Director of Digital Marketing and E-Commerce at Bang Energy

To ensure success in the evolving landscape of e-commerce, brands play a pivotal role in shaping the future of online shopping. The fast shift of consumers from traditional e-commerce to social commerce highlights the need for marketers to embrace this change and adjust their marketing strategies accordingly to avoid losing out on the significant portion of consumer’s digital spending, which is expected to increase over the next three years. 

To establish themselves as a leader in ecommerce and seize the social-commerce opportunity, brands are leveraging their organic social media channel as well as influencer marketing more than ever. These have become essential tools not only to generate brand awareness and engagement, but also to drive revenue. Why? The rise in paid media together with the fact that 99 percent of Gen Z consumers have admitted to frequently skipping social ads are shifting digital marketers focus back to cultivating communities where authentic recommendations can take place. In fact, there’s real hunger for this among Gen Z consumers.

To gain share in the digital marketplace, brands can consider several tactics:

Build brand - aligned Influencer “storytellers”

Influencer marketing has revolutionized the way brands connect with consumers online. Brands can leverage their channels by producing captivating content and drawing in influencers into their network of ambassadors. This offers a chance to cultivate excitement, provide an interactive forum for feedback and inquiries, and establish influencers as brand partners and promoters. 

  ​There are many Influencer Marketing software’s that allow brands to track the consumer journey and attribute revenue, costs, sales and ROI to each influencer. This has been a game changer for companies that rely heavily on influencer marketing 

It is crucial to develop a comprehensive influencer marketing plan that is continuously optimized. Brands must thoughtfully choose creators to partner with based on factors including their audience, reach and engagement, yet that’s not all. Authenticity and content creation is becoming more important for social commerce, making these two critical factors for brands to select their influencers. When creators’ use their unique strengths to produce unique content that is natural to them and sell a product in their own authentic voice it's when we see a rise in eCommerce sales.

“Building a team of brand-aligned storytellers rather than influencers marks the difference to drive eCommerce sales,” Viviana Muci. Measuring the impact of influencer campaigns throughout the advertising funnel is crucial, including top-of-the-funnel metrics like engagement rates and video views, and lower funnel metrics like sales and average order value. There are many Influencer Marketing software’s that allow brands to track the consumer journey and attribute revenue, costs, sales and ROI to each influencer. This has been a game changer for companies that rely heavily on influencer marketing.

Build a solid Affiliate marketing program

If you have eCommerce and you don’t have an affiliate marketing program, you are leaving a big chunk of sales on the table. Affiliate marketing is a great way to drive e-commerce sales by leveraging the promotional reach of affiliate partners to attract new audiences and drive traffic to the e-commerce site.

The key to affiliate marketing today is to partner with many relevant affiliates in different niches. Sometimes brands disregard creators because they are not directly within the brands’ industry. Yet, I’ve found that they might be even more credible than others that have a plethora of brand affiliate programs, thus driving higher conversions.  Also, having a competitive commission rate to incentivize affiliates to promote your eCommerce products rather than other brands. 

Tracking and optimizing performance over time is also important. Metrics such as clicks, conversions, and revenue generated by each affiliate will help marketers make decisions to refine commission rates, offer better promotional materials, and create campaign strategies.

Create Social-first content for eCommerce deals

It’s still surprising to see how brands create eCommerce offers without thinking about social content first. Especially for brands that have an established social media following, the eCommerce deals, offers and promotions will give greater results when Social content is the priority.

Marketers can think about what offers are easier to read on an IG Story, for an influencer to promote, for an affiliate to communicate, for a TikTok creator to share, tie that into a culturally relevant theme or moment and wait to see the best results. Also, offering “platform specific” flash promotions that urges the social community to take advantage of is a tactic we are finding successful.

Seize the Social Commerce opportunity

According to research, social media is still among the top 4 ways consumers discover new brands and products. Taking consumers from discovery to purchase on a website has been a challenge for digital marketers especially given the drop off rates and higher CPCs. 

Social Media App features such as Tik Tok Shop, that drive consumers directly from discovery to purchase without leaving the app in a seamless native way and integrated with multiple eCommerce platforms, is definitely a solution that will change the landscape, helping brands sell more through social media in a more cost effective way.

What is great about these new technologies is that brands are able to work with a broader creator network to get their products promoted. They can run Lives, create shoppable videos, showcase products and get commissions per sale. Brands can also get insights and sales performance analytics to measure creator and campaign success. 

The social commerce market is worth $36 billion and has the potential to become the best channel for US brands thanks to the opportunity to engage with consumers and hyper-target customer segments. Social commerce merges marketing and retail channels into a single dynamic universe, allowing brands to work with social and creator platforms to draw a more direct line between their marketing spend and actual sales by customers, making advertising more effective and efficient. 

However, the challenge for brands that start maximizing this space is that in some cases the consumer journey will bypass the brand-owned channels. For example, consumers may discover brands on social media platforms, such as Instagram, through posts from influencers and then check out through Instagram's shopping feature, receiving personalized ads and relevant posts in their feeds selected by Instagram's algorithm, reducing the relationship brand-consumer. As a result, direct-to-consumer relationships will need to be nurtured through innovative ways.