Amazon Loses Ground in Social Commerce

by Clare O'Shea Amazon

When it comes to social commerce, Amazon isn’t the only dog in the fight anymore. While Amazon may still be the top product search channel for consumers, it is ceding ground as consumers increasingly turn to social platforms for shopping. In fact, social media is shaping up as a real competitor.

Less Market Share

Declining numbers tell the story: according to Insider Intelligence, in Q1 2023, 56 percent of U.S. adults started their product search on Amazon, a drop from the 63 percent evidenced in Q1 2022. So where are consumers initiating product searches instead? One need look no further than platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube.

The defection from Amazon is currently a generational phenomenon that skews young: a February 2023 GWI survey reveals that for Gen Z product research, social networks have lapped search engines annually since 2020. In the United States, Gen Z is definitely the biggest group turning to social. As Insider Intelligence points out, 43 percent of Gen Z uses TikTok to search products online. By contrast, only 2 percent of Baby Boomers do so.

Money Talks

When it comes to actually making purchases on social platforms, Gen Z again leads the way. As a recent Capgemini survey points out, influencers introduced nearly 50 percent of Gen Z adults to a new brand or product in the six months prior to the survey’s publication; almost one-third of them went on to purchase that product.

Story of a Social App

Snap’s foray into shopping offers a glimpse into the real challenges Amazon faces hanging on to its share of the social commerce pie. In March 2023, Snap announced the launch of a new business unit, called ARES, to help retailers use—and make money from—AR and AI shopping tools.

According to The Verge, AR Enterprise Services (ARES) will furnish retailers with a suite of tools that will make it easy for consumers to virtually try on products like clothing, sunglasses, and shoes — from home. On a practical level, Shopping Suite features allow users to shop and make purchase decisions just as they might in a brick-and-mortar store. For example, a shopper can upload a photo of themselves, then see how a product looks on them, in real time, at home, with that fresh cup of coffee still hot from the kitchen on hand.

Other ARES tools provide recommendations, based on body size and shape, to help ensure shoppers get the right size and fit on the first try. The goal: reduced return rates, which translates into a win/win for both consumers and retailers. Finally, a 3D Viewer tool allows shoppers to examine products from different angles — again, from the comfort of home. According to Snap, more than 300 customers, including Gobi Cashmere and women’s clothing/fashion retailer Princess Polly, have embraced various Shopping Suite features.

More to Come

In the face of shopping tools such as those touted by Snap, Amazon will likely continue to feel the squeeze. TikTok appears to be a particularly strong competitor for the tech behemoth. As a February 2023 Bizrate/Insider Intelligence survey indicates, nearly 20 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 to 34 shopped (and dropped cash) on TikTok in the past month.

And the prediction is that this shopping trend will only intensify: Insider Intelligence forecasts that TikTok will enjoy an uptick in social buyers in 2023—a jaw-dropping 9.6 million, in fact. That’s more than the net increase of Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram combined.

All This Despite the Drama

Advertisers are certainly paying attention. And even though there’s been talk of a straight-up ban of TikTok, marketers are still spending there. As Ben Jankowski, the former head of global media at Mastercard Inc., shared with The Wall Street Journal, “A lot of marketers are getting really good value out of TikTok and if something is performing really well, marketers are typically super slow to try to find alternatives.” And TikTok, by beta-testing search ads, is making it hard for advertisers to ignore the promise inherent in the platform’s 150 million American users.

Contact True Interactive

If Amazon is currently being invited to share the wealth when it comes to social commerce, that only means more opportunities for marketers to explore. Eager to get a better handle on social shopping? Contact us. We can help.

