building brands through social e commerce

Building Brands Through Social E-commerce

Social e-commerce is a new, expanding strategy for e-commerce

sites. However, it is important to be able to differentiate the two

kinds of social e-commerce: One occurs on the e-commerce site

itself, usually on a platform managed by the company. Whereas

the other, offsite social e-commerce, occurs on social media sites

and blogs, often outside of the control of the e-commerce

company concerned.

Either place has its own ways of engagement, but their

advantages are quite similar:

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Community – The ability to correctly gauge your target

audience’s social mood and expectations of your product

due to them being in one collective group.

Social proof – The evidence to show that people like your

product through their own social channels.

Authority and engagement – Which indicates if your product

resonates and engages your target audience in both quality

and customer satisfaction.

Firms Making Business Through It

Facebook, for example, is enabling businesses to “chat” with

consumers through its Messenger platform. The idea is that users

can chat with organizations to get information, answer questions

and transact through Messenger.

For example, imagine a scenario in which two friends are chatting

on Messenger about meeting up for dinner at a favorite

restaurant. Without leaving Messenger, they reach out to the

restaurant’s bot to use chat to book the table. If the settings

allow, the restaurant’s bot could even reach out directly to the


users, having spotted the restaurant mentioned in a conversation,

and confirm their reservation.

Shopping functionalities in the social realm (i.e. Facebook’s and

Twitter’s “buy” buttons and Curalate’s Like2Buy platform for

Instagram) tell us that social is going to get a whole lot more

shoppable in 2017. Retailers that have already started

participating in the trend include Nordstrom and Target, which are

using the Like2Buy platform on Instagram, and Home Depot,

(RED), and Burberry, which are testing Twitter’s buy button.

Another example would be of brands are coming up with-Buy one

and donate one. A campaign was run by TOMS Shoes Inc. wherein

you can buy a pair of shoe and donate one pair to needy ones. It

was called as Buy One, Give one. It not only spread the brand’s

name but also shared its social mission with customers.

India Not Far Behind

Following the trend, Indian fashion discovery platforms Wooplr

and Roposo have added commerce in addition to


branding/advertising as a source of revenue. With the expansion

of in-app shopping, social e-commerce is bound to leapfrog in

2017.

In 2016, it is estimated that sales worth around $50 billion were

generated using social networks, an increase of $20 billion from

the previous year. No wonder leading social networks like

Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest have introduced ‘shop now’

features.

Wooplr even claims to have positive unit economics on every

transaction and charges upward of 20% as commission from

brands. It does fashion campaigns with brands. “We worked with

brands like Zara and Levi’s to launch their new collection and also

did a campaign with Forever21 and helped them create the 2016

calendar with 12 influencers,” says Wooplr’s CEO Arjun Zacharia.

On the revenue front, Roposo has tie-ups with marketplaces and

works as an affiliate marketer to e-commerce players like Jabong.

Recently, it also started monetizing through its ‘chat and buy’

feature.


“Brands are approaching us for influencer marketing. To leverage

this we recently launched Bizdrum to connect brands with

influencers for their social reach.This will work as another revenue

stream for us,” says Mayank Bhangadia, co-founder and CEO,

Roposo.

Some Great Benefits Of Social E-commerce

One can use it as a metric for measuring the effectiveness of

your e-commerce marketing. You can measure the return on

investment for your partners or backers through the effects

your efforts make on social e-commerce through social

media.

More often than not, it will drive sales by a considerable

degree, allowing you to accurately predict growth and future

demand.

With most reviews now found through social media sites,

listening to reviews and comments on your brand on social

media allows for a much more responsive brand


engagement process, while providing a future opportunity to

build customer relations.

Strong social e-commerce-driven business can drastically

widen its reach through social media channels, especially if

the strategy incorporates organic and viral growth.

“Perhaps the key aspect of conversational commerce, however, is

that it allows users to converse in their platform of choice, and

therefore takes channel transparency to the next level,” says

Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner.

Things To Be Taken Care Of

As with any channel to market, conversational commerce

solutions will need to fit with the other physical and digital

channels already in place.

It’s also important to remember that customers see

messaging platforms as a peer-to-peer communication tool,

so care should be taken that customers don’t see this new

channel of communication as an intrusion on their personal

conversations.


Conclusion

Social e-commerce allows for organic marketing and a stronger

brand presence in brand engagements. Ultimately, natural-

language interactions will become the norm in terms of how

people expect to interact with technology. Forecasts predict that

2017 is the year for social e-commerce and it’s only going to get

bigger from here.


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