One example of a third-party app is Soldsie, which allows its followers to make a purchase just by commenting on a post with the word ‘Sold’ on both Instagram and Facebook. After customers post the comment, the app takes care of the rest, emailing them an invoice to complete payment and confirm the order.
Similarly, another company venturing into the space is MikMak. It is an e-commerce platform that allows brands to make all of their digital and social media shoppable. MikMak Attach, the company’s core product, lets brands tie shoppable video ads to additional video content as well as the retailer’s own e-commerce experience. For example, Benefit Cosmetics used MikMak Attach to promote its new mascara, BADgal Bang. Consumers would first watch the traditional ad video, swipe up and see additional video content, add the item to their cart and then tap the ‘Checkout Now’ option and complete their purchase, without ever leaving Instagram.
Prospects for the future
The e-commerce market in India is growing at an unprecedented rate, so much so that even foreign brands are setting up e-commerce platforms before their offline retail shows considerable results. Social commerce as a concept is being used far and wide by brands like Global Desi, Only India, Chumbak, Westside, Myntra, among others, where they provide shoppable links on posts, stories and collaborate with platforms that provide the buy button.
Similar to companies abroad, cashing in on the trend of social commerce through assisting brands, India has its own home-grown marketplace- Meesho. It facilitates an innovative three-way marketplace enabling individuals, SMBs and micro-entrepreneurs across India to connect with potential buyers using social media like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.
Apart from having huge potential for all brands in India, there lies an immense scope for the international brands to tend to in order to prevent their content on social media from getting redundant.
Brands looking to make an impact on social media must become intensively visual- driven, relatable and authentic. The social content e-commerce brands produce is what will pull the customers in and encourage them to find out more about the brand or the product, or brands run the risk of blending into the background of users’ busy, fast-scrolling social media feeds.
Whilst consumers may be browsing and purchasing online more than ever, social commerce is still relatively new. The recent privacy scandals affecting Facebook and other platforms have instilled fear in going through with monetary transactions. Brands looking to move into social commerce should look at ways to build trust and create an online experience that demonstrates transparency in browsing and buying online.
Customer service might seem to be the least interesting area to focus on, but the consumers getting influenced or making purchases through social media, also expect the addressal of their grievances through these channels.
