Social commerce by brands : 5 great examples
There’s no doubt that social commerce is on the rise and starting to change the way that people buy products. But other than putting a shopping cart onto your Facebook Page, there’s many ways that social technologies can be used to improve the commerce process both offline and online, making it into a more social experience. There is an opportunity for brands to start introducing social commerce early on, and using this to provide a more valuable experience for the consumer. Social commerce is certainly big business, with buzz around Groupon’s upcoming IPO and now rival deals site LivingSocial rumored to be entering into an IPO soon with an estimated valuation of $15 billion. To show you the value of social commerce, here’s 5 great examples of brands using this to promote and sell products.
Starbucks luxury coffee
Last year Starbucks showed how social commerce is done well, by running a promotion based on customer loyalty. They had partnered up with the luxury site Gilt Groupe, to launch a new luxury line of coffee. Instead of just launching the product directly to Gilt members, they decided to reward loyalty instead. MyStarbucks card holders were invited to an exclusive sale of the coffee, before even Gilt members could get their hands on it, and way before the product was released to the general public. Starbucks did two things right here. Firstly they partnered up with a social commerce service in the first place – through Gilt – but they then found a way to create real talkability among their loyal customers. The initiative was launched in August 2010 and is a good example of social commerce being done in the right way, targeted to a loyal fanbase and finding a very real way to reward them. Though it didn’t include integration on their own Facebook Page, the strength of this came in with partnering with Gilt – they found an existing community and worked with them.
Social selling for charity
In a recent charity campaign around the film ‘Life In A Day’, people were asked to become mini movie moguls and use the power of social commerce for good. For the film, the organisers set up a facility where people could become social sellers and create their own online ticket booth. You could then use your online booth to sell film tickets to friends and family, via a partnership with easyfundraising.co.uk and 25% of the ticket revenue was then given directly to charity of your choice. This significantly incentivised people to keep selling more tickets. This is an entirely new social commerce concept, and it forms part of a completely social project overall, as Life In A Day’ was made up of clips submitted by people from all over the world, to Youtube. This is an interesting approach to the idea of social selling and using people’s own communities with a side benefit to charities. Though a concept like this wouldn’t need to be restricted to charities, it’s a great way of facilitating online fundraising in an entirely new way. You can check out the film trailer below :
Uniqlo Under Construction
This has got to be one of the best social commerce campaigns ever. When Uniqlo were rebuilding their site last year, they decided against using a standard ‘under construction’ page and went for something completely different. When they landed on the holding page, users were asked to set the price for 10 featured items, by integrating with Twitter. The more tweets a certain product got, the cheaper it became. Uniqlo called on people here to use their own social communities to determine the outcome of the new site, bringing them in early on in the process to fully engage them with the brand the products. The concept is simple yet genius, successfully bringing social features into the site, but finding a way to bring people back to the site eventually, so you don’t lose the end benefit and ultimate sale that you’re hoping to drive.
Chanel’s Popup Store
A great campaign from Chanel here, that showed how you can take an offline concept and transform it online. When Chanel were launching their new lipstick line, they opened up a popup shop on Facebook. To reward their loyal Facebook fans, Chanel opened up a store on their Facebook Page, where you could purchase the lipstick ahead of the main launch. The chance to purchase this through the Facebook Page was limited, to extend the ‘popup’ concept and they also added in some nice social features here. As well as being able to purchase the lipstick through the Facebook app, you could also buy it directly within the wall itself, making this an inherently social concept. What I like about this campaign is that it also shows social commerce is a viable option for luxury brands, where it may not seem like there’s such a natural fit.
Dropbox Referrals
Dropbox is one of my favourite online services around and they show how to give something back to a loyal community, with their social referral scheme. While you can choose to buy extra space on Dropbox to store your files, you can also use word of mouth to earn extra storage. You can earn extra space within the site simply by inviting your friends with your unique discount code. This shows forward-thinking by Dropbox. They’ve kept the social commerce completely centred around their product, and are willing to say goodbye to extra revenue, in return for a bigger community on their site. The action for the user is simple – tell a friend about a service you probably love anyway, get extra space, which in turn encourages you back to the site more. This is a great scheme by Dropbox and it shows that the new currency may be social, rather than monetary.
