Marketing Briefing: ‘Build for the future’: Marketers and agency execs want to make their advertising work for social commerce

By Kristina Monllos

Selling on social platforms isn’t new — platforms have been rolling out shopping capabilities and updates for the last few years — but it is becoming a bigger focus for marketers this year.

As platforms like TikTok and Instagram, among others, aim to make it easier for people to see something from their favorite creator, click to buy it and then purchase it through the app, it’s making social commerce more important for marketers. That means marketers need to tweak their overall marketing approach to account for a world where someone may not ever click out of a social app to their site to buy something, according to marketers and agency execs.

“Before, you had creators do a teaser for your brand; now, you need them to do the full show,” said Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing shop Village Marketing, which was recently acquired by WPP. “That’s a totally different prompt. Before they had to garner interest and drive someone to a [brand] where the brand would then close that sale. Now, brands need creators to close [sales] entirely.”

As platforms like TikTok and Instagram prioritize social commerce, marketers, agency execs and creators will need to navigate a “monumental shift” in strategy as working with influencers will move beyond brand awareness and media play to a “commerce engine” within the platforms, noted Segar. As previously reported by Digiday, major marketers like L’Oreal are already focused on commerce via TikTok.

“E-commerce has generally been about replenishment — there are often functional and practical motivations behind it,” Lex Bradshaw-Zanger, CMO of L’Oréal U.K. and Ireland, previously told Digiday of the brand’s focus on shopping on TikTok. “TikTok and the creators there are all about discovery so that shopping experience is being reinvented around that discovery element of scrolling through the app being brought together with the entertainment people get from watching creators.”

L’Oreal isn’t alone. Marketers and agency execs say conversations about social commerce and plans to test out strategies on platforms to focus on social commerce are heating up. “We’ll be doing a number of test campaigns with live social commerce this year,” said Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism. “There’s definitely a broader awareness of this and excitement. Overall, the space seems very nascent, but it’s clear it’s an arena that is going to be big.”

Gahan continued: “It ties into this macro shift as well, [in which] iOS 14 targeting is not what it once was, so collaborating with communities to sell directly via social seems like it’s going to grow considerably.”

How brands will work with creators, platforms and agencies to adapt to a changing social landscape where more shopping is done via platforms rather than brands’ websites is yet to be seen. Even so, brands are looking at ways to capitalize on social commerce as platforms emphasize it.

“Social commerce is only going to become more and more normal for more people to use,” said Cheryl Gresham, CMO of phone carrier Visible; …read more

Source:: Digiday