When Social Met eCommerce: An Introduction Social Commerce

An Ambassador eBook

When Social Met eCommerce:
An Introduction to Social Commerce

An Introduction to Table of Contents
Social Commerce

Contents

Introduction: More Than a Feeling........................................3

Chapter 1: The Three Dimensions of Social Comerce.....7

Chapter 2: Selling on Social Networks............................... 9

Chapter 3: Getting Started with Social Commerce......... 18

Chapter 4: Analytics and You............................................... 21

Conclusion............................................................................... 24

Page 2

An Introduction to Introduction
Social Commerce

Introduction: More Than a Feeling
Social media and eCommerce first met in the early 2007
when Facebook began offering virtual gifts to its users.
Searching for a new way to conduct business online,
the two platforms bumped into each other time and time
again, but weren’t able to connect on an intimate level.
Finally, a close friendship began to bloom between them
and they both embraced a casual relationship. But fate
had other plans in store for the two star-crossed online

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Social Commerce

platforms, resulting in a storybook marriage and the birth of
social commerce.

That’s all well and good, but what exactly is social
commerce? Wikipedia defines it as, “a subset of electronic
commerce that involves using social media, online media
that supports social interaction, and user contributions to
assist in the online buying and selling of products and
services.”

Put simply, social commerce combines the interactivity of
social networks with the sales potential of eCommerce
platforms. This interactive evolution of eCommerce allows
for brands to participate directly in customer communities,
leveraging their networks to drive sales, increase revenue

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Social Commerce

and build powerful brand ambassadors that increase
traffic back home.
The marketing to sales process used to be easy when
it was driven mainly by outbound techniques. But with
a customer’s path to purchase becoming increasingly
non-linear, the traditional marketing pipeline no longer
makes sense.

Consider the last time you bought a product online. In all
likelihood you first looked up customer reviews, did some
research on other websites and contacted friends to see
if they were familiar with the brand. You most likely you
used social media sites to facilitate this process. This
disjointed sales process requires a disjointed marketing
strategy involving a strong online presence to help
customers come to positive conclusions about your brand.

Social commerce is a win-win for customers and brands.
Customers get to feel more secure and confident in their
purchases, and brands are able to promote happy
customers as advocates for their brand. Customer
referrals have proven to the most effective driver of repeat

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Social Commerce

sales. Social commerce connects the dots between word
of mouth marketing and eCommerce platforms.

Like most new Internet buzzwords, there’s a lot to learn
when it comes to actually implementing social strategies in
your selling process. The following eBook will lay out how
to get started, key trends to follow and the best practices
for preserving the blossoming relationship of social media
and eCommerce.

Page 6

An Introduction to Chapter 1: The Three Dimen-
Social Commerce sions of Social Commerce

Chapter 1: The Three Dimensions
of Social Commerce
Social commerce can seem a little imposing at first. After
all, never before have businesses been able to
communicate with customers on such a personal level.
But don’t be afraid of rejection. Ultimately the process of
leveraging soc ial commerce can be segmented into 3
simple dimensions:

1. Social Shopping: Social shopping seeks to mimic the
interactions found in brick and mortar stores by allowing a
customer’s friends to be involved in the shopping
experience. Group shopping sites (like Groupon),
recommendation engines and on-
Did you know:
line marketplaces all bring custom- According to the
ers together in a central location New York Times,
and allow for an interactive, social 65% of new business
experience. comes from referrals.
A Nielsen study also
2. Customer Reviews: Giving found that you are 4
customers a platform to review times more likely to
buy when referred
products facilitates their ability to
by a friend.

Page 7

An Introduction to Chapter 1: The Three Dimen-
Social Commerce sions of Social Commerce

come to a secure conclusion about their
purchase. By harnessing the wisdom of With social refer-
crowds, positive reviews can be game ral software built
changers in a customer’s decision to into your eCom-
choose your brand. merce platform,
you can easily
3. Peer-to-Peer Referrals: Reviews are reward custom-
available to all visitors, but a happy ers for sharing
customer will share a peer-to-peer referral information
with friends and family. This has proven to about their pur-
be the most effective way of driving new chase, referring
sales, as potential customers trust close new friends and
friends more than an anonymous review driving sales
on your site.

You may have noticed a common theme here: establishing a
trust-based relationship is critical to success on social media.

Shoppers today have an inherent distrust of branded
messaging. Instead, they look to friends, family and online
communities to build trust in a brand. Neglect your online
community at your own peril.

Page 8

An Introduction to Chapter 2: Selling
Social Commerce on Social Networks

Chapter 2: Selling on Social
Networks
So you’ve decided to put down your guard and move into
the social sphere. Great job! But now you have to decide
what social network to focus on. There are many
differences between social platforms, so understanding
what’s best for your business is critical to success.
Currently, the two big drivers of social commerce are
Facebook on Pinterest so let’s pick them apart and see
how social commerce impacts both communities:

Facebook
Facebook was a pioneer in the social commerce sector by
kicking of the trend way back in 2007. The push was
initially met with skepticism but has seen a strong increase
in sales referrals over the past couple of months. There
are two types of Facebook commerce:

1. Sell directly through Facebook: Generally, this
involves a store creating a branded page on Facebook
and selling through an application.

