E145 - Commerce Today - Beyond the 'Buy' Button: A Playbook for Profitable Social Commerce
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Commerce Today. I'm Joshua Warren, CEO of e-Commerce Agency, creativity and your host here on Commerce Today, and also the author of the E-Commerce Growth Playbook. You can find that on Amazon, on your Kindle in bookstores, and actually want to dive into some feedback I got on the book in this episode.

Had some. Questions and requests to talk a little bit more about social commerce. So in my book, I tell the story of a baby apparel brand. I. Changed the name of course, to predict the not so innocent. I call them Lux Baby in the book. And I talk about how their site melted down after a TikTok video went viral.

They had the marketing fire to drive traffic, but their tech engine just couldn't handle the heat. So today, those platforms like TikTok shop and Instagram checkout offer a native fix for part of that problem. Customers can buy right in the app. There's no redirect, no slow cart. You tap, you buy, you're done.

And it sounds really simple, doesn't it? The platforms love to push it as something [00:01:00] simple, but it really isn't. Social commerce is not put a buy button on a post. That is I think what some of the early efforts around that were. I was actually involved in the first time Pinterest tried to make pens viable and put a buy button on Pinterest pens.

That was super interesting and looking at it as, hey, we're putting a buy button on a post and. That's it, that's not the right way to look at it. It's a new channel with new rules. If you bring your website habits and your website experience to a social commerce experience, you're not gonna get great results.

You might get a lot of traffic or a lot of views, but not a lot of profits. So today I wanna give you a very clear playbook. I call it the three Cs of profitable social commerce, and that is content, community, and conversion. So I want to cover how to what to make, what sort of content to make, how to build that trust and how to wire the backend so your ops don't just absolutely melt like [00:02:00] l lux babies did.

I'm also gonna give you a 30 day sprint plan and a short readiness audit you can apply today. So let's dive in. The first C is content. Your product is actually a co-star and not the hero. Or not the star in your social content on your site, your website. The product is absolutely the hero. People are there to look at the products, to buy the products.

It's all about the products On social, the content is the hero. The product is just a co-star that hopefully steals a few scenes. So your job actually shifts from merchant to media. Company doesn't mean a high budget. I'm not saying Hollywood Media Company. It just means high signal, high quality content.

So here's the really simple content rule for social commerce. Earn attention first, then trust, then get the buy. So you do that with native watchable content that blends value with a clear, low friction path to buy. So five beats that work really well for a shoppable video. The hook should be in the first [00:03:00] three seconds.

If you don't hook them in the first three seconds, they're gone. Say the problem out loud, or show the after the results. Teacher entertain in the next 20 to 45 seconds. Show the product doing real work. Then offer social proof in one line. 40 K sold. Chef approved. A quick testimonial offer clarity, price, variant shipping basics.

Keep it very tight and simple, and a very soft call to action. So tap to see colors. Shop the bundle. ADD now to save your place. Now notice what I didn't list. Long monologues, studio lighting, feature dumps, what performs is reality and just having a real product, solving a real problem and getting straight to the point.

So some content types that really convert on social. So a demo in context show, show the problem, solving a real task in a real place. No stop. Kitten kitchens your actual counter. I actually have a quick personal story on this. I had to rebuild the motor in a pool pump recently. [00:04:00] And it was actually the pool repair guys that videoed themselves in somebody's backyard tearing apart one of these motors that I found most engaging.

I actually watched and engaged with and ended up buying a couple of products that they recommended, versus there was some pool supply stores that they actually had perfect lighting inside, totally unrealistic conditions and did a very clinical tear down of the pool pump. Yeah, it was helpful to refer to, but honestly I found myself going back to those that more real.

Grittier video from the guys that are actually doing the work in the backyard more than the more clinical ones. So sometimes you think social commerce, you think video content, and you go out and you buy lots of nice lights, you buy lots of nice equipment. I'm definitely guilty of that when what people really want to see is that gritty video that is clearly real life experience with the product.

But that aside, that little tangent aside, other content types that can really [00:05:00] convert. Before and after. Do a fast split screen, dirty to clean, dull to shiny, masto, tidy, whatever it is your product's gonna do. Do just a very fast before and after. A recipe or routine. So morning routine with product X three.

Step fix for problem y. Your product would then be step two or three. Don't make your product. Step one, people will just click on to the next video. Myth bustings Show one common mistake, one fix. Show the proof. Stitches or duets definitely work. React to a customer using your product, celebrate them.

Then maybe add one tip. Live shopping is becoming bigger and bigger. Do one hour one theme, one offer. Pin the products, answer questions in real time. A few quick notes. Write for the ear and record for the I. And what I mean by that is keep short lines, shortcuts. Let the action really carry the message.

