For Retailers, Finishing in the Black Depends on Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the new marketing. The pandemic pushed digital adoption forward five years in eight weeks. Now, as the country reopens, internet-centric habits consumers developed during their past 18 months of downtime will remain. Retailers wanting to finish the year in the black will need a strong social commerce push and positive digital experience for customers to do it.  

In short: if you aren’t selling on social media, you’re not connecting with customers as well as you could be. Here, I share five insights I’ve seen net positive results for retail companies in 2021. 

5 Tips to Supercharge Your Social Commerce Strategy 

Marketers have said for some time that Amazon is the new storefront. While it has long worked to be consumers’ single destination for everything they buy, a new app called Shein has quietly overtaken Amazon as the most installed shopping app in America. Called the “TikTok of e-commerce,” Shein controls its entire production chain from design to manufacturing, which allows it to turn out hundreds of new products tailored to user preferences daily. Like TikTok, Shein uses algorithms to understand user habits in real-time.  

It’s a timely reminder for retailers of just how digital the world has become. And, it’s why understanding social algorithms is my first insight. 

Tip #1: Understand social commerce algorithms.

Complete understanding from a technical level is unnecessary. But gaining high level knowledge of how social channels like Instagram decide what content to show each individual user helps you create content that captures the imagination (and dollars) of your ideal audiences. For their part, platforms are eager to help advertisers and businesses understand how their platforms work, because it leads to a better overall experience for every user.  

The first thing to know about the Instagram algorithm is that there are actually multiple algorithms influencing the platform. One important algorithm influences what people see in their feeds, by ranking posts based on what users indicate they value most. For this reason, feeds and Stories in Instagram focus on posts from users’ friends, while Explore and Reels are used to display posts based on trends and interests. Retailers can act on this insight by creating content for the Explore and Reels tabs that promote their products.  

Read more: Instagram Provides a New Overview of How Its Algorithms Work 

 Tip #2: Invest in customer experience insight. 

Like brand, customer experience is the total of every interaction a customer has with an organization, from discovery to post-purchase and beyond. Every touchpoint along the buyer journey contributes to the overall experience with a brand or business and influences whether or not a customer will make an initial, or repeat, purchase. If you don’t already have recent insight into the journey a customer takes with your brand on digital channels, it’s critical to gain it now. Going into the holiday season armed with knowledge of the customer experience and the actions to take to improve it, will help retailers come out of it ahead. 

OBI helped a global PC vendor build a better brand with its o.VOC methodology. Boosting revenue through social commerce starts with knowing what your customers are thinking and doing across the buyer journey. Our client needed a third party to provide an unbiased and detailed examination of their customers’ journeys with its brand.  

Our multi-dimensional, omnichannel customer experience assessment methodology was a perfect fit. A mix of quantitative and qualitative data was harvested through: 

• Customer, general population and target demographic surveys 
• Secret shopping 
• Customer journey mapping 
• Digital audit and target audience intelligence study 
• 400+ customer and employee interviews 
• Brand and competitor marketing reviews   

That information yielded insights into all four phases of the buyer journey (Exploration, Research, Purchase, Post Purchase). Secret shoppers simulated real-life situations by performing multiple tasks across the buyer journey. Their tasks were tracked in real time using a digital portal and analyzed at a micro level to identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement.  

Ultimately, the insights and recommendations helped the PC vendor see what their customers saw across their journey and avoid the echo chamber so many brands trap themselves in. 

Read more: See how one rental community used customer journey insight to boost interest in its property 

Tip #3: Use the right influencers to promote your products on social. 

Celebrity influencer arrangements aren’t possible for every business due to the budget and unique alignments necessary to execute them. However, the same principals for identifying the right celebrity influencer arrangement apply to microinfluencers, graninfluencers and every other type of influencer as well. It’s no secret, for instance, that Dolly Parton loves wigs. When I read her interview with the Wall Street Journal announcing not just her own fragrance line, but her broad appeal with all Americans, I saw an influencer arrangement for a wig brand in her future.  

The most important thing with influencer marketing is to work with influencers whose audiences align with your own, and whose messaging and personality support that of your own brand.  

Read more: Influencer Marketing Tips & Tricks 

Tip #4: Keep up with social commerce trends. 

Customer behaviors changed dramatically over the past 18 months. A report from CouponFollow found that online shopping increased 208% from April 2019 to April 2020, and 48% of social media users surveyed made at least one purchase on a social media channel in 2020, cementing the reality of social commerce in the American economy.  

Facebook and Instagram are the most popular social channels for shopping, and customers are most comfortable clicking on an ad (63%) or post (48%) to an external site to make a purchase. For this reason, a mix of organic and paid content on social channels is necessary to successfully sell products on social media. Photos and tutorials of people using your product, testimonials, feedback from real users, and featuring multiple items laid out on a flat surface are all effective ways to post about your products on social channels. 

Read more: How to sell your products on Instagram 

Tip #5: Don’t write off newer social channels as places to promote your products. 

While Instagram and Facebook may be the most popular, and established, social channels for commerce, newer entrants like TikTok and Snapchat should not be ignored. Snapchat just announced a new holiday season guide and resource hub for retailers that can help plan successful social campaigns for the holiday season. The existence of the hub is a timely reminder of the need to consider the platform, even if you ultimately decide not to use it. If your customers are there (and believe me, they are), then you need to give it a serious look. 

Read more: Snapchat Resource Hub for Retailers 

 A final word for retailers 

Retailers that invest in customer journey insights earn six times more revenue than retailers who don’t. The better you understand your customers, the more profit you will generate and the better experience you will deliver. Growth-minded retailers know that customer insight is the key to sales success.  

Do you need a social commerce strategy for the 2021 holiday season? Message me now to start a conversation that will lead to profitable results.