In the first part of our two-part series on Social Commerce, we defined the concept and illustrated how it capitalized on “Social Proof”, “Impulse Shopping”, and a friction-less experience to change the way eCommerce is done. The multi-step traditional journey is effectively reduced into two steps: 1) Seeing the product and 2) Buying it. Today we’ll review some examples and share some guidelines that emerging and established brands alike can use to capitalize on Social Commerce.
Undoubtedly, the elephant in the room, when it comes to new methodologies is “Does it work?” To quote Cuba Goodin Jr. in Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money”. To answer that question, we’ll look at a few examples:
Marvel Studios
Despite being one of the world’s biggest movie studios, Marvel remains at the forefront of innovation. As such, it has been a leader in its adoption of social media marketing growing and engaging with its audience. Extending to its approach to social commerce was a natural extension of that strategy. As part of their promotion for the Avengers and Ant Man movies, it successfully executed on an aggressive social commerce strategy that saw them achieve 58% conversion rate for ticket sales tied to the Avengers and Ant Man movies. To put it in perspective, according to GrowCode and Compass, the average conversion rate for eCommerce in 2019 is 2.35% - with the highest quartile achieving 12%. By contrast, Marvel Studios was able to achieve 58% (~25x the average / ~5x the highest quartile) conversion in ticket sales.
Using a specific hashtag to its organic content, a comment by a user or prospect would trigger a bot-generated checkout process in the user’s DM. Here’s what it looked like from the users perspective:
Jordan Brand
As part of its NBA ALL STAR promotions, Jordan brand launched a Social Commerce strategy tied to the release of a new signature shoe: the Nike Air Jordan Tinker (AJ III Tinker). As part of this promotion, Nike became the first brand to sell directly through Snapchat and have the sneaker sell out in 23 minutes. They did so via a half- analog, half digital experience supported by same-day delivery (instant gratification). To buy a sneaker, all a user needed to do was snap a special QR code which instantly opened a store-like interface within SnapChat:
Scan a code
Launch checkout process
Now, the reality is those examples are that of Nike and Marvel, companies that have access to resources that the average Shopify or eCommerce store won’t have. Still, there are two guidelines that the average brand or store can leverage:
Social Commerce is an extension of Social Media Marketing
As such, having a comprehensive social media marketing strategy is required. To do so, one must establish a baseline for social media marketing performance with a particular audience.We recommend performing an audit to understand the full funnel: from impressions to revenue:
- Native networks can provide insights around likes, shares, and impressions (organic content) and you can leverage corresponding Pixels to get some insights into your ads.
- To kick things to the next level, you may want to get a clear picture of how those basic metrics are impacting web traffic via a web analytic tool like Google Analytics. If you have nice images, people will likely click on them, but does that drive traffic to your website?
- Lastly, you may want to marry that with your shopify sales data to understand if this is driving the right web traffic: are my web visits from social from people that buy? Understand the web visit from your social channels and content and its impact on revenue and profitability will help you get a solid grasp on your current social media audience’s appetite for Social Commerce.
- Now if for you this seems daunting or time consuming, you can leverage a turnkey solution like ThoughtMetric. With ThoughtMetric, in a matter of clicks, you can get a holistic picture from impressions to sales transactions and revenue with no complex pixels or UTM codes.
Now if for you this seems daunting or time consuming, you can leverage a turnkey solution like ThoughtMetric. With ThoughtMetric, in a matter of clicks, you can get a holistic picture from impressions to sales transactions and revenue with no complex pixels or UTM codes.
Tight Customer Experience
At the crux of Social Commerce is a seamless and frictionless experience. In a matter of clicks, the prospects went from image to checkout. As such, whether it’s via IG Checkout, Shopify store integration, or Shoppable content, any successful Social Commerce needs to focus on having a sharp customer experience. Minimizing friction is paramount.
Brands like Nike and Marvel have had successful campaigns showcasing the effectiveness of Social Commerce. As part of a comprehensive social media marketing strategy, Social Commerce can amplify, if not revolutionize, an ecommerce brands’ ecommerce experience. If you are new to social commerce, we recommend starting with an assessment of the effectiveness of your social media marketing- you can do so using a combination of tools or leverage a tool like ThoughtMetric- and focus on a frictionless experience.