Winter is coming. And one of the channels brands will be looking to leverage to raise awareness over the holiday shopping season will be social shopping. Social sharing platforms such as Pinterest, Polyvore, Houzz, and Wanelo can be powerful tools to link together consumer purchase cycles, and enable consumers to discover products and services.
A new study by DataPop and Kenshoo on social commerce has identified a number of best practices for brands to drive engagement and increase the visibility of their products on social sharing sites such as Pinterest.
The findings were very positive from a brand perspective. According to the report, social commerce has experienced a 60 percent year-on-year rise in attributable revenues (potentially even greater when factoring the impact of social commerce on offline sales). It explains why 42 percent of retailers are already devoting resource to social commerce in what is fast becoming a fierce and competitive playing field for brands to get their messages across.
DataPop and Kenshoo Social Commerce Study also provided data on the best performing brands on social commerce platforms.
The second edition of the annual Social Commerce Index also revealed that 70 percent of the most engaging Pins on Pinterest are product-related, and that Rich Pins drive 20 percent higher engagement than standard Pins.
3 Ways Marketers Can Help Drive More Sales From Pinterest
Above all, the 2014 Social Commerce Index revealed three key Pinterest marketing findings useful for retail brands:
- Optimizing Pin descriptions with product attributes (type, size, color, etc.) dramatically boosts impressions: It’s well established that consumers use Pinterest to research and be inspired. Useful tags to help consumers find content and products they are interested as they are searching dramatically boosts the number of impressions.
- Product posts have the highest levels of engagements: With more than 70 percent of the most engaging Pins on Pinterest being product related, brands should feel a great deal of encouragement to step up their efforts on the channel. However, make sure you conform to the aesthetics of the medium – the study found that product images that don’t use a plain white background generate 159 percent more likes and re-pins.
- Depth and richness of content drives engagement: Rich Pins drive 20 percent more engagement, however brands aren’t yet fully utilizing the feature. More than 60 percent of overall Pins on Pinterest still aren’t employing Rich Pin functionality.
Tying Together Purchase Journeys For The Winter Shopping Season
Social commerce has proven to be fantastically powerful in the building awareness and consideration stages of the consumer purchase journey. It also provides consumers with early reassurance about one’s brand and products. With the crucial winter shopping season ahead, it’s imperative that brands ensure they are visible and coming across positively as a means of aiding healthy revenues in the bottom levels of brand purchase funnels.
As Christine Bensen, SVP of Media at iCrossing explains “social commerce [is gaining] recognition for its effectiveness, [and] more and more retailers will rush to capitalize on the opportunity.”
Improving Social Commerce Analytics
As the social commerce space continues to become more established, it will become inevitable that additional advertising and organic features will be implemented by brands operating on the platforms, complemented by an increase in the level of sophistication in analytics.
Pinterest has already launched Promoted Pins to help advertisers measure their performance, and Polyvore and Wanelo are also working on enhanced analytics features for enterprise brands.
Undoubtedly, the emerging social commerce platforms will be a competitive battleground for brands for years to come.
You can download DataPop and Kenshoo full Social Commerce Index report here.