[This post was originally written for Social Media Today.
You can read the original article herewhich
got published on June 16th]
Background: F-commerce is increasing generating
buzz in the social media and social technology market. Growing upon the
people’s social graph, Facebook is suddenly emerging not only as a place to
connect and share interesting stuff with people but also as a tool for commerce
for brands and customers. World’s biggest brands are selling on Facebook today.
In fact, the top 3 brands on Facebook – Coca Cola, Starbucks and Disney, sell
directly on Facebook. E-commerce leaders are predicting that within the next 5
years more sales will be happening on Facebook that Amazon.
Hence we thought it would be a good idea to research on some
interesting F-commerce strategies and see what different things are being done
by brands in F-Commerce (Hat tip tosocial
commerce today for their excellent research on Facebook
commerce, which was very valuable for writing this article).
Here are the top 7 F-commerce strategies brand owners should
know:
- Facebook Stores:
Facebook stores (also known as F-Stores) are the typical
stores on Facebook. The idea behind having such stores is to bring the store
where the consumer is (i.e. on Facebook). Consumers can decide upon the
product, make selections and transactions without leaving Facebook. Moreover,
such stores get the viral advantages of Facebook like ‘likes’ and ‘Facebook
shares’.
Many brands such as Tide, Gillette, Coca-Cola, 1-800-flowers, jcpenny and many
more are selling on Facebook through Facebook stores
- Group Buying
Facebook might have jumped into the ‘group buying’ waters
with Facebook deals, but some brands are already using group buying to pump up
sales in their stores. Certain brands like W Hotels activate heavily discounted
deals when a set number of people bid on it. Skoda, ran the ‘More you
like… less you pay campaign’ on their Facebook store, which was an
online auction where each ‘like’ reduced the cost of the car by 1 Euro until
somebody bought it. Similarly Searsis using
the same mechanism on its Facebook store where deals go live when they have
received enough likes. This ensures each product on the store generates buzz
from its fans
- Exclusive Offers
Since your fans and your Facebook store both are on your
Facebook page, there are high chances that it will be your fans who will be
shopping from your Facebook page. So why not use your store to reward them with
exclusive offers to generate buzz along with sales.
Many brands are using this strategy to give exclusive offers
on their Facebook stores. Pantene did this some time back when they were giving
early access to their new products on their F-stores. Ketchup brand Heinz and Women
shoes and Handbag brand Nine
West are also using F-stores to give limited edition products to their
fans
- Facebook connect for network recommendations
Some of the biggest e-commerce and retail brands seem to be
using this for moving their customers ahead into the sales funnel. Such
Facebook commerce applications leverage Facebook’s open graph to show valuable
recommendations to potential customers and buyers.
For instance, Amazon’s ‘Your Amazon
Facebook Page’ application recommends movies, music and other products
based on the recommendations of your friends on Facebook. Tripadvisor’stravel map application shows you a
map of all your friends and the places they have been across the globe, which
is a simple but smart way of gaining travel recommendations. Similarly, Levis Friends Store displays jeans liked
by other people and your friends.
- Shop and tell
You will find this as the emerging trend among onsite
Facebook stores. With Shop and tell plugins brands can integrate referral
features to their shopping carts so that whenever someone makes a purchase on
the store, they can recommend the product to people in their network. In return
they can avail rewards such as discounts, free shipping etc. Many companies
like Flaunt it, Tip
from me and Finz.it provide
such type of plugins.
Another interesting shop and tell tool is Swipely which integrates with your card
information to notify people in your network about your purchases. It also
shows what is happening at the places you shop as a shopping feed.
Certain brands tweaked this model to generate
recommendations and word of mouth. They are selling consumers content (books,
papers, research reports, music) and products (beers, gifts) in exchange of a
Tweet or a Facebook wall update about your brand. See pay with a tweet for more
information.
- Facebook check in deals
Certain brands are making smart use of Facebook check –in
deals for boosting up their sales. Facebook check- in deals allows users to
find deals in their vicinity using their mobile phones and find offers. Such
kind of campaigns helps brands since user check-ins, when they come up in
activity feeds, act as a marketing channel for the brands. We see a great
potential in Facebook check in deals for F-commerce since a lot of interesting
stuff can be experimented in this space.
Brands like Gap used
Facebook check ins to give free jeans to the first 10, 000 check ins and
discounts to the rest of the customers who checked in. Mazda too
used Facebook book check ins to give 20% off on Mazda Roadster customers who
checked in.
- In store Facebook commerce
While some brands are trying to bring their stores to
Facebook through Facebook stores, some others are doing the vice versa, that
is, bringing Facebook to their on -ground retail stores. If your brand has
offline retail stores targeting a lot of youth, then this strategy would
definitely win you a lot of buzz and recommendation.
Coca
Cola village is an interesting example of in store F-commerce, where
there was a real life ‘like’ button that sent ‘likes’ to the users Facebook
account by scanning their wristbands.DieselCam –
an initiative by Diesel, had devices installed in trial rooms where people
could take post their pics with Diesel Gear on their Facebook account.
Hope this research will help brand owners and social media
research understand the wide scope of social commerce. It you know of any more
strategies, please add to this list.
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