Image source: https://unsplash.com/photos/YddMIRck34I

Lessons from the 2022 Holiday Shopping Season

by Kurt Anagnostopoulos Retail

How was your holiday sales season? For many retailers, the holiday shopping season felt as close to a return to normal as could be hoped for. This does not mean everyone had a great retail season; but some of the disruptive forces from 2020 and 2021 abated, such as supply chain woes and the impact of Covid-19 on in-store shopping. Instead, retailers managed against some of the variable conditions that affect shopping every season, including the state the economy and weather conditions. Here are some major takeaways from the 2022 holiday season:

Economic uncertainty has influenced spend – but by how much? U.S. retail sales grew 7.6 percent during the holiday shopping season, according to a Mastercard report. This was higher than the 7.1 percent growth that Mastercard had predicted in September but lower than the 8.5 percent growth achieved in 2021. Online sales grew 10.6 percent, slightly less than the 11 percent increase last year. Mastercard attributed the lower rates to consumers’ experiencing economic uncertainty. But given just how much uncertainty is in the air right now – including an ongoing war in Ukraine and a looming recession – the slowdown was really nowhere as bad as it could have been.

Retailers that offered price deals did especially well. Remember in 2021 when retailers were reluctant to offer discounts and deals because the supply chain crisis had hurt their inventory levels? That’s an example of an unusual problem that abated in 2022. Inventory levels returned to normal in 2022, and retailers even experienced excess inventory – which happens just about every year. So, they offered more discounts. According to Salesforce, the average U.S. discount rate stands at 19 percent, with the global discount rate at 18 percent an increase of 6 percent globally and in the U.S. year over year. Discounts increased two weeks after Cyber Week, rising 11 percent globally year over year and 14 percent in the U.S. as retailers tried to entice last-minute shoppers ahead of the shipping cutoff window.

Fall sales might have caused a returns problem. In 2022, retailers such as Amazon, Target, and Walmart continued to offer holiday sales in the early fall, continuing a pattern from recent years. Cyber Week was pre-empted by sales such as Amazon’s Prime Days II and Walmart’s Deals for Days. But then returns nearly doubled the week after Cyber Week compared to the previous year and have remained high since then. Salesforce says that the surge in returns could be attributable to people purchasing gifts earlier in the season and then returning them to buy something else on discount. This data underscores how much work retailers still need to do in order to synchronizes pre-Cyber Week sales with consumers’ buying habits and sentiment.

Social continues to fuel online shopping traffic. After hitting all-time highs during Cyber Week, social traffic referring to retailers’ sites grew 23 percent year over during the holiday shopping season, representing 12 percent of all mobile traffic, according to Salesforce. The U.S. is leading this trend, with social traffic growing 28 percent over the first three weeks of December.

Takeaways

Online advertising is as important as ever. Consumers surprised analysts by spending more than predicted even during a recession. Businesses that kept their brand names and merchandise visible were best positioned to win. Retailers that scaled back their online ad spending because they feared consumers were going to spend less ended up missing out.

Social media advertising in particular is essential. Industry watchers have been speculating that social commerce – or the actual purchase of a product on a social app – might be ebbing a bit. But commerce resulting from advertising on social apps appears to be alive and well.

Retailers need to focus on value, not deals. Consumers will continue to respond to deals amid uncertainty – but retailers need to be careful. Discounted products and lower-priced alternatives to name-brand products attracted consumers. But as noted, overselling deals throughout the holiday season may have backfired on retailers when consumers returned products in their quest to find better deals than they were offered.

Retailers need to be nimbler with their ad campaigns. As we saw, consumers continued to demonstrate an uncanny knack for surprising retailers, in this case buying more than expected and apparently being aggressive about trading up with holiday deals. We suggest capitalizing on tools such as Google’s demand forecasts on the Insights page. This predicts upcoming trends relevant to your business so that you can adjust your budget and bidding strategy to capture spikes in demand. Additionally, use Performance Planner to understand how these changes to your advertising spend will affect your predicted clicks, conversions, and conversion values. In addition, Product-specific insights are now at your disposal at the account level in the Google Ads products tab. These insights let you spot underperforming offers, identify products with missing feed attributes and compare your bidding strategy with your top competitors’.

Contact True Interactive

True Interactive has deep experience helping clients plan and implement shopping campaigns online during all seasons. We can help you, too. We understand how to create nimble search campaigns and multi-channel ad outreach to target consumers with the right message at the right time. Contact us to learn more.

