Partnership Series: Peak Season Success with Social Commerce
From holiday to back-to-school, peak season for any e-commerce brand is a time of celebration, fun, and sometimes nail biting pressure to turn up the results. To defend your nails and improve your bottom line, we are here to share how you can use social commerce to make this the best peak season yet.
In order to optimize towards the ideal social media marketing mix, we met with our social team at Rise and platform partners to gather all the facts and some behind the scenes tips. We found the trends, innovations, and optimizations you need to start implementing today for a strategic social commerce playbook. Check them out below!
Plan Ahead
- Consumers shop early. With longer sale periods and shipping timelines, make sure to build excitement early, even months beforehand, in order to spread awareness and fill your remarketing pool.
- Test now. Aim to run any testing before your peak season formally begins so you have significant learnings on what is and is not exceeding goals. With a strong, data based foundation, you can successfully combine tried and true tactics with innovative social commerce strategies during the big event.
- Check that all tracking is in place prior to the season in order to best report on your investments. Take the time to ask questions and connect to advanced tracking with tools like Meta’s Conversion API or Snapchat retargeting pixels.
- Be Present Across Platforms. Social media spans across more platforms and audiences than ever before, with consumers also regularly engaging across multiple social touchpoints, making your presence on multiple platforms that much more important. Each platform plays a significant role within the consumer shopping journey, many that go well beyond perceptions. For example, TikTok's largest audience is millennials, not Gen-Z, and more than half of Snapchat's users are over 25 years old. Pinterest is a hub for discovery and inspiration, while Reddit facilitates authentic product education and community. Brands need to create a healthy multi-platform combination to reach unique audiences, while also meeting consumers wherever they are.
How to Leverage Social Commerce to Address the Latest Macro Shopping Trends
To make your brand’s ideal strategy, there are three macro shopping trends that the social platforms will help you take on. While all platforms are pushing the limits from awareness to conversion, we dug into how some are specifically tackling these trends:
1. Creators & Influencers
Creators are key! Consumers care where their content is coming from and they want to discover and buy from who they follow and trust. The tremendous growth of influencer marketing has provided a more personalized way for brands to diversify their creative source and amplify their message authentically. Here’s why:
- Google reported that uploads of videos with “Shop with Me” in the title increased by over 60% since last year. Their creator network, Brand Connect, is another avenue where brands can consider influencer marketing on YouTube and elsewhere in the Google ecosystem.
- 1/3 of Meta beauty shoppers discover new brands from creators
- 42% of TikTok users say they are likely to discover products from creator videos
TikTok is one platform that makes it easy for brands to boost and put paid media dollars behind influencer content.
TikTok's highly unduplicated audience is an opportunity for your brand to have high exposure to new consumers for the holidays. Plus, TikTok is more than a place for discovery and storytelling. It also is highly shoppable, especially in collaboration with creators.
So we know TikTok has an audience and is a place to demonstrate a bit of personality. Now we just need the right ad type. TikTok’s recently launched, Live Shopping Ads, give brands the opportunity to pair a highly authentic voice of an influencer with an ad unit that amplifies discovery and action of shopping. Plus, it can be used organically in addition to the paid option for even more reach.
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2. On-Platform Shopping
Not only do consumers care who and where their content comes from, they also want a seamless shopping experience. And the social platforms have invested in innovation to do just that - simplify the checkout experience. Consumers want a fast and easy path to purchase and brands need to maximize those spontaneous buys!
Meta knows that in order to reach new customers this holiday shopping season, you need to make any moment, a shopping moment.
Meta’s collection of shoppable ads, like Ads with Product Tags, Advantage+ Catalog Ads (formerly Dynamic Ads) and Digital Circulars, turn discoveries into purchases, all across the Meta owned platforms.
The Instagram checkout experience has also brought the checkout journey inside the platform, so consumers don’t even have to leave.
Fewer steps to purchase → Easier user experience → More conversions
Speaking of conversions, the world watches YouTube, but do they visit to view or also to buy? Here is a number you may not expect:
The advertising world in general is seeing a growing investment in Connected TV with Google pushing more money into YouTube, making it the #1 place to reach viewers across all devices. There also are Shoppable ad placements beyond video, creating the opportunity for brands to more seriously look at YouTube for high conversion and return performance for holiday. Their Shoppable formats make it easy not only for brands to connect their product feeds to videos, but also to drive users to purchase then and there!
Whether YouTube is new to you or you are looking to expand a current approach, this holiday is the perfect time to incorporate more YouTube and drive results you care about.
3. Augmented Reality
Product checkout experiences are not the only way platforms are innovating to make a seamless and engaging customer journey. They've also invested heavily in Augmented Reality (AR) to make it happen.
Paid AR ads are the path to immersive advertising. Brands should be opting into AR engagement and shoppable lenses now in order to be prepped for the future.
Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat have all heavily invested in AR technology, especially when it comes to shoppable AR. So what to do? Make AR a part of your digital strategy and test into it across various platforms. A great place to start or build on your existing strategy is on Snapchat.
Snapchat is a driver of research, inspiration, and conversion using their advanced camera technology.
If you’re new to AR ads, Snapchat's camera first focus makes it very easy for brands to opt in. There are no minimums and their AR Builder tool makes creative production a breeze. Plus, the platform is the second-largest source of AR discovery during shopping, after store websites.
Now that you're ready for your busiest sales season, if you want to learn more about crafting impactful social media strategies year-round, don’t hesitate to contact us!