Business Engineer Anubhav Sharma shares his thoughts on Social-Video-Commerce and how companies can best position themselves to make the most of a growing trend that doesn’t seem to be fading anytime soon.
Business Engineer Anubhav Sharma shares his thoughts on Social-Video-Commerce and how companies can best position themselves to make the most of a growing trend that doesn’t seem to be fading anytime soon.
Recently, major brands such as Ted Baker, Diesel, Kate Spade, and Tommy Hilfiger have invested in high quality interactive videos, giving their buyers a way to See-Now & Buy-Now.
Retail has been one of the most dynamic industries in history with fads and trends disrupting the status quo, repeatedly forcing retailers to evolve swiftly and continuously. Now is the time for another such wave where retailers need to accept and invest in ‘visual commerce’, knowing that this is the trend that will be driving customer engagement for the foreseeable future.
This is happening now because environment, buyer, transactions, and technology are all inspired through digital content and the sooner the brands bring their commerce to content and adapt to the new technologies, the further ahead they will be from their competition.
By 2019, over 70% of personal mobile interactions will be with video content and if you are a retailer, that is a BIG number which will define not only who leads the market but also who makes it and who does not. Video stands out from other media types because of its high dual impact on engagement and conversion – two critical metrics in ecommerce. Video content generates three times as many monthly visitors as other content which makes it a gold mine for retailers.
This lays the foundation for video to become the principal medium for retailers to engage their customers. The challenge is, technology and scalability. This is where we will see lot of innovations in the industry. This push has to come from the retailers, they need to realize how important and critical content strategy is for their survival and need to start developing or start asking for solutions that enables them to make the most of their video assets.
The millennial buyer likes to see a product and visualize it in various contexts. They want to relate what they see to their own situation and surroundings. They believe in influencers more than the brands because today peer-to-peer trust is greater than trust for corporations.
Social-Video-Commerce: Use video as the medium to engage, promote, and distribute on social channels with an easy way to buy from the media to make commerce sales.
Retailers should use the power of user-generated content to let their shoppers create content for them, share reviews, upload product images on social media, and create videos of them actually using the product. With most of us on our phones watching video, it is the best time to place your products where the users see it and make that content shoppable. Brands need to incentivize their audience and community to create and share content and provide an easy way to make that content shoppable.
Marketing teams, especially fashion and cosmetics brands, need to divert their resources into ensuring their media is engaging, intuitive, shareable, and shoppable. We often see these beautiful sites which have lots of engagement because of their design and content but less impressive sales, this has to do with the fact that these sites did not make it easy for their shoppers to See-Now & Buy-Now. Success will be with retailers who bring their commerce and content together either natively on social media apps or on their commerce platforms.
Digital Content Managers and Ecommerce Managers need to not only start thinking but also start executing strategies which include investment in creating shoppable media assets for your organization. It is time to make it easier to See-Now & Buy-Now.