Lead photo by Kayle Kaupanger on Unsplash

Why Twitter Launched Twitter Shops

by Bella Schneider Twitter

Twitter gets it. Brands want to drive sales. And shoppers are more motivated to buy if the process is a positive one. Enter Twitter Shops, the platform’s latest bid to foam the runway for consumer purchases. The feature, which ups the number of products brands can display at the top of their profiles, also aims to make the buying transaction even more seamless.

What Is Twitter Shops?

Twitter wants to support businesses; it also aspires to be consumer-friendly. Twitter Shops, which allows brands to display 50 shoppable products, is meant to check both those boxes. Shoppers need only click on “View shop” to scroll through the items a brand has uploaded, then click on a product to open an in-app browser and wrap up their purchase on the brand’s website. Easy!

The new feature is part of a concerted effort Twitter has been making to make shopping on the platform that much friendlier. Shop Module, announced last year, allowed businesses to display up to five products on their profile. Twitter Shops builds off that development. And notably, Twitter will not be taking a cut of revenue from purchases made on Shops.

Bruce Falck, revenue product lead at Twitter, puts it this way: “We know that shoppers come to Twitter to interact with brands and have conversations about products . . . Our growing shopping ecosystem is designed to leverage the power of that shopping conversation and create a pathway for people to go from talking about and discovering products to browsing and purchasing them.”

Why Did Twitter Launch Twitter Shops?

As Falck notes above, Twitter wants to bolster its social commerce functionality. It’s a smart move. As we’ve blogged, social shopping accelerated in popularity during the pandemic, and it’s showing no sign of slowing down. Social media has evolved along with this trend, morphing to meet the needs of users inspired by what they find online. That’s a growing demographic: as Retail Dive points out, a jaw-dropping 87 percent of Gen Z will be looking to social media for shopping inspiration.

Of course, Twitter isn’t the only platform to see the writing on the wall. They have competition: Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok have also made inroads with social shopping. As we’ve blogged, Facebook’s Shops in Groups is intended to “make shopping and buying better on our apps.” Meanwhile, TikTok has partnered up with Shopify to make it easy for TikTok users to shop directly in the TikTok app.

What Brands Should Do

What do these developments mean? We recommend that you:

Understand your audience. Are you reaching out to a demographic that works and plays on platforms like Twitter? The answer to that question will help you decide if it makes sense to lean into a feature like Twitter Shops.

Learn how to use the tools available to you. Every platform has its own requirements for creating content. Moreover, working confidently on these popular sites demands a strong grasp of how to use visuals. If you are going down this path, you must know how to create powerful, effective imagery.

Make sure you are ready to handle the demand. As we’ve blogged, some brands have struggled to keep up with the surge in demand that happens when more shoppers are inspired to buy. Online fulfillment must be up to handling an uptick in sales.

Keep an eye on the competition. How are your direct competitors leveraging digital to build bridges with consumers? What can you learn from their strategies?

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Balance an online presence between the major platforms that offer value in advertising—and shoppability.

Contact True Interactive

Eager to explore how platforms like Twitter can elevate your marketing plan? Contact us. We can help.

The 2021 Holiday Shopping Season: Four Lessons Learned

by Kurt Anagnostopoulos Retail

The 2021 holiday shopping season was a qualified success – all things considered.

Consumers entered the season amid uncertainty. Would Covid-19 spike again? And yes, it did – later in the season. How bad would the supply chain crisis get? It was a problem – holiday inventory shrank 2 percent because of shortages – but it was not a big problem for the big-box retailers who possessed the resources to plan ahead. Would inflation hurt spending? Yes, rising inflation played a role, especially in December.

The good news is that overall, U.S. holiday sales overall rose 8.5 percent according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. Online spending in the United States rose 8.9 percent in the United States, according to Salesforce. The bad news is that in both cases, the growth rates were lower than expected. MasterCard had predicted an 8.8 percent increase. Salesforce had predicted a 10 percent increase. But keep in mind that no one was predicting inflation to spike, and inflation definitely hurt sales as December wore on.

