Editor’s note: Robert Passikoff is founder and president of Brand Keys, a New York-based research firm.
Marketers are always looking for new ways to engage consumers. And today’s consumer are turning to social media as a way to gather information and share knowledge (and opinions). Five years ago, Brand Keys might have suggested that consumers would need time to get used to the idea of shopping on mobile devises. But with more than 85% of U.S. shoppers making purchases online, it’s a given. And with ever-increasing consumer expectations regarding outreach – both personal and commercial – alternative platforms with shoppable posts are going to be a leading trend for the foreseeable future.
Consumers live online. They shop, share and learn online. And what they’ve learned and shared is that they have access to virtually everything. When they have questions, they search. But expectations are such that they want immediate access to something when they see it online.
Where is it? What’s in it? What is she wearing? How much does it cost? Where can I find it? Consumers want shoppable posts. They want to tap on an image and learn everything about it.
Tap to shop
New platforms able to accommodate the entire sales process – or at the very least facilitate it – will assist brands and market researchers in accurately measuring and managing attitudes and behaviors, engagement and efforts via shoppable posts. Tap on an item that captures your attention or engages you. Tap on an item to show the price. Tap on a price for more product information. Tap on the link to shop.
Core B2C platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – and even B2B platforms like LinkedIn – are not currently meeting consumer expectations regarding the “Wow!” archetype, but all of them are adopting or developing shoppable strategies to keep up with competition like Amazon. Here are some recent examples:
- TikTok’s ads have a “shop now” button connected to user-generated content that redirects users to a microsite.
- Instagram introduced a program that allows retailers with the Shopify network to embed point-of-sale items in their posts.
- New research says that 92% of Pinterest users feel the platform helps them make purchasing decisions.
- Shoppable ads on Google Image are a new ad format that gives brands the opportunity to tag multiple products in a single, lifestyle image. These ads appear in Google Images and give users the ability to hover over any sponsored ad for more information, including the items for sale, prices and the brands. Google is testing this shoppable ad format with select retailers.
From a retail and market research perspective, shoppable analytics should be able to point the way to prioritizing which products retailers want to make shoppable. It’s also going to necessitate finding ways to seamlessly blend social and retail, because the truth is that most of what’s out there and what engages consumers is broader (and less specific) than retail alone. Today, engagement is about awareness and emotion, and awareness and emotion is the doorway for making something desired and eminently sociable, sharable and shoppable. The idea of shoppable posts gives consumers the opportunity to buy immediately.
Social media and e-commerce
Native integration will make it easier for consumers to tag and shop products. In addition, finding product pages will be easier, more instinctive and more immediate, all of which promises to make online experiences more relevant, engaging, customizable and profitable for shoppable ads. In the past two years, major players have been creating formats where online and social network users can make purchases within the creative. From a marketing research perspective, new platforms specifically designed to accommodate shoppable ads have the added advantage of providing visitation and advertising efficacy because they will deliver nanosecond measures of consumer, attention, engagement, behavior and sales.
Most B2C brands already have access to social and lifestyle content. While a lot of it is siloed and not currently designed for commerce, marketing research can help to segment and repurpose the content. Consumer-generated and influencer content can often be used both socially and commercially.
And while this is a very big trend and an even bigger idea, brands should start small. I recommend retailers start with their own social networking efforts and websites. With the continuing growth of social media and e-commerce (and new platforms to accommodate shoppable posts), synergy between the two is going to be massive.
That’s something that B2B brands are going to have to pay attention to and foster. B2B brands should not hide in their silos. B2B customers are just as social as B2C – in some instances more so. B2B will be the next big thing for social media and will likely be a focus of new social networking platforms.
A maturing social marketplace
For brands and market researchers the measurement paradigm has become commerce and sharing. The scale of what’s available to consumers in both social and retail platforms is huge and more alternative platforms are on the way. Amid a maturing digital, online, social and retail marketplace, tech companies are working very hard to make everything more transactional.
Shoppable posts are going to become socially driven consumers’ off-ramp for commerce, a fast lane for brands and a new GPS for market researchers.