5 Game-Changers in The Future of Discovery Commerce
Whether you tuned in live and want to brush up on some of the finer details or you’re tuning in for the first time, “The Future of Discovery Commerce with Facebook and Hawke Media” was 2-hours of action-packed edutainment.
We broke out the Santa hats to show brands that it’s time to dust off their workshops and get to work so they can perform and deliver this holiday season–which in many ways has already started.
Don’t get left behind! It’s time to dash into the best things we covered at “The Future of Discovery Commerce” that were new, innovative, and just plain common sense. Here are our top five most critical takeaways from the event (Hint: Watch the video for more):
1) What is “Discovery Commerce”?
“Discovery commerce is really about connecting the right product to the right person. It’s about driving discovery demand and delight while respecting people’s right to privacy. It’s about collapsing the journey between discovery and action.
Today more than ever businesses need efficient strategies to meet people where they are and close the measurement loop to know that those strategies are working. So, brands that have made digital their top priority like direct to consumer brands are in a strong position to future-proof their business.” – Morgan Tierney, Facebook
2) Digital Transformation
“In Q2 of this year, really due to COVID, the average consumer mix of spending online versus in-store went from 13 to 30. So assuming not a huge drop in consumer spending–which the only drops we really saw were on travel, leisure, & hospitality not on consumer goods–basically over 2x’d the ability to earn online and we saw this with a lot of brands.
We saw a lot of brands skyrocket during that period. A lot of our investments and a lot of our clients saw a 2x or more increase in revenue. I’ve seen as high as 5x during Q2! During that three month period, and we’re not talking about a business doing $50,000/month or $20,000/month, we had clients that are doing $1,000,000 month that went to $4,000,000.” – Erik Huberman, Hawke Media
3) Products Finding Customers
“Businesses will need to meet their customers where they are and personalize their online experience from discovery, to purchase, to post-purchase and Facebook is known for personalized and relevant advertising serving one-to-one experiences based on people’s unique interests” – Morgan Tierney, Facebook
4) Shoppable Content on Instagram
[Instagram] Shops are an immersive full-screen storefront that enables businesses to build their brand story and drive product discovery all in a native shopping experience. These can be accessed directly from your Instagram handle where there’s actually a Shops tab.
Shopping Tags
We’ve built shopping tags for businesses to tag products across Instagram so people can easily shop wherever they find joy in the app.
Shopping tags allow businesses to highlight products from their catalog and stories and in-feed so people can learn more and businesses that use checkout on Instagram can highlight products in feed captions and in their “link in bios”.
Collections
Product mentions collections allow businesses to curate the shopping experience by surfacing products into themes that tell a story in their shop and product detail pages (PDPS) showcase. All relevant information on an item including pricing, rich descriptions, and media product detail pages are usually shortened as PDPS, but PDPS pull in media where the product is tagged on instagram so that people can see the products used in a number of different ways.
Shopping Ads
Shopping ads, which as I mentioned just launched last week, allow businesses to boost existing shopping posts and launch ads in ads manager with tagged products to reach audiences at scale.
Checkout on Instagram
Checkout on Instagram allows businesses to sell their products directly on Instagram. It’s available to all US businesses that meet our commerce eligibility requirements. I know it was in closed alpha for a while so if folks aren’t aware that they can actually onboard onto checkout, now you definitely can.
I think there are a lot of meaningful tools that we’re going to run through that are eligible whenever you have checkout. So, I think it’s something to watch if you are specifically interested in some of the products that might be gated to those who are using checkout.
Shopping from Creators
One of those being, shopping from creators, which makes it possible for people to shop inspiring looks from the creators that they love without leaving instagram. This is currently available to checkout sellers.
Product Launches
Product launches are a way for businesses to announce an upcoming launch on Instagram so people can preview details and set reminders to buy as soon as possible. This is also currently available for checkout sellers.
Live Shopping
Live shopping unlocks a new channel for businesses to share products with customers. Businesses can tag products in live broadcasts that customers can purchase in real-time.
Instagram Shop
And Shop is a shoppable real-time reflection of our community’s interests across top shopping categories like fashion, beauty, home decor, and more.
With the full suite of shoppable features, there truly is a shopping strategy for every business, big or small, to grow on Instagram and there are 130 million people tapping to reveal a shoppable tag every month across stories, in-feed, and more.
People encounter shoppable content all over so the path to shopping is not linear on Instagram, which presents an opportunity for businesses to meet shoppers wherever they are spending time in the app and so here are some of the main advantages of setting up a shopping strategy
- You can now turn inspiring content into actionable content.
- You can own your own brand narrative with a full suite of shopping products.
- You can create full-funnel strategies with Instagram shopping so you can build out larger brand moments based on the interests of your audience while facilitating transactions all in one place.
5) Chatbots & AR
Chatbots
We all forget that chatbots exist and [that] it is a type of marketing. I think that some people think it just happens. Well, it doesn’t.
The first piece of this is having a site to connect your brand to the consumer with the best experience possible and the most streamlined user experience. Connecting to a consumer to drive conversions takes the personalization of the consumer’s journey along every step of the way with mobile messaging, meaning you’re able to customize the experience the person has in their journey.
You’re able to answer questions like you would in a store. You’re able to ultimately make a conversion happen.
While it might be a little bit longer process, it streamlines the idea that someone has the ease–specifically in that older demographic too–to ask questions about a new brand.
With furniture, a lot of times furniture descriptions on sites…don’t have all the dimensions [displayed] properly so having a chatbot that can answer, “What’s the dimension? What’s the circumference? What’s the height?” That really helps with mobile shopping these days!
It really allows you to connect with your consumer, but on the other side of this, it allows you to collect consumer data. It allows you to collect their email, it allows you to get their phone number, it allows you to get insights about your products. While chatbots are great for the personalization of the consumer journey for the brand, they’re even more valuable when you’re seeing what questions people are asking. So you can tailor your site experience”
Augmented Reality: Try Before You Buy
“Augmented reality is really a piece where you can try [a product] out. This is something that’s really interesting on Instagram, for example. It’s an [experience] where you can take a real-world environment and make it an augmented reality experience and make it viewable in an environment in which users are aware of their surroundings and themselves and forming an even larger connection with the brand. AR shopping experiences receive approximately a 65 to 69 percent higher conversion rate within social apps. That’s tested in a lot of places!” – Kyle Harrington, Hawke Media