What do spending patterns in 2021 say about how advertisers might approach 2022 seasonal campaigns?

Getting a head start is more important ever. Everyone should brace themselves for the launch of seasonal campaigns even earlier. That means Memorial Day campaigns starting sooner. Fourth of July, Back to School, Christmas 2022 – all sooner. That’s because the supply chain crisis is casting a permanent shadow over retail for the year and possibly beyond. During the 2021 holiday shopping season, retailers were launching holiday promotions in September to get out in front of the possibility of shortages hurting inventory availability. By Thanksgiving, 30 percent of consumers had made their holiday purchases, according to Salesforce. Even though the supply chain crisis proved to be less disruptive than many had feared, few retailers lack the scale and resources that the big box retailers possess to offset the effects of inventory shortages. In addition, retailers learned a lesson about the value of getting an earlier start, and now they are all feeling the pressure to get a jump on the seasonal sales before a competitor does. With uncertainty continuing, retailers will to advertise sooner.

Big-tent events may have less impact. A byproduct of launching campaigns earlier is that they can dilute the actual impact of an event-oriented sale (Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, etc.) In 2021, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales were subdued. But muted sales were only a problem for businesses that defined Black Friday or Cyber Monday as a single-day event. In fact, for the past few years, big retailers have been redefining Black Friday in particular as a series of events throughout the month of November. As a result, they may have expereinced strong “Black Friday sales” over a period of days, while sales from the actual Black Friday may not have been as strong. This is all OK. It just means that retailers need to adapt to changing shopping patterns and more creatively combine day-of sales with smaller flash sales that occur near the day-of sale.

Adaptability is essential. Advertisers should be ready for the unexpected. For example, typically as December 25 approaches, we see a slowdown in online retail sales as consumers avoid taking the risk of buying a gift and missing the cutoff day for having a gift arrive by Christmas Day. But according to Salesforce, “Retailers nabbed 23% of their holiday sales during the final two weeks of the year, up 11% from the previous year, even though the shipping cutoff date had long passed by then.” Why? Likely because the surge in Covid-19 with the Omicron variant made shoppers more cautious about buying in-store. Interestingly, Salesforce reported a surge in buy online, pick up in store shopping during this period, which suggests that however they shopped, people just wanted to stay away from browsing in a store. Flexibility also means being adapting to different shopping formats online. Salesforce said that over the 2021 holiday season, 4 percent of global digital sales on a mobile device were made through a social media app; and 10 percent of mobile traffic originated from consumers browsing through social networks. Social commerce will be an increasingly part of the advertising and marketing mix in 2022 especially for any business whose customer base is composed of Gen Zers and Millennials.

Promoting flexible financing options is important. With inflation worsening, consumers are looking for ways to ease the strain on their budgets, but they may be leery of racking up big credit card bills. These are reasons why, according to Salesforce, “Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services in the U.S. during the holiday season increased 40% compared to 2020. Consumers turned to these offerings throughout the holiday season to offset the higher price tags. Alternative payment forms, including PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, also increased by 15% YoY in the U.S.” In fact, the rise of BNPL is one of the hottest topics in retail now. Retailers should make BNPL an important part of their advertising strategies for 2022.

In 2022, advertising will be an adventurous industry with so many fascinating formats arising and trends coalescing around changing consumer behavior. One thing is clear: wise businesses are going to advertise, both during lean times, prosperous times, and uncertain times. We’ve learned time and again that scaling back because of uncertainty is always a bad strategy, as we have discussed on our blog here and here. Get ready for an exciting ride!

Contact True Interactive

At True Interactive, we’ve helped a number of businesses develop and execute seasonal holiday campaigns. Contact us to learn how we can help you.

Image source: https://pixabay.com/photos/background-bauble-celebration-21658/

Why Facebook Launched Shoppable Groups

by Taylor Hart Facebook

We all need a little help from our friends, and Facebook is leaning into this reality with its Shops in Groups. The social networking behemoth has announced that it will be making it easier to shop for products on the app, using connections with friends and trusted creators to gain inspiration — and find just the right gift. This development underscores how important social media is becoming as the holiday shopping season ramps up.

