Five Ways Brands Can Drive Social Commerce

January 18th, 2010 View Comments

Thought: Facebook will float at the end of this year, as the social commerce area grows as brands establish how to sell through the social graph.

The social graph is what Facebook’s hopes and dreams are built upon, yet to date there aren’t hugely obvious examples of how the social graph dream is going to accelerate social commerce. Clearly, as a Head of Social Media, social commerce is something I am keen to get my brands to test, formulate learnings and grow. Yet, there are few businesses really genuinely thinking about the way to do this.

In order to make social media consistently valuable to clients it needs to deliver a genuine ROI and without social commerce it is difficult how to prove this. Syzygy have predicted that this will be the year that social commerce really grows up, if it does fantastic.. but I think we are, in alot of cases, along way off making this actually happen.

The right thinking is that we should be allowing and encouraging consumers to purchase where they engage, and engage where they purchase. e.g. feeding purchase information into a news feed, raising short-term alerts on product offers to followers.

How can brands get closer to this promised land of social commerce?

1) By shifting to DTC (Direct to Consumer). Wiggle.co.uk is one brand in the UK who I would say have done this really well. They consistently engage away from their site through both Twitter and Facebook profiles, driving short-term usage. Their site and company are set-up to adapt quickly to demands and thus followers feel they are getting a great one-2-one service. They do not have the strategy of waiting for consumers to come to them, but engage and drive purchase from within social channels.

2) By Switching from Cost Per Lead Models to Cost Per Acquisition. By switching to a CPA model, clients are immediately wanting a sale not a lead. The CPL model has worked well for social media due to the availability of the data. However, if clients using social media focus on CPA it will create a need to shorten the purchase process and thus deliver a purchase experience outside of their core site.

3) By Mapping their Social Graph and Purchase Habits. Understanding their consumers’ social media behaviours and the products they purchase will enable them to provide smaller scale solutions. Not all social audiences will want to purchase away from a core site, in fact, not all audiences are social, or confident socially. Therefore, studying who your most social audiences are… and how they purchase on your site will enable you to create smaller bespoke packages.

4) By trying a firesale. Try some really short-term offers on products you want to dispose off. End of season lines for example. Imagine ASOS delivering a Boxing Day sale only through its Facebook News Feeds or Twitter feeds…? Could be quite a magical and interesting thing, plus imagine this overlaid with an auction model… exciting times I think.

5) Invest in Web Analytics to survey what % of users are coming from social channels. My bet is that for alot of companies Facebook is becoming your 2nd digital volume driver behind Google. If this is the case, what are you waiting for?

Digigen Fix:

With anything social, the start up investment can be relatively small. A page and a newsfeed is really all you need to start consumers engaging with your social commerce platform. Of course it can get more complex, but its best to start small, test to see what works, then invest in rapid growth.

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  • The Dza
    some nice ideas here and the social purchase journey is well established, if not well trodden yet, but the problem is that this kind of social commerce is fundamentally at odds with the principles of web 2.0 and with user behaviour on open social platforms. Brands and practitioners need to realise that the online environment is not a place where you can simply tweak traditional commercial techniques to make them look 'social'; but a new paradigm, with new behaviours and a place where old-world commerce is ultimately not welcome. If you want to use social platforms to sell more products and make more money you are on a short, narrow path that leads nowhere. If you make you business model truly social by design, to offer services and products that improve the lives and well-being of the people around you, that is the promised land.
  • mattbambow
    Thanks for responding Dan. I'm not sure I compelely agree with you though. I
    would actively encourage brands to trial different models within the social
    media area to see what works best. Real-time sales feeds into Facebook
    groups and Twitter profiles seem an interesting first entry into this world
    for brands. Vouchering and offer-led activity again I see working well.

    Alongside this an innate understanding of how to get conversation to flow
    (small-talk for brands if you like) and therefore listening to what that
    potential customer is telling you, is a way of opening up more sales
    channels.

    The Engagement DB study from the US clearly shows that more engagement, more
    presence delivers better business performance. All I think this means though
    is that the more social channels you open, the more sales channels you open.


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