Author: Allie Haupt

5 Ways to Maximize Programmatic Dollars Amidst Economic Uncertainty

Posted on by Allie Haupt

As economic uncertainty looms, marketing dollars matter now more than ever. However, this challenge presents an opportunity for brands to re-evaluate their programmatic marketing strategy and discover innovative approaches to maximize media investment. While it’s critical to continue on with proven marketing strategies that consistently deliver against business goals, refinement and experimentation is the name of the game within the programmatic ecosystem to position the brand for success and drive growth well beyond the downturn. 

Here are five tips to ensure your investment in programmatic channels is efficiently driving brand goals and positive ROI:

#1 – Prioritize high-value audiences

Advertising to a broad and undefined audience often results in reaching users who are unlikely to convert. An important first step of media planning is gaining a deep understanding of the audience you are trying to reach and what motivates them. 

  • Conduct Audience Analysis: Utilize data-driven research tools, analyze existing customer data, and review past campaign performance. This approach helps identify users demonstrating interest and intent, setting the stage for a highly targeted audience strategy. 
  • Focus on Likely Converters: Prioritize your programmatic media spend toward audiences with a high propensity to convert. This strategy reduces ad waste and ensures your media budget is invested in segments most likely to generate significant impact.
  • Balance Your Retargeting Efforts: While retargeting can yield strong results, it’s crucial to balance your investment in this area. Over-relying on retargeting can lead to spending unnecessarily on users who would likely have converted anyway, and will be a recipe for disaster with third-party cookie deprecation. Diversify your approach to capture new potential customers without neglecting those close to conversion.

#2 – Eliminate inventory inefficiencies 

One of the benefits of activating programmatically is accessing inventory across the entire open web, enabling efficient reach and scale. However, not all inventory is created equal and investing in poor quality placements may inhibit ROI goals. Platform algorithms use ad engagement metrics, such as clicks or video completions, to assess the quality of an inventory source. However, it lacks human logic by not considering the user’s intention with the engagement, such as accidentally clicking on an ad. Therefore, it’s critical to incorporate supply path optimization (SPO) into your media approach to have a granular understanding of where your ad dollars are being spent and how it contributes to the overall campaign’s success. SPO analysis highlights which inventory sources drive the most efficient conversions, informing optimizations of media spend toward the most valuable placements. This translates into a campaign that uses each ad dollar effectively to maximize ROI.

#3 – Leverage AI for operational efficiencies

In times of economic uncertainty, every resource counts. To maximize the impact of your media investments, AI can augment your team’s capabilities and streamline operations enabling you to do more with less. AI-powered solutions, like dynamic creative optimization (DCO), reduces the human hours needed to manually develop and assign each creative since DCO automatically generates and assigns the most effective creative variation in real-time. Delivering highly personalized and performance-driven creative can improve engagement and messaging resonance for each individual user, leading to overall stronger media results.

It’s critical to roll out AI to your teams with a focus on responsible usage and governance. The upfront investment of AI training and policy development will set your team up for success. 

#4 – Optimize user frequency 

Frequency metrics tend to be overlooked due to focusing on metrics that ladder up to business goals, like ROI. However, it’s important to actively monitor frequency to ensure media spend is not resulting in wasted impressions. Oversaturating users with brand messaging can lead to ad fatigue or a poor user experience potentially creating negative brand associations. High user frequency can also indicate media dollars are being spent on reaching users who have already performed the desired action.

Utilize frequency as an optimization lever to ensure your media dollars are efficiently invested in creating valuable brand engagement and driving results. Every brand’s customer journey is unique, so there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to optimal frequency. Consider the steps and length of the audience’s journey to set realistic goals. Then, continually monitor the frequency compared to performance and utilize conversion path analysis to hone in on the optimal level of brand interaction with your audience. 

#5 – Embrace omnichannel strategies

Users interact with brands across multiple touchpoints throughout their journey, including traditional and digital channels. To maximize the impact of your media investment, develop an omnichannel approach tailored to your audience that provides a holistic and streamlined brand experience. 