Facebook Announces Shoppable Groups

Facebook describes its mandate this way: Facebook wants to introduce new tools to “make shopping and buying better on our apps.” And Shops in Groups allows users to support the communities they are interested in by buying products from them. One example? Shops in Groups makes it possible for members of OctoNation, an octopus fan group on Facebook, to directly purchase stickers, mugs, and apparel related to their passion for the eight-limbed mollusks.

TechCrunch describes the new feature as follows: admins of Facebook groups can essentially set up an online store on their associated Facebook Page, and the admins can determine where the money goes. In the case of OctoNation, mentioned above, profits go straight to OctoNation’s nonprofit. And as Yulie Kwon Kim, Meta’s VP of Product Management, notes, the shops can offer a revenue stream to group admins, who tend to be volunteers. She says, “The money goes to the group admin, and they can decide how they want to use it. This is a great way for people to sustain and keep the group going.”

The feature appears to have legs: Ad Age reports that after testing on a smaller number of groups, Facebook is opening up shoppability to another 100,000 groups. And it’s worth noting how flexible the setup can be: groups can link to sites such as a Facebook Shop, Shopify store, or BigCommerce store. Making Groups shoppable is important because, as Facebook points out, more than 1.8 billion people are using Facebook Groups every month.

Facebook Shoppable Groups in the Context of Social Shopping

Facebook is tapping into the rise of social shopping — also known as social commerce. As we’ve blogged, social shopping accelerated in popularity during the pandemic — and it’s showing no sign of slowing down. Social media has evolved along with this trend, working to meet the needs of users who are inspired by what they see online.

The numbers are telling. According to ChannelAdvisor, 57 percent of people aged 26 to 35 had researched a product on Facebook. People on Facebook are not only receptive to social shopping, they are actually doing it. And according to Retail Dive, a whopping 87 percent of Gen Z will be looking to social media for shopping inspiration.

Facebook is determined not to miss out on this trend. Moreover, the tech giant wants to give people more reasons to stay engaged with Facebook and use its advertising products.

What Brands Should Do

What does this mean for your brand? We suggest:

If you sell products online, consider Facebook as more than an advertising platform. Learn more about features such as Shops in Groups.

Master Facebook advertising products that appeal to people on Facebook (or find a partner who can do the heavy lifting for you – we manage Facebook advertising for our clients). The platform is clearly committed to making itself more engaging and useful to users: consider how that investment might benefit your brand.

As ever, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Balance your online presence between the major platforms that offer value in advertising — and shoppability.

Contact True Interactive

Eager to explore what Facebook — and other platforms — have to offer your brand? Contact us. We can help. Learn more our social media expertise here and our experience with shopping tools here.

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Why Big Retailers Are Ramping up Holiday Shopping Promotions – and What Advertisers Should Do

by Kurt Anagnostopoulos Advertising

It still feels a bit like summer in early October, and retailers are already starting to ramp up their holiday shopping promotions:

On September 29, Walmart announced its Top-Rated by Kids Toy List, “featuring the must-have toys of the holiday season.”

On September 30, Target announced that its Holiday Price Match Guarantee would kick off October 10 (earlier than ever) and that Target Deal Days would be back October 10-12.

Amazon quickly responded on October 4 by releasing “Black Friday-worthy deals.”

Why are these retailers getting out in front of the holiday season, and what are the implications for other advertisers?

Digging Deeper in Major Announcements

The announcements require a bit of unpacking.

Target’s Holiday Price Match Guarantee allows shoppers to request a price adjustment on all qualifying items purchased if they go on sale before December 24. This news sends a signal that Target expects shoppers to begin looking for deals earlier in the season. On the other hand, Target Deal Days and the Walmart Top-Rated Kids Toy list (the largest ever such list by Walmart) are clearly intended to stoke shopper demand for the holidays. As Target announced, “For three full days, shoppers can get a head start checking off their holiday lists with incredible deals on favorite products like Beats, fleece, kitchen gifts and more.”