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2. Social plug-ins: Facebook makes it
possible for companies to implement JC Penny offers a
social sharing plug-ins on their own robust selection
landing pages, allowing customers to log- of products on its
in directly with their Facebook account Facebook store,
and share their purchases with the including links
entirety of their network. on every page to
facilitate sharing,
Selling through Facebook has a number commenting and
of benefits for online brands. For one, it purchasing.
allows for instantaneous communication
between customers and their friends. This can be a huge
boon to looping in new fans as customers can rapidly share
offers and purchases with close friends. These peer refer-
rals are extremely valuable and are much more likely to
make a purchase down the road.

Levi’s Friends Store shows what products a shopper’s friend likes,
upcoming birthdays and a number of other social components.
The plug-in is focused more on recommendations than actual pur-
chasing, however it is currently one of the most robust
implementations of Facebook’s social plug-in for retail.
mentioning and purchasing.

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Facebook is also extremely effective at building customer
loyalty. Consistently interacting with your fans builds a per-
sonal relationship with the
customer that creates strong emotional ties between them
and your brand. Offering new deals and exciting offers can
help grow this relationship, and will also incentivize loyal
fans to go out and advocate on behalf of your brand.

Finally, Facebook pages allow for highly targeted
marketing strategies by letting brands pinpoint the exact
demographics and interests of their customer base. In this
way, your brand can ensure the delivery of relevant content
offers and deals to the right fans, improving your CTR and
overall fan engagement.

Pinterest
Founded in March 2010, Pinterest has become the
fastest-growing social media site on the web, gaining over
140% more users since January 2012 alone. It’s potential for
reshaping social commerce cannot be understated: data
collected by e-commerce platform Shopify found that not
only are Pinterest users 10% more likely to buy than
customers referred from other social networks, but are

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likely to spend double the amount per purchase.

Pinterest is a textbook example of social commerce at
its most effective. A recent study from ComScore found
that visual content is now the most effective influencer of
consumer click-through-rates (CTR) and as you may have
known, Pinterest is all about visuals. The keys to success
on Pinterest are optimizing your images to make them as
appealing and accessible as possible so that followers
actually want to share it.

Pinterest gives users the opportunity to share products
that they’re interested in or repin them for other followers
to see. Most important to social commerce however, is the
ability to transport followers directly from your pinboard to
your site. By sharing images from you eCommerce website,
people can click-through and make a purchase almost
instantaneously. A customer sees a cool product, they click
it, buy it and share it with their friends – it’s social
commerce distilled to its most simplistic form.

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B2B Businesses, Take Note
Pinterest may not be the best avenue for a B2B company
but if you can break into the market you’ll be targeting
customers that your competitors aren’t even aware of. In
terms of posting content eBooks, whitepapers and
infographics work well because they generally are more
information based and offer opportunities to create
imaginative, engaging covers.

If you’re a little rusty on posting you could try pinning of
pictures/content to your board. It can help build
connections with other businesses on the site and help
loop in strategic partnerships and customers. If you are
able to produce imaginative covers and infographics

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Pinterest is a great place to showcase them. There are a
lot of boards dedicated to these types of content that get
quite a bit of traffic.
Once you have them on your board, you can drive traffic
back to your landing pages by including links embedded
in your images. The name of the game is conversion and if
you’re not bringing people onto your site there’s really no
reason to be online. Pinterest may not be the best avenue
for B2B lead generation, but if you already have a lot of
image-heavy content on hand and optimize the site to
bring people to an existing landing page it can prove very
useful, at least for bringing in more top of the funnel leads.

What About Twitter?
While Twitter itself does not provide any eCommerce
functionality it can be very useful for marketing other social
media channels and promoting your products to thousands
of followers.

Twitter also allows for continuing to build your online
presence and creating a strong, branded community of
followers. The micro-blogging platform recently allowed
for customized profile pictures and backgrounds, allowing

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brands to tailor their profiles for increased user
engagement.

The three main uses of Twitter for social commerce are:

1. Provide time-sensitive offers to followers
2. Leverage Twitter to drive traffic to other social
networks
3. Establishing a branded Twitter profile

Twitter is a hodgepodge of B2Bs, B2Cs and general fans of
your brand. It’s oriented to customer support or
general brand engagement. Use it to get discussions going
and post call to actions that drive people to a landing page
and build communities of supporters.   

Although Twitter cannot be used for actually selling, it
should be part of a broader strategy to increase awareness
and loop in new fans.

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Social Sharing Buttons and You
Ultimately a successful social commerce campaign
depends on your brand and customers. But don’t fret!
Social media is essentially a free marketing tool, so don’t
be afraid to try out both and see what works best.

However, you can use social sharing buttons to integrate
both channels into a robust social commerce experience.
In fact, it’s highly recommended!

If you’ve ever clicked a “Like” button next to a product or a
“Retweet” button on a blog you’ve experienced the
power of social sharing buttons. As we’ve said, word of
mouth marketing is the most effective way to drive repeat
customers and sales so optimizing your social channels for
sharing is at the core of a successful social commerce
driven business.

