Black Friday, which heralds the Christmas business on November 27th, should turn out to be the online shopping highlight, as it does every year, with customers hunting for bargains and gifts. In order to get the maximum out of such lucrative milestones, it is important to adequately pick up the customer. After all, those who rely on e-commerce as a sure-fire success have already lost.
In 2020, global online retail sales made a huge leap on Black Friday, not least because of Corona. A sales analysis of over one million retailers on the Shopify e-commerce platform revealed that sales on Black Friday had increased by a whopping 75% compared to the previous year.
Can this be increased even without the pandemic effect? Definitely – but brands have to offer an attractive and innovative shopping experience that is based on spontaneity and new experiences.
Facebook Discovery Commerce: Four Steps to Stronger Online Commerce
This includes dissolving the boundaries between the analogue shopping experience in the store and the digital experience. The motto used to be that a visit to the store offers customers inspiration and discovery, while online shopping is primarily for convenience. But why not combine both in a seamless shopping journey? This is where Facebook’s Discovery Commerce comes in.
In order to make online shopping a convincing journey of discovery, brands and retailers should use the Internet for themselves, where extensive browsing and inspiration are a natural part of the user experience – and where people also spend a lot of time. A current study by Facebook shows that customers are already discovering products on social media: 66% of the consumers surveyed in the USA who usually discover new products online said they use Facebook platforms for this.
Facebook has identified four pillars of Discovery Commerce that consumer goods brands use to increase reach, sales, and success:
Personalization: Address target groups individually
A curated shopping experience on Facebook mimics the discovery of products in the store – with one decisive advantage: Personalization.
Every digital interaction with a company generates data that marketers can use in combination with their own customer knowledge and the performance solutions from Facebook in order not only to address the target group in a personalized way but also to reach new customer bases.
Fast connections and machine learning ensure real-time data that can be translated directly into personalized ads using tools such as Pixel, SDK and the Conversions API.
Inspire: creative and strategic ad design
In 2020, the time users spent on their smartphones every day was three hours – a whole hour more than in the previous year. Shopping is also increasingly done on mobile devices. So that shopping is no longer just a functional process, but a curated, inspiring experience, the customer should be picked up while casually surfing or scrolling through social media. Mobile-first ads can create purchase inspiration where people spend most of their time.
What is important for this is consistent, visual branding that creates recognition value across all campaigns. Important added value can also be generated by those who get to know the motivation to shop and create relevant ads based on this: According to Facebook, 89% of all conversions in new target groups were influenced by convincing ad design.
Conversion: Helpful tools for a smooth customer journey
The purchase inspiration is only the first step on the shopping journey, and the fewer points of friction there are on the path to purchase, the greater the success. Wherever conversion should take place, the individual customer experience should be optimized. Here, too, with Discovery Commerce, machine learning and user data help to pick up the customer at every point of their experience.
Facebook offers conversion tools to make the buying process as easy as possible. Any tool can be integrated into the Discovery Commerce system: it combines awareness, consideration and conversion campaigns to deliver a better overall experience.
A major advantage of this flexible form of marketing: campaigns no longer have to be tailored to a single goal in the marketing funnel, but can be linked to one another and serve several goals at the same time.
Optimization: tools to measure success
Digital advertising is a highly competitive field. In order to remain competitive, solutions are needed to measure marketing success and to adapt strategies.
At the same time, such measurements must be compatible with data protection regulations. To achieve this, strategies can be implemented that combine internal data with data aggregated elsewhere. For example, advertisers can track an awareness campaign on Facebook and also carry out and measure a conversion campaign on Facebook.
If you want to get the most out of your brand, social commerce opens up completely new ways to leverage unused sales potential in the high-volume year-end spurt – starting with Black Friday on November 27th.
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