Social Commerce: Simplifying the Customer Journey

Learn how social commerce can simplify the customer journey. Marketing through social media platforms might be the trick you need to meet your e-commerce goals.

Social commerce is a not-so-new game for brands to compete in. Back in 2005, Yahoo! coined the term to describe its user-generated content features like pick lists, ratings, and content tagging, that were part of a push to prioritize social media and consumer feedback. 

Now, we’ve moved past having a select few features designated to amplifying customer voices. With social media platforms at the front of almost every online action, social commerce has become an even bigger marvel.

What Is Social Commerce?

The current definition of social commerce as the marriage of social media and ecommerce highlights the use of social networks to sell products or services. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter are some of the most popular social commerce platforms, primarily because of their massive number of active users. As social media continues to grow, especially in post-pandemic life, social commerce has become the new online shopping experience for Gen Z, Millennials, and every other online demographic.

Your customers use social channels for all of their wants and needs. News, entertainment, community, new products – everything is in-app. It’s a unified experience, planting social proof for your products right next to the “buy” button.

Social Commerce: Features that Benefit Businesses

Social commerce benefits ecommerce sites because it allows them to leverage social media apps for increased reach, engagement, and sales. Your customers can go from browsing your Facebook Page to clicking “shop now” and heading to checkout in a matter of seconds.

Now, it’s also easier to promote your site on socials, with add-ins for Shopify, Amazon, and other ecommerce platforms, plus built-in ways to tag product catalogs and other links. Apps are incorporating new features designed for advertising optimization, and more and more sites are adding a “Shop tab” to persuade users to focus on products while they explore their socials.

With a wide variety of social commerce spaces, from Facebook Shops to Instagram shopping and TikTok, there are even more places for your brand to conquer social shopping.

And social commerce continues to expand daily. Customers can now communicate with sellers via messenger features, click on user-generated hashtags to find new products, and use social media apps as shopping search engines

Another example of social commerce’s evolution is the integration of live shopping. Popularized by China, live shopping allows viewers to watch livestreams (often hosted by influencers), explore products, and buy items from the brand’s storefront in real time. The functionality of the swift switch from live video viewing to instantaneous purchase is a prime example of the ways social commerce is unstoppable.

First Media’s Social Commerce Strategy

Your brand’s marketing strategy can make or break your success in social commerce. Just because it’s ubiquitous does not mean it’s always successfully implemented.

First Media’s social commerce strategy embraces shoppable content to further enhance the ecommerce customer experience, reduce friction, and simplify the path to purchase. We use multiple shoppable content formats to hit social consumers at every stage:

  • Organic social: Powerful digital storytelling distributed across our brand social platforms. Our content is shoppable at many online stores, giving endless access points for consumers to meet your brand.
  • Long-form content: Custom long-form content that drives social shopping. First Media’s long-form content is distributed on TV, Facebook Watch, YouTube, and TikTok.
  • Performance marketing ads: Paid CPA dynamic ads targeting social media users and potential customers. This paid content drives direct brand awareness and action through shoppable posts.
  • Out-of-home: Custom digital experience that meets users whenever they leave their homes. All First Media’s out-of-home content is 100% shoppable through scannable QR codes, bridging the gap between online and offline marketing.

The Real Difference: Strategic Shoppable Content in Action

We take content users are already engaging with and drive them to action by making it all 100% shoppable. Incorporating all forms of shoppable content for a 360-degree digital experience, we deliver a data-driven path-to-purchase pipeline with no friction for your users.

Our 360° Shoppable Walmart Campaign shows just how impactful our social commerce strategy can be.

The 12-week campaign consisted of original video content for social and television made to engage, excite, and drive user action through a seamless shoppable experience.

So Yummy, our food and drink publishing channel, distributed organic recipe-based content to drive initial awareness and engagement. This organic social campaign drove 154K clicks to the shoppable landing page.

After engaging and exciting target audiences through social media marketing, we created performance marketing ads based on that organic content for the users who engaged with it. Each dynamic ad included a specific call-to-action to “shop all recipes,” driving action, purchase, and purchase intent.

Pushing the campaign even further, a custom 10-episode television show exclusively featuring Walmart products was developed for So Yummy’s linear TV network. The series, titled Unbox’d, allowed viewers to use a text code to purchase products through their mobile devices. This long-form content explored exciting new avenues to make online shopping as intriguing as possible for our viewers. Influencers in the cast of Unbox’d also created custom content for extra amplification.

Unbox’d garnered more than 6.9 million views and 2.4 million engagements, providing more opportunities for direct purchases for Walmart from viewers-turned-online shoppers.

Our multi-pronged strategy for the 360° Shoppable Walmart Campaign followed social commerce trends to execute every form of shoppable content, plus performance marketing and influencer marketing solutions. The campaign offered visible results by driving ecommerce sales with high-quality custom content, partnerships with influencers, and data-driven practices.

Partnering with First Media to Simplify the Customer Journey

Shoppable content is the key to social commerce. Turning inspirational content into transactional experiences paves a path for your consumers, improving their experience, growing awareness for your social channels, and increasing your ecommerce sales in the process. Drive more online shoppers to your ecommerce site in real-time by partnering with First Media to enhance your social commerce strategy.