The most effective way to do this is through ‘Share’ buttons
(Retweet, Like, Share, +1, etc). Every blog post or product
page should include a share button to give shoppers the
ability to push out recommendations to all of their followers
promoting sharing and generating social proof.

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Facebook has even gone so far as to incorporate
sharing-capabilities directly into their eCommerce
functionalities. The social network recently rolled out
Collections – a new feature that allows online brands to
add, “Want,”
“Collect,” and “Buy” buttons to product posts.

Here’s a quick rundown: clicking “Want” adds a product to
a “Wishlist” on a user’s Timeline. “Collect,” adds it to a
Pinboard-esque page called “Products.” On the “Wishlist”
and “Products” pages, the “Buy” button directs users to
make purchases offsite.

Beyond Facebook users, brand pages are also able to
create collections to build an online catalogue of all their
products. The one difference is company collections are
only viewable to their Facebook fans. If pages want more
people collecting, resharing and clicking they’re going to
need a well-developed fan base.

Facebook’s new features are clearly a win for social
brands, and further push online businesses into the realm
of social commerce.

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An Introduction to Chapter 3: Getting Started
Social Commerce with Social Commerce

Chapter 3: Getting Started with
Social Commerce
So you’ve got all your social networks set-up, your
eCommerce site is live and you’re ready to get started on
building am engaged community of supporters. The
question is, how do you actually go about developing a
social commerce-driven brand?

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Here are 4 things to keep in mind when getting started:

1. Outline Your Objectives: What are you trying to
achieve with your new model? Is your goal to acquire new
customers, or maybe to convert customers into advocates?
Determining the ultimate goals you’re trying to reach will
help structure your program accordingly and determine the
appropriate metrics with which to measure success.

2. Create a Promotional Strategy: You’ve made a
Facebook brand page, but what else will you do to
generate a strong brand presence? There is little room for
organic growth on social media sites making
implementing a promotional strategy critical to ensuring
people are aware of your brand. Some options include
word of mouth campaigns, outbound advertising and
media integrations but ultimately you must determine what
works for your own brand.

3. Create Content to Establish Your Authority: Any type
of original content, be it photos, blog posts or videos, is a
great way to engage your fans in conversations relevant
to your products. Over time your content will grow into a
library that establishes credibility and authority for your
brand and build a lasting community in the process.

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4. Integrate Social Commerce Into a Multi-Channel
Strategy: Social commerce may be a large part of your
sales strategy, but it is not the only one. It is important to
determine what effect social commerce will have on other
marketing channels and how you can support and
integrate your marketing programs to optimize conversions
and sales.

Page 20

An Introduction to
Chapter 4: Analytics and You
Social Commerce

Throughout the duration of your social commerce
campaign, you should be tracking all of your metrics
through social media analytics. Otherwise, you’ll be
unable to determine what’s working and what’s getting
lost in the blogosphere.

As a rule of thumb, be careful to avoid “vanity” metrics and
make sure you’re focusing on actionable metrics that can
actually inform your business strategy. A lot of the data
social media sites offer is fluff (fans and likes for
example). Measuring your success based on these metrics
may show a high ROI but you’re not getting the whole
story.

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An Introduction to
Social Commerce

If you’re measuring things like bounce rates, click through
rates, etc you’d be looking at metrics that tie actions to real
results.

Choosing the right metrics also depends on the types of
goals you’re looking to get from social media. For example,
if you’re looking to measure customer engagement with
your brand, focus on:

• Site visits
• Number of comments/unique commenters on your
blog
• Quantity/frequency of reviews, comments, discussions,
etc.
• Content sharing frequency (retweets, Facebook posts,
etc.)
• Site affinity/likelihood to influence other friends

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An Introduction to
Social Commerce

These metrics can be tied to actual results from your online
strategy and can help you optimize your marketing
program. As a general rule, 3 important thoughts to keep in
mind are:

• Measure what matters to the health of your business.
• Measure customer behavior, not intermediate steps.
• Measure macro metrics to pinpoint what needs im
provement.

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An Introduction to Conclusion
Social Commerce

Conclusion
Today’s customers are more active in
social media than ever before. They review
products and services, refer friends back to
brands and share experience across
social media channels. Along all steps of
the purchasing process – from awareness
to purchase to brand advocacy –
companies should work to develop a
socially driven shopping experience and
promote sharing across all social media
channels.

Social commerce integration may be
relatively new, but the underlying concepts
behind it date back to the early days of
civilization: we are all social creatures,
community minded and driven by
recommendations from friends and family.
Social media has opened the door to
leveraging these tendencies for commercial
gain. It’s now up to online brands to step
through it.

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An Introduction to Conclusion
Social Commerce

Ambassador enables any company to easily track,
manage & reward their advocates for referring customers
and driving conversions. Receive actionable channel-spe-
cific metrics; including shares, clicks, conversions, revenue
and clicks per share. Ambassador can be fully integrated
into your website, maintaining your look & feel while
providing a frictionless experience for your advocates.

Page 25

When Social Met eCommerce: An Introduction Social Commerce

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