  • Research Your Audience’s Behaviors: Assess which channels highly index with your audience’s behaviors and preferences to align media with how users consume content. 
  • Optimize Channel Mix: Strategically select the channels that ladder up to the overall marketing and brand goals. For example, if your audience has an affinity for video and the goal is to increase brand awareness, leveraging a high reach channel, such as Connected TV (CTV), is an efficient way to capture attention. 
  • Develop an Integrated Strategy: Once the optimal channel mix has been identified, create a strategy that maximizes the strengths of each channel to amplify a consistent brand message.

As marketing leaders navigate economic challenges, leaning into innovative and data-driven approaches will ensure every media dollar invested efficiently contributes to brand and marketing goals. Through continuous campaign optimizations aimed at reducing impression waste to prioritize investment on the audiences that matter most, brands will be well positioned for continued growth.

How Search Engine Insights Fuel Growth Marketing

Posted on by Allie Haupt

Most think of search as purely an activation channel that captures demand and defends the brand’s presence on the SERP, but it’s actually an intent-driven data goldmine. Search can be leveraged as the eyes and ears for a brand to gain insights on audience motivations and pinpoint their stage in the conversion journey. These insights should be translated into holistic channel mix planning, media measurement, and competitive research to build an informed growth marketing strategy.

The big picture

Picture it: All of your brand’s digital (and even traditional) media gets completely turned off for a month. What do you think would happen to demand? The brand’s search volume would likely take a noticeable hit since search effectiveness diminishes without the push of brand messaging from efficient reach channels like streaming TV or social media. Similar to social listening, search serves as a behavioral listening tool that captures consumer engagement with brands throughout their conversion journey. For example, if someone sees a connected TV (CTV) ad that piques their interest and addresses a current need, the logical next step is searching for the brand to learn more and potentially convert. This scenario highlights the critical relationship between paid media channels and brand demand – as advertising amplifies a brand’s offering across channels, consumer demand grows. By using search lift as a KPI, we can analyze demand pre and post marketing initiatives to understand the directional impact on total sales.

Why it matters

Using search analysis as a key indicator of consumer demand lays a foundation for a growth marketing strategy. First, it can identify untapped opportunities and whitespace to better align media investment and messaging based on seasonality and emerging keyword trends. For example, if a financial brand consistently observes search demand peaks during tax planning season, they can heavy up their digital presence with a branded search investment that will effectively capture consumer demand and drive them to convert. 

Analyzing search lift after a media initiative launches can also help uncover how the channel mix and messaging strategy impacted brand awareness and interest, informing future channel investment. Non-clickable environments, such as CTV, can be challenging to showcase the impact on driving conversions, but using search demand provides directional insight into a holistic view of your marketing efforts.

Applying search insights to maximize your marketing ROI:

  • Real-time optimization: Analyzing search trends offers a cookieless measurement and attribution solution that not only measures the impact of paid media on driving brand awareness and purchase intent, but also informs real-time campaign optimizations. Examining branded search lift, the increase in search volume of branded or related keywords, after a marketing initiative launch can inform campaign optimizations, including:
    • Audience targeting refinement to maximize reach and allocate media spend toward the highest performing segments to drive ROI
    • Messaging strategy optimization based on consumer searches, dynamically tailoring the messaging to align with their preferences and needs
    • Marketing budget reallocation to channels driving the most effective search lift 
  • Competitive intelligence: Search trends can give you a peek behind your competitor’s curtain to learn what initiatives they are amplifying or what audiences they are reaching. By analyzing the peaks and valleys of competitor search trends, you can identify whitespace to capture the attention of potential customers who are actively searching for a related product or service. Get started by:
    • Analyzing competitor messaging strategies to identify ways to differentiate your brand and highlight the value of your offering
    • Increase media investment during the valleys of a competitor’s search trends to capitalize on the lower competition efficiently, grow share of voice, and gain a spot on audiences’ consideration sets
    • Develop a targeting strategy aimed to engage with movable audiences who have been exposed to your competitor but aren’t yet loyalists
  • Demand forecasts:  Search demand insights can be leveraged far beyond marketing strategy development and execution – it can also inform broader business implications, such as:
    • Supply chain logistics – ensure efficient operations with production and staffing levels based on consumer search demand
    • Seasonality indicators – uncover your customer’s most important needs and preferences to inform your brand’s messaging strategy to engage them with relevant content

The application of search engine insights goes way beyond SEM channel activation – it’s a treasure trove of intent-based data that should be used at every stage of marketing strategy development and execution to effectively align with consumer demand and preferences.

