Cover Story: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
A Retail Social Commerce Strategy for the Holidays
2012 was another year of massive change for social commerce. Pinterest was the darling of retail last year, as product curation and social discovery has become a primary vehicle to drive social commerce. In parallel, Facebook has been transforming itself from a social website into a marketing platform, and is now the platform for social identity and marketing scale. Instagram is also trending because it combines mobile and photo sharing, both of which are significant to retailers because they enable not only omnichannel engagement but product discovery as well.
In 2013, most retailers are still concentrating on growing social network communities and brand awareness using branded content supplemented with Facebook Ads to get Likes. As in years past, the results of these activities will drive little customer insight or significant return on investment. The new retail social commerce strategy is to create user experiences that motivate consumers to generate content around a retailer's products, then monetize this word-of-mouth advice.
Pinterest's "Pin to Win" and Instagram's "hashtagged" photo contests are the most popular examples of these social campaigns happening today. The leaders in social commerce are going further to create their own tools to foster user product sharing and social discovery on their own sites — think Fab.com. Functionality to create personal collections and activity feeds are appearing on e-commerce sites daily … and just in time. Just as Facebook has rules that don't allow direct use of its platform to deliver rewards, contests and sweepstakes, Pinterest recently announced more restrictive rules that prohibit the majority of the "Pin to Win" campaigns being run today. Social commerce best practices are rapidly evolving; here are some to keep in mind as you plan your holiday strategy:
1. Engage: Host product sharing, social discovery, contests and rewards on your e-commerce website with earned media shared back to the social networks for referral. Start with a simple "Want it to Win it" contest hosted on your site with Facebook, Pinterest and/or Instagram integration. There's plenty of time to launch this capability for the holidays with the right partner. Once you do, you'll have the start of social commerce functionality.
2. Learn: Collect the social profile and product intent information supplied by the above activity and from the integration to social platforms. This data will lead to deep customer insights and product intent.
3. Amplify: Use friend-to-friend sponsored stories, including action-specific targeting, to amplify referral traffic.
4. Scale: Select your best customers and create Facebook Custom Audiences. Begin testing Facebook's Lookalike targeting to be ready to scale social marketing for the holidays.
Jon Kubo is the chief product officer at 8thBridge, a company that offers technology and expertise to help retailers and brands monetize social media. Jon can be reached at jkubo@8thbridge.com.
- Companies:
- 1-800-Flowers.com