Social Commerce, Have You Started?
Organisations go where people go, whether these are boutiques to hip neighbourhoods (think of soho, NY) or nowadays brands entering the social arena. The next step is making sure you can offer your product and service on these ‘social’ channels. Learn more about the power of Social Commerce…
Alas, we can’t blindly adopt our e-commerce strategy to this connected web…
Peer Pressure
We all know that the biggest influencers in our purchasing funnel are our peers. But not only should we mobilise our peers to advocate our stuff, and have them convince their friends to buy are stuff. We need to add value to a relationship.
When you do not create a win-win relationship with your followers, you will not sell more of your products or services. Having a big fanbase is fun, makes a good story on the golf course and might even impress your friends or co-workers. However it doesn’t mean that these ‘fans’ would recommend you to others (as they were probably ‘bribed’ to follow your brand) or have any connection with your brand.
Only the ones that give you an NPS of 8 or higher and the ones that rate you lower than 4 are followers that add value to your brand. These are the ones you can sell your product to, help them in their needs and build a valuable relationship with.
Social Commerce Market
The definition of social commerce is still evolving; but it basically means selling your product and services through social channels but with slightly different rules. On-line behaviour: more than 25% of all time spent online is on social networks. It has been predicted (booz&co) that the social commerce market will grow to $ 15,000,000,000 (big number 15 Billion) in 2014 and to 30 Billion in 2015!
This is 10% of the entire eCommerce market. So it is time to re-imagine, sharpen our saws and prepare for battle. Timing is an essential game influencer in the social web; you cant buy relationships, you build them… so if your competition starts before you, they will have a great advantage.
How to start?
Check out your competitors, aren’t your competitors on social commerce? Check out their social presence and performance; how is their relationship with their followers? Are they yelling ‘look at me and buy my shit’ or are they listening and talking and having fun with their followers?
Reflect their performance to your own: this will give you an insight of their competitive edge. We need the people that give us a high or low NPS to create a game plan and sell… remember?
A top 5 steps:
- set-up strategy, build your community and grow your s-CRM
- evaluate and establish your relationships
- content, content, content: make a beautiful page, write stories, solicit feedback and great exclusive offerings
- gear up your internal organisation: customer care, logistics and marketeerd
- promote your shop in your owned channels, earn attention around your content and integrate your shop location in paid media outings.
Who Does What?
To get an impression how others talk shop, I comprised two lists. One of the top retailers and their increase and the other is the top-20 of brands. (yes, we can safely say that Lady Gaga is a brand nowadays).
Definitely leading the pack is the entertainment industry; music, sports and film, they all have a strong presence. As said; learn from them and start for yourself. It is extremely difficult to overtake your competitors if they are in the lead.
Top 25 Retailers + Increase
| Rank | Prev. Rank | Retailer | September Fans |
September Increase |
September % Increase |
| 1 | 1 | Victoria’s Secret | 15,307,759 | 210,978 | 1% |
| 2 | 2 | adidas Originals | 11,165,986 | 175,350 | 2% |
| 3 | 3 | Victoria’s Secret Pink | 10,413,662 | 84,249 | 1% |
| 4 | 4 | Walmart | 9,323,010 | 522,645 | 6% |
| 5 | 5 | Burberry | 8,598,039 | 513,818 | 6% |
| 6 | 6 | Levi’s | 7,464,384 | 181,213 | 2% |
| 7 | 7 | WWE | 6,760,135 | 104,617 | 2% |
| 8 | 8 | Lacoste | 6,526,625 | 123,563 | 2% |
| 9 | 9 | Hollister Co. | 6,044,509 | 109,249 | 2% |
| 10 | 10 | Kohl’s | 5,774,477 | 53,851 | 1% |
| 11 | 11 | Target | 5,578,391 | 137,541 | 3% |
| 12 | 12 | Abercrombie & Fitch | 5,450,902 | 91,143 | 2% |
| 13 | 13 | American Eagle Outfitters | 5,425,455 | 76,510 | 1% |
| 14 | 14 | Gucci | 5,375,022 | 116,216 | 2% |
| 15 | 15 | Aeropostale | 5,221,075 | 72,332 | 1% |
| 16 | 16 | Forever 21 | 5,152,065 | 69,279 | 1% |
| 17 | 17 | Nike | 5,132,174 | 151,724 | 3% |
| 18 | 18 | Best Buy | 4,729,191 | 564,091 | 14% |
| 19 | 19 | Ralph Lauren | 4,017,496 | 123,909 | 3% |
| 20 | 20 | NFL | 3,948,754 | 136,364 | 4% |
| 21 | 21 | Hot Topic | 3,540,718 | 57,209 | 2% |
| 22 | 22 | Dolce & Gabbana | 3,319,258 | 60,959 | 2% |
| 23 | 23 | GameStop | 2,842,519 | 85,181 | 3% |
| 24 | 24 | Old Navy | 2,527,573 | 72,762 | 3% |
| 25 | 25 | Macy’s | 2,514,069 | 182,338 | 8% |
source; socialcommercetoday.com
Top 20 facebook shops
- Lady Gaga
- Justin Bieber
- Starbucks
- Green Day
- Grey’s Anatomy
- Muse
- NBA
- Dexter
- Desperate Housewives
- Lost
- Jason Mraz
- UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship
- George Lopez
- Liverpool FC
- WWE
- 30 Seconds to Mars
- I Love Being Black
- Batman: The Dark Knight
- Celtics
- Best Buy
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Nice article Neil..
I really wonder why brick and mortar stores don’t offer their online services instore. For example: how many times have you been to a store for clothes and they don’t have your size. They will send you to another store or ask if you want to make a reservation.. I don’t want that I want the product. They should say: shall we order the product in our online store you’ll have it within 2 day’s. You connect to the client, sell and both parties are happy.
On- and offline should work more seamlessly in my opinion. Social commerce could be a prefect solution, because you can login with your Facebook account and don’t have to have an account for the store in question.
Cheers,
Rick
Look at Amazon.com: in many ways they have been offering a shopping experience no retail store can offer.
At least: many retail stores have pretty young and cheap workers that know jack shit about the products.
Retail stores should work on their experience to top online.
I agree on both.. with the migration to online shopping and the brand experience you can find in retail: I believe in a few years time we will see the retail stores as flagshipstores and experience centres, successively we will be shopping from the comfort of our own homes.
Really liked your post about using social commerce. For people who are new to the format I’ve written up 5 tips along with an infographic that could be found useful http://venpop.com/2011/5-tips-for-getting-started-with-f-commerce-infographic/
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