CTV + Live Streaming – What You Need to Know

Posted on by Allie Haupt

With the rise of cord-cutting and the 2023 Hollywood strikes delaying content creation, tapping into live-streaming CTV inventory has piqued marketers’ interest with its ability to reach a highly engaged audience. Live-streaming offers brands a valuable space to programmatically connect with consumers at scale to drive awareness goals with the added benefit of flexibility that is not found in traditional linear TV buys. If you’ve been on the fence about testing live streaming in your marketing initiative, you likely have many questions regarding how to efficiently and effectively leverage this inventory.

For this Live Streaming Q&A article, we met with two CTV experts – Stephen Eidelman, Director of Inventory Development at The Trade Desk, and Joel Schaffner, Manager of Programmatic Operations at Coegi. They answered key questions to help inform your planning and activation of live streaming inventory to achieve your brand goals.

Why should advertisers incorporate live-streaming CTV into their strategic plan?

Joel: Incorporating live streaming CTV into a strategic plan is a great way to reach a new set of users at a slightly different angle. The live-streaming viewer is typically more engaged since they’re watching content in real-time, instead of having something on in the background that they can go back and watch later.

Stephen: Similar to the reason they have been historically coveted properties in linear TV advertising, live sports are highly sought after because they draw large audiences that are attentive and emotionally engaged – up through the very last second.  Not only does streaming account for more than 30% of live sports viewership, but we’ve also seen advertisers reach audiences that are completely unique compared to audiences in linear live sports and non-live sports streaming, meaning the only way to connect with that audience is by buying on live streaming sports. 

What has been a key driver of the increase in interest and investment in live streaming?

Stephen: Viewership patterns have shifted, so much so that the majority of Americans are expected to be watching live sports via digital channels by next year. At the same time, top-tier broadcasters like NBC and Disney have continued to shift more of their highly valued properties to be distributed exclusively on streaming apps (i.e. Peacock & ESPN+). Some of the most sought-after content is only available on streaming, and you saw that this year with NFL games exclusively on ESPN+ or Peacock. Fans are a more passionate audience than regular viewers, and they can’t miss a game!

Joel: I think a couple of things have been key drivers in the growing interest of live streaming. For one, the pandemic accelerated the trend of people cord-cutting and shifting to streaming services, making live streaming an avenue to reach a larger, more highly engaged audience.  Another thing is that live streaming inventory is much more accessible now, so marketers can seamlessly integrate it into their plans to test and compare performance with other streaming inventory.

How can marketers measure the impact of live-streaming CTV on brand goals?

Joel: Reach is a primary KPI for CTV in general, but especially for live streaming inventory since it is often seen as a mass reach play. With our partner, The Trade Desk, we can measure the quality of reach by comparing the users the CTV campaign reached to the seed audience, such as site visitors, sales data, and CRM lists. This measures the quality of our reach and helps us optimize media spending toward users that drive brand goals. We can also track offline actions, enabling conversion attribution to a user exposed to our brands’ live-streaming ads. 

Stephen: This is the beauty of live sports in streaming, you can achieve the same goals, and measure the same impact in live sports as you do in the rest of streaming. Whether it’s awareness, incremental reach, or outcome impact, all the targeting and measurement available in streaming is available in CTV. 

What is the impact on user engagement running in live streaming compared to standard CTV?

Joel: Standard CTV user engagement is valuable since media is reaching an entire household on the biggest screen, but live streaming takes this engagement to another level. The real-time factor of live-streaming content means that the audience is more engaged as they set time aside from their day to watch this specific event. 

Stephen: Live sports engagement is highly concentrated because the viewership patterns are usually in a set period of time, either a few minutes or several hours if they’re binging sports all day. The spikes in traffic are larger, so live sports can generate a larger audience reach much faster compared to other genres.

What are some best practices marketers should know for live streaming?