Amazon made the most overt holiday land grab with its October 4 announcement. The company’s epic-length 3,000-word press release looked like a laundry list of holiday deals and related news, ranging from discounts for “need to have electronics” to a detailed list of gift guides. The announcement was peppered with references to Black Friday – an attempt to gain the upper hand on traditional offline Black Friday events.

What the Announcements Mean

Retailers want to stoke demand now for a few reasons:

They want to capitalize on the anticipated surge in holiday spending resulting from pent-up demand for discretionary goods. Buoyed by stimulus checks, consumers have been confounding economists with their robust spending, showing once again how unpredictable consumer behavior can be during the pandemic.

Retailers also want to encourage people to buy now before the effects of the global supply chain crisis kick in. The lingering supply chain bottleneck is expected to result in higher prices and product shortages later in the holiday season. Retailers want people to spend now when consumers are more likely to find what they want.

Retailers are also following a practice that has prevailed since before the pandemic: extending Black Friday. For the past few years, retailers have been tinkering with the Black Friday format as holiday shopping becomes more multi-channel. Black Friday as an in-store event still matters very much, and in 2021, with shopping returning to pre-pandemic behaviors, we should see the offline Black Friday becoming more popular again. But Black Friday has changed forever: it’s an online event, too, and retailers are no longer constricted to saving Black Friday deals until the day after Thanksgiving.

So, in a sense, bellwether retailers are following a pattern they started in recent years – creating holiday shopping demand earlier – but with a newfound sense of urgency to get out in front of the impact of the supply chain bottleneck.

What Advertisers Should Do

Realize that when big retailers launch holiday promotions, they create general consumer awareness of the holiday shopping season. As a result, retailers should expect an uptick in searches for holiday sales and promotions. Now might be a good time to capitalize on that increased search activity to activate your own campaigns.

Create a sense of urgency in your holiday campaigns – but don’t overplay your hand. If you expect the supply chain bottleneck to create limited inventory later this season, do get proactive about promoting deals now, and let shoppers know why they need to act sooner rather than later. But be careful with your tone. A “shop now and avoid headaches later” approach could backfire if your inventory levels are not affected as seriously as you thought they would.

If you’re an Amazon Advertising customer, optimize your holiday advertising now by maximizing the value of Amazon’s various advertising products, such as Sponsored Ads. Amazon also recommends experimenting with video with shoppable links, Amazon Live, and actionable ads (voice and remote). Amazon raising awareness for holiday shopping deals is like the rising tide that lifts all boats. With increased awareness for holiday deals comes more search traffic on Amazon, and you should capitalize on that.

Capitalize on Google advertising products. Inevitably, the increased chatter about the holidays from these big retailers will create an uptick in searches for holiday merchandise online. For example, Discovery ads are designed to show more relevant products in moments where customers are exploring their interests in Google’s feeds.

As shoppers respond to the holiday blitz, make sure you are using all tools at your disposal to accelerate the path to purchase. For instance, we’ve discussed on our blog the rise of social commerce options on apps such as Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok, which make it easier for shoppers to browse and shop with an easy click. Snapchat recently shared a holiday shopping guide with detailed campaign strategies. Snapchat notes that most Snapchatters start planning gift purchases and creating wishlists two-to-three months before Christmas. Snapchat urges retailers to launch holiday ads in October to stay top of mind with shoppers who are browsing for gifts and building wish lists.

Manage your expectations – and shoppers’, too. Yes, there will be an uptick in search and shopping behavior sooner than normal. But human nature is not going to change: many people will continue to wait until the last minute to do their shopping. Have a game plan in place to respond to shoppers who experience product shortages (if indeed predictions for the 2021 season play out as expected). Be ready for an uptick in negative reviews, and be ready to respond. Retailers should also be ready to offer top rated alternatives to products out of stock as this example shows.

Contact True Interactive

At True Interactive, we help businesses maximize their online spend all year-round, and we have deep experience managing holiday shopping campaigns online, ranging from campaigns on Google to Amazon Advertising. Contact us to learn how we can help you.

