Integrating Shoppable Videos Into Your Ecommerce Strategy
It’s no secret that the ecommerce landscape is more competitive than ever in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The death of brick-and-mortar means online shopping is more popular than it ever has been – and why wouldn’t it be? Who doesn’t love saving a trip to the store?
As traffic continues to shift towards online fulfillment, and as younger, more tech-obsessed demographics begin to gain purchasing power, there’s no question the trend towards ecommerce will only continue.
With that in mind, having a robust and frequently-updated marketing strategy – with cutting-edge elements like shoppable video – is crucial to reach these new demographics and customers.
What is Shoppable Video?
Shoppable video is an interactive video where you can click on elements in the video to direct people to various different places. In many ways, youtube’s buttons and banners feature are the earliest forms of shoppable video, allowing content creators to add clickable elements in-video that would then link out to another video or page.
You can find shoppable video almost anywhere on the web, but the usual social media suspects – TikTok, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitch – support shoppable video in various forms, including live strreams. The other places where you may run into shoppable video off these main platforms are product pages or landers for brands.
What goes into shoppable video?
When creating a shoppable video, the key is to have some sort of action in mind that you can design the video around. At the end of the day, you’re probably focused on conversions, CTR and other marketing KPIs that directly affect your bottom line. It all depends on your marketing strategy, but knowing which elements to make interactive to in your shoppable video is critical.
If you’re in the bedding industry, for example, you may want to get your customers to view your various sheets, or maybe you want to feature pillowcases and allow customers to see the many colors you offer. Or maybe you want them to compare textures on your product pages.
Once you have this in mind, you can design the clickable elements to work around your goals, highlighting products and giving the customer an easy way for them to into checkout and ultimately converting as a new customer.
The most successful shoppable videos have a clear, direct series of actions they want the user to take – whether it’s getting someone to convert or just learning more about a company’s various initiatives.
The Benefits of Shoppable Video
Shoppable video obviously offers more potential to marketers than non-interactive video, as you can consistently offer them varied opportunities and methods to dig further into your offerings. Here are just a few ways shoppable video is superior to traditional video marketing:
- More Direct
- Can click right through, right away, and get out of the audience’s way. They don’t have to look for the product – they can literally reach out and grab it.
- More Engaging
- Shoppable ads offer more opportunity for engagement as shoppable video gives the audience a chance to directly engage with the ad. Curiosity is a large driver for conversions of any sort – so giving the audience something to do within the ad can help bring in tuned-out people back in.
- More Accessible
- By giving the audience a series of different cues, prompts, products or calls to action, you give your audience a broader possibility for one of your advertising variables to hit. Every person needs a different lever to buy – and shoppable video gives you more levers than a comparable non-interactive ad.
Where can you post shoppable video?
Livesteaming
Platforms like Twitch and Youtube Live are typically what we think of when it comes to livestreaming, but now platforms like Facebook Live Shopping and Amazon Live are giving businesses the chance to sell in real time – just like Home Shopping Network has done for years with great success.
- Examples:
- Twitch
- Youtube
- Facebook Live Shopping
- Amazon Live
- Pros:
- Creates feeling of closeness for audience
- Immediate feedback and adjustment of strategy
- Highly personalized advertising (down to an individual level!)
- Trusted source for audience (ersatz word-of-mouth marketing)
- Full audience attention
- Cons:
- Livestream only
- Lack of control over content if partnering with content creators
- Time-consuming
- Limited creativity
Social Media
The usual suspects are a painless on-ramp to running shoppable video. With a well-defined infrastructure and established conventions to use as a shortcut to get to your audience, social media is the quickest and easiest way to get going for e-commerce shoppable video.
- Examples:
- TikTok
- Pros:
- Easy and quick to use
- Audience familiar with format
- TikTok and Meta are Shopify-integrated
- Opportunity to leverage on-platform talent
- Cons:
- Limited creativity
- Minuscule attention windows
- Extremely competitive landscape
Natively
You can host your shoppable video natively on your e-commerce site. This option is time consuming and expensive but yields the most creative, unique results that can have BIG upside for your brand.
- Pros:
- Endless creative freedom
- Hyper-specific targeting
- Can A/B test various variables
- Can be integrated specifically with your store
- Warm audience
- Cons:
- Expensive
- Requires expertise to create
- Time-consuming
How First Media Can Help
There’s so much potential for shoppable video in ecommerce that not creating interactive video is missing out on conversions that competitors will gleefully take. But creating a shoppable video with proper functionality and engaging content is another question entirely.
That’s where we come in. Let First Media’s deep expertise and rich network of video experts guide you through the creation of shoppable video that works. We can help you understand and develop a comprehensive plan to start creating shoppable video – so you can start seeing your conversion rates soar.