Stephen: Start broader and build your campaigns across all sports and leagues since there are live sports with big audiences all year round. You can also gain flexibility by getting into live sports programmatically without being tied to larger commitments or spending thresholds that are often required of traditional TV advertising. The growth of streaming allows for more and more types of sports to be aired, meaning more opportunities for advertisers as more diehard fans watch live sports via streaming. 

Joel: Some best practices marketers should consider when planning and executing campaigns on live streaming are to: 

  • Plan in advance
  • Plan for higher CPMs than standard CTV due to the high demand of live-streaming content, and 
  • Invest in high-quality and meaningful creatives since these ads will be seen on a big screen with highly engaged viewers

Are there any potential challenges to be aware of when leveraging live streaming?

Stephen: Live sports are unpredictable, and no two campaigns in live sports will be the same. That’s dependent on the sport, the teams involved, the time of day and so much more, so don’t expect that you can replicate the same recipe every live game. Aaron Rodgers getting injured in the first few minutes of the Jets season is a prime example of that – and also why advertisers need flexibility rather than being locked into deals for games that became far less appealing without start power. One thing to be conscious of is league sponsorships and other agreed upon contracts that may limit access to inventory. However, we see so much scale in live sports that advertisers should not be deterred – in fact, we’ve seen over one billion impressions of football-related content in a given weekend. Imagine all of the opportunities just in one weekend alone.

Joel: Of course, there are potential challenges to be aware of when leveraging live streaming but challenges is what makes the programmatic team at Coegi thrive! One obvious challenge can be the seasonality of live-streaming events which causes a high demand for the inventory. You can mitigate the shifts in demand by continuously monitoring the campaign’s bidding parameters and adjusting as needed in order to win in the ad auction.

What criteria should marketers consider when selecting live-streaming inventory?

Stephen: It’s important to approach live streaming with a balance of the marketing initiative’s overall goals (e.g. reach, frequency, outcomes) since regional and national live-streaming content are both available. By sticking to an audience strategy and testing across all live sports, for example, there is an opportunity for unconventional wisdom (sports co-viewing) and to find audiences when they are highly engaged and leaned in.

Joel: When selecting live streaming inventory, marketers should consider what type of event their ad will be viewed during – college sports, professional sports, awards shows, etc. It’s important to consider because each live event draws a different audience with various interests and purchase intents.  

What audience targeting strategies should marketers utilize to effectively reach their core audience?

Joel: Always consider the geotargeting parameters as some regions may align more with the marketing goal. Demographics, such as age, are also important to broadly refine the core audience media intends to reach. When thinking of data-driven audience strategies, try to keep this fairly broad as live streaming inventory is competitive, and efficiently scaling can be a challenge if too many variables are layered on.

Stephen: Advertisers need to understand who their audience is in live sports if they want to provide the best ad experience and use a strategy rooted in precisely reaching the core audience when and where they are watching live sports. Building your strategy around strong, authenticated data so you can see that the avid baseball viewer is also a loyal grocery store shopper requires a cross-channel identifier like UID2. This is especially important since much of the rise in live sports viewership is also taking place on non-traditional TV devices, such as tablets and mobile phones, so you want to connect the dots across viewers and devices for the best ad experience.

And finally, what piece of advice would you give to markets to run a successful live-streaming CTV campaign?

Stephen: Getting in programmatically provides cost efficiency by offering flexibility, control, and access that otherwise would only be available from larger networks or league sponsorships. If a game is a blow out by halftime, you don’t risk wasting budget on the second half that likely had significantly less viewership. Consolidating live sports within your CTV planning will also give marketers better decisioning and frequency management with the line of sight into the rest of the marketing objectives.

Joel: As most live events are scheduled at least a year in advance, it’s never too early to start planning. However, I recommend planning at least one month in advance of the campaign’s intended launch date. One of the first things to consider during the planning period is what kind of live events to incorporate in the strategy in order to reach the right audience. 

To learn more about broader CTV strategies, check out our other Q&A with The Trade Desk or take a deep dive with Connected TV Advertising Guide.

 

5 Social Advertising Trends for 2024

Posted on by Allie Haupt

Advancements in technology and evolving consumer behavior are continuously shaping the social media landscape, presenting brands with an opportunity to evolve alongside the consumer to meet brand goals.