Why TikTok Has Embraced Social Shopping

by Bella Schneider TikTok

TikTok has partnered with Shopify to make it possible for TikTok users to shop directly in the TikTok app. The headline here? Social shopping has become huge! Read on to learn more:

TikTok Made Me Buy It

TikTok, the video app that has taken Gen Z by storm, is perhaps best known as a go-to for short-form entertainment and memes. It’s not that products have been ignored. But up to now, TikTok has featured influencers who talk up merch—from clothing to household goods—and users could only buy those products through ads on the app.

Things have changed.

Now, with the Shopify/TikTok partnership, Shopify merchants participating in a pilot program can add a shopping tab to their profiles, then build a “mini-storefront” including prices, photos, and an “add to favorites” button. As Marketing Dive explains it, the storefront “leads users to [the brand’s] website upon checkout by syncing their product catalogs.” The shopping pilot is currently open to Shopify sellers in the U.S. and U.K., and will launch in other regions in coming months. (Merchants must have a TikTok For Business account in order to participate.)

The move is a savvy one, indicative of an understanding of a simple fact: users find merch that speaks to them on TikTok. According to The New York Times, two-thirds of TikTok users have been inspired to shop, even if that wasn’t their original intent when accessing the app in the first place. The phenomenon has gained enough attention that it even has a hashtag: #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has garnered more than 4.7 billion views on the app.

TikTok isn’t alone: apps like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter have all jumped onto the social commerce bandwagon. The data supports this trend: a recent eMarketer report reveals that social commerce sales in the U.S. have exploded, growing 35.8 percent this year, from $26.97 billion in 2020 to $36.62 billion in 2021.

Although TikTok is relatively new to this crowded field, it’s already demonstrated that it has a talent for making merch go viral. As we have blogged, TikTok collaborated with Walmart last December to host a shoppable livestream event. The response was . . . significant, with viewership exceeding expectations so spectacularly that a second event was scheduled for March 2021.

It’s also worth noting that TikTok Shopping is meant to appeal to brands large and small. As Blake Chandlee, the president of global business solutions at TikTok, said in a statement, “TikTok is uniquely placed at the center of content and commerce, and these new solutions make it even easier for businesses of all sizes to create engaging content that drives consumers directly to the digital point of purchase.” And brands are taking note. Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics is pegged to be one of the early TikTok Shopping adopters.

Why the News Matters

These developments underscore how big social shopping (also known as retail social commerce) has become. As noted above, eMarketer has acknowledged the multibillion-dollar industry retail value that social commerce represents. The market research company goes on to make a bold projection, predicting that 2020’s $26.97 billion in sales “will more than double by 2023, when we predict retail social commerce earnings will hit $56.17 billion.”

eMarketer also notes that social shopping is particularly popular with the surging Gen Z population. That’s good intel for brands hoping to reach this audience. Per eMarketer, more than half of U.S. social media users aged 18 to 24 have used a social channel to make purchases. eMarketer also says that in the United States, it’s the Millennials who are most likely to rely on social media networks as important information sources when deciding what to buy.

What Brands Should Do

How to incorporate social commerce into your marketing plan? We recommend that you:

Understand your audience. Are you reaching out to Gen Z? Boomers? Not all social commerce platforms are the same. TikTok resonates with Gen Z and Millennials. Boomers tend to gravitate to Facebook. Ask yourself: who am I trying to reach, and where can I find them?

Learn how to use the tools available to you. Each platform will have its own requirements for creating content. In addition, all of these popular sites will demand a strong understanding of how to use visuals—anymore, it’s essential that brands know how to create powerful imagery.

Appreciate how influencers can be a powerful ally to your brand. How might you partner with influencers to reach your audience online—and fan the flames of demand?

Make sure you are teed up for success. As we’ve blogged, many businesses have struggled to manage the surge in demand that can happen when they attract more shoppers with an intent to buy. Make sure your online fulfillment is up to handling an uptick in sales.

Contact True Interactive

Now more than ever, there are multiple ways brands can connect with their audience—and facilitate purchases. Contact us to learn more about leveraging the exciting digital opportunities out there.