Users are no longer looking to social platforms as only a way to connect with friends, but rather as a mechanism for shopping, searching, and enjoying entertainment.

So what should your brand focus their social media strategy on? Keep reading to discover our top five social media trends for 2024 and tips on how to effectively incorporate them into your strategy.

Social Media Trend #1: Growth of Influencer Marketing

Investment in influencer marketing is expected to see strong growth in the next few years due to its effectiveness in building trust and authenticity for your brand. In 2024, there will be an increased focus on leveraging short-form UGC videos, testing out generative AI, and mindfully selecting creators that foster a diverse and representative social media community. 

What You Need to Know:

Influencer Marketing Tips:

  • Establish clear goals and measurable KPIs before selecting a content creator. For example, if your influencer marketing goal is to drive increased engagement, select a creator that has a loyal and highly engaged audience.
  • Collaborate with content creators that align with your brand’s tone and have a follower community with interests that match your product or service offering.

To learn more about tap into creators for your marketing strategy, check out Coegi’s guide to influencer marketing. 

Social Media Trend #2: Paid Subscription Models

Global governments are continuing to hold social platforms accountable for adhering to user privacy regulations. With the increased regulations, social platforms are looking for solutions to maintain an optimal user experience, including offering paid monthly subscriptions for users to opt out of ads. 

What You Need to Know:

Paid Subscription Model Tips:

  • Influencer marketing is going to become important in a paid subscription model since the content will not be categorized as an ad. Use this time to start honing your influencer marketing strategy to learn what works best for your brand.
  • Organic social will be another effective way to reach users in an ad-free environment. Focus your efforts on building your brand’s following across social media platforms and learning what content resonates well with your core audience.
  • While the development of paid subscription models is currently focused on the EU market, other markets may follow. Be sure to keep up-to-date on the latest platform releases.

Social Media Trend #3: Generative AI

AI had a large impact on the marketing industry in 2023 and is expected to continue with increased momentum in 2024 as social platforms continue rolling out AI features. From AI chatbots directly integrated within the platforms to audio generation tools, the way users and marketers engage with social media will be in a constant state of change.

What You Need to Know:

  • Due to strong user engagement with Snapchat’s My AI, the platform is looking for ways to leverage the chatbot to boost advertising.
  • Meta released two Generative AI tools for audio creation – AudioCraft to create audio and music from a text prompt, and Voicebox to assist with editing audio.
  • Meta AI is a virtual assistant – including 28 familiar individuals, such as Snoop Dog and Kendall Jenner, that users can interact with across Meta platforms.

Generative AI Tips:

  • Generative AI is going to elevate the importance of brand’s maintaining authenticity. As deepfakes and AI assistants circulate across social platforms, users will look to brands to be a source of truth and familiarity.
  • Create internal guidelines and policies for the usage of AI to ensure it is being used ethically and responsibly.
  • Read our article – Do’s and Don’ts of Using Generative AI for Creative – for more information on how to effectively use AI.

Social Media Trend #4: Social Platforms Utilized as a Search Engine

Social media platforms continue to serve a dual purpose, namely among younger users, to connect and engage with friends and to utilize as a search engine for finding products and services. This shift in consumer behavior should be accounted for when planning your marketing strategy.

What You Need to Know:

Social Search Tips:

Social Media Trend #5: AR/VR Advancements

Gone are the days of one-dimensional internet usage as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology advancements are spurring an “immersive internet.” Users are seeking a more engaging experience across the web and social platforms, giving brands an opportunity to better meet their audiences’ needs and preferences.

What You Need to Know: 

AR/VR Tips:

  • Leverage Pinterest Try on product pins to enable users to virtually try on products wherever they are, increasing engagement and attention.
  • Meta augmented reality ads create an engaging and unique experience where users test out products and interact with your brand.
  • It’s important to keep your brand’s product catalog on social platforms updated so users can virtually engage with your brand and build affinity.

If you want to discuss how to apply these trends and tips to your marketing strategy in 2024, reach out to schedule a discovery call with the team at Coegi.

3 Ways AI is Shifting the Search Marketing Landscape

Posted on by Allie Haupt

With the rise of AI-powered technology, user search behavior is in a constant state of change. Voice assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, have transformed search queries into colloquial conversations. Google Lens has made visual searches a reality. ChatGPT has emerged as a new prompt-based search engine. All of these developments create new ways of searching and present a challenge to marketers to determine how to navigate the search landscape as user needs and preferences evolve.

The Continuous Evolution of Search Behavior

Voice Search

Speaking to technology as if we are conversing with a friend has become a natural instinct in this new tech age. Picture it. You’re driving to your parents’ house for dinner and notice you’re low on gas. What do you do? *raises phone to speak* “Hey Google, can you tell me where the nearest gas station is?” Voice assistants have created an easier, frictionless, and in this case, safer option for getting the information you’re seeking in lieu of physically typing your query into a search bar. More than 1 billion voice searches occur each month globally, which is predicted to continue to grow. 

How should marketers adapt?

In response to the longer, question-based queries that voice assistants have introduced, search teams must modify their approach to keep pace with changing search behavior. Since 27% of voice searches take place on mobile devices, it’s critical that marketers either maintain the mobile-friendliness of their brand’s site or create a microsite that is optimized for mobile devices. A mobile-optimized site will create a more seamless search experience for users who start their quest for information using a voice assistant. It’s also important to develop a content strategy on your brand’s site based on keywords related to your product and/or service offerings in order to rank higher on search results pages. Quality content increases the likelihood of being the trusted source selected to answer a user’s voice question.

The gas station example also alludes to the fact that voice searches are used frequently in a local context. Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) teams need to collaborate together to develop a local search strategy to ensure your brand is at the fingertips of a user’s inquiries regarding surrounding businesses and services. If applicable to your brand, maintaining a local-friendly site as well, including store locations and hours of operation, will help place your brand at the forefront of a local-based search. 

Visual Search

Advances in technology have made visual search another avenue for information seekers. Google Lens, which launched in 2017, is the predominant platform leading the way for visual search. To visually search, a user can either upload an image directly from their camera roll or capture a new picture in the Google app, and Google will analyze the image to provide relevant image and content results. For example, if you come across a plant on your morning walk that you want to know more about, you can take a photo and Google will provide relevant search results, such as the plant’s name, care instructions, or a shopping ad of a local nursery where you can purchase said plant.

Google shared that people use Lens for 12 billion visual searches per month, which is a 4x increase in just two years. With this kind of YoY growth, visual search most certainly needs to be a consideration when planning a brand’s search strategy.

How should marketers adapt?

Visual search makes product images the hero of the ad, so it’s key for marketers to focus on creative. Maintain your brand’s product catalogs, ensuring all offerings are up-to-date and highlighted with high-quality imagery. For example, if you’re promoting travel coffee mugs, having all color options available in the product catalog will provide a seamless search experience. If a user visually searches for a pink mug, the product ad will provide a link to purchase the pink mug that best fits their interests.

It’s also imperative to understand which visuals drive your audience to make that all important click to navigate to your brand’s website. Creative A/B tests should be a core component of your search strategy in order to nimbly optimize toward the highest performing images.

Generative AI

Let’s not forget about the elephant in the room – Generative AI. AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, have emerged as a supplementary search engine. Currently, ChatGPT generates responses for 10 million searches per day compared to Google at 8.5 billion searches. While Google firmly maintains first position in the search volume leaderboard, ChatGPT search volume continues to grow, and therefore, must be proactively accounted for.

How should marketers adapt?

Generative AI chatbots are creating a rise in colloquial, prompt-based search queries which will flow over into conventional search engines. As a result, marketers should deploy new long-tail keywords to keep pace with these new search queries. In addition, these longer phrases will require a marketer to distill intent and provide relevant, concise information within the ad or evergreen website content to help keep engagement high. 

Generative AI can also be utilized as a research tool to inform your brand’s content strategy. Monitoring chat bot inquiries can help you understand what consumers are frequently searching for before purchasing a product or selecting a service. As general themes are identified, create content that proactively answers those questions and update it regularly based on changing inquiries.

AI is igniting rapid changes in the search landscape. The key to navigating these uncharted waters will be understanding the impacts to search behavior and the changes in consumers needs and preferences. Maintaining a nimble, test-and-learn approach will help marketers find the secret sauce to their ever-evolving search strategy.

Social Commerce 101: What Marketers Need to Know

Posted on by Allie Haupt

During your leisurely afternoon scroll through social media, you may have come across a post with a shopping feature prompting you to purchase a product within the app. This is social commerce at play – the ability to buy and sell a good or service within a social media platform. 

Why Is Social Commerce Important?

The pandemic permanently changed consumer shopping behaviors. 62% of US consumers are shopping more online now and 48% of US social media users have bought something on a social platform. 

Brands, now more than ever, should explore social commerce to meet the consumers where they are. Let’s explore ways you can leverage social commerce by platform to meet campaign objectives and business goals.

Meta: Facebook and Instagram

Meta makes it easy for brands and consumers to engage in social commerce. In Facebook Business Manager, a business can upload and manage their inventory and even provide customer support via Commerce Manager. To get started, create a Commerce Manager account where you’ll be prompted to link your business account, set shipping options, create a return policy, and assign a bank account for payouts. You can upload as much inventory as you desire to the Facebook catalog because there is no limit on product uploads.

Facebook also introduced in-app shopping features in 2021 including: Shops in Groups and Product Recommendations in Group. 

Likewise, Instagram added Shopping from Creators which allows users to purchase products that influencers tag in their posts. Users can also research and purchase products on the Shop Tab which is located on the Search and Explore Page in the Instagram app. Instagram is really driving the user experience and optimizing the algorithm to become the go-to hub for product discovery. 

Twitter

Twitter recently introduced a new shopping feature, Twitter Shops, that allows brands to create an inventory list of up to 50 products that can be displayed on their profile. Users can then peruse the brand’s products and click a “View Shop” button that will direct them to the brands website to complete the transaction. 

It is important to note that the transactions do not directly take place in the Twitter platform. This means users will be driven to your external site and your brand does not need to develop a new transaction process for payouts.

Pinterest

Pinterest was one of the trailblazers for social commerce, introducing shoppable pins in 2019. Within the platform, there are a plethora of ways a consumer can engage with a brand and purchase products. This includes the Shopping List feature, which automatically saves all of the product pins a user has pinned in one location so they can easily come back and shop. It also notifies a user when a product price has decreased to entice them to purchase. 

Additionally, Pinterest has an AR shopping experience that allows users to virtually try out products, such as placing furniture in their home, before purchasing. Check out this article for more Pinterest advertising tips. 

Snapchat

Snapchat may not be the first platform that comes to mind when thinking about social commerce, but it is helping brands drive efficient sales. Through Snapchat’s AR lens product, Try On, brands’ product catalogs are pulled into the platform to allow for user interaction. 

Major makeup retailer, Ulta, has seen significant success using the AR lens feature. They generated $6 million in sales by allowing users to virtually try on makeup in the app.

TikTok

TikTok is also beginning to enter the social commerce space. Brands can promote their products in the app by adding a Shopping Tab to their profiles. This allows users to look at products and prices, and then redirects the user to the website once ready for checkout. Two prominent brands successfully utilizing the Shopping Tab are Kylie Cosmetics and Sephora. 

If you’re unsure how to adapt your marketing to fit on TikTok, follow these Do’s and Don’ts of TikTok Advertising. 

Which Social Commerce Platforms Should You Use?

When planning a social commerce strategy, first define who your target audience is and identify which social platform(s) can help you reach them efficiently. Also consider the different social commerce offerings and capabilities each platform provides and how they can best meet your brand needs. Use this information to choose the platform(s) that can most effectively promote your brand’s products and create a positive user shopping experience.

Social commerce is a great way to align with shifting consumer shopping behaviors and meet the next generation of shoppers where they are active online. The volume of new shopping tools we’ve seen roll out in the first half of 2022 alone indicate this is only the beginning. Now is the time to get familiar with and start testing different social commerce applications to find what sparks the greatest results for your brand. 

For more on social commerce and other emerging topics, view our top 5 Social Media Trends for 2022. 

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