Make sure you design the first frame really well. Start with a problem, a stain on a shirt, a tangled cable, a [00:06:00] foggy mirror, whatever problem you're gonna solve. Keep the sound honest. Use real room noise. If it feels human voiceovers are okay, but please don't. Overproduce. There's so many AI tools out there that can give you perfect studio sound and amazing voiceovers AI voices.

It sounds like you have the guy from all the movie previews talking about your product. Don't do that. Keep it real. Again, my example earlier of the pool pump repair. It was noisy. You could hear pool equipment, you could hear dogs barking, you could hear lawnmowers. They were in a real backyard.

That didn't make me click through to another video. That just made me realize, hey, these guys are actually solving the problem that I have. I wanna see how they do it. Caption everything people watch on mute. So make sure you either use native captions or very crisp open captions. Also, one idea per video.

Don't cram a catalog into 30 seconds. Make many micro stories or micro videos. And yes, tag the product. There's a lot of people like, oh, I don't wanna be too pushy. I [00:07:00] wanna put the content out there, but I'm not gonna tag the product. I'm not gonna put a shoppable link. Tag the product. It's the reason you're making this video.

Make sure the shoppable link is obvious. Don't make people hunt for it. Keep the variance really clear. Don't let people get surprised by the price. If you make a video talking about how affordable your product is and they click through, it's a thousand dollars, they're never gonna click through one of your videos again.

If you partner with creators, and we've had some great commerce today episodes about partnering with creators and just like I said there, I'm gonna say again now, let the creator keep their voice. Don't overly script them. Don't tell them you have to say it this way. You can guide the beats, but just don't choke out the vibe that their videos normally have.

Their audience will pick up on that, and again, they'll just click right through or scroll right through. They're not gonna watch that video. So I would say if you're worried that your team isn't creative run a seven day content sprint. So day one, brain dump 30 hooks that start with if you [00:08:00] struggle with, or the fastest way to that relate to your product.

Day two, record five 32nd demos on a phone. Keep it vertical. Good light, but in a real setting. Day three, edit them on the phone. Don't get fancy. Don't worry about having fancy software. Just add captions. Pin the product. Pick two of these five and actually post them. Day four, record three reactions to reading, customer comments, and post one of the videos.

Day five, go film a before and after and post one day six. This is the big one. Go live for 20 minutes. Talk about one bundle, one bonus. Don't script it, don't worry about it, just do it. And then day seven, review the metrics and the customer feedback from all the other days. Keep what worked, kill what didn't, and repeat.

So some things to watch to make sure that you have quality content. Check the thumb stop rate. So three second views and impressions. Are we hooking people in [00:09:00] the average watch time? Are people staying on the video? The click through to product. Are we earning taps and the save share rate? Are we valuable enough to pass along?

If you're a hook and watch times are weak, then fix the content before you start blaming the offer. So the second C that we're gonna talk about is community. So trust is the real funnel. People don't buy just because you're selling. They buy because they feel safe to try your product. And social commerce really turns the comment section into the storefront.

And community is actually how you staff that storefront community shifts you from a one to many broadcaster, to a many, to many relationships and really aim for three feelings in your audience. They get me, people like me use this and they'll take care of me if something goes wrong. Some very practical things you can build community with.

First of all, comment back. Fast speed is a trust signal. Set a simple SLA reply to purchase intent comments within 15 minutes during business hours. Pin [00:10:00] frequently asked questions in the comments. Does it fit wide feet? Is it dishwasher safe? Whatever relates to your product, pin a short answer with a link.

Show your receipts. Post some behind the scenes. Post the packaging line, post the quality control process. The team reward people that are helping. So when a customer answers another customer's question, thank them. Gift them. Screenshot the moment. Create some rituals within your community. The first Friday live, the Sunday restocks, the Wednesday maker q and a.

Those rituals and routines will build habit and identity in your community. Use DMS for service, not for pressure. Do not hard sell people in the dms, so answer people's dms with Care. Link what helps don't nag them. In the book my eCommerce Growth Playbook book, I talk about personalization without creepiness.

This absolutely applies here. Use what they told you in public. So if they comment and mention they're a nurse, say, Hey, you mentioned you're a nurse. Here's how it's gonna hold up on double [00:11:00] shifts. Avoid using data that you scrape or things from your customer data platform when commenting publicly with your customers.

I've seen people do that. That is absolutely the creepiness level of personalization. Don't do it moderate with a light hand. So remove hate, but leave fair critiques, answer respectfully, and move on. So micro communities can be absolutely gold if you sell products for runners. Host a weekly 5K check-in.

If you sell for parents, do lunchbox tips live. The product is gonna fund the community, and the community is actually gonna fund the business. A loyalty program can also help, but don't hide everything behind points. Give status in public the commoner of the month made by spotlights. Early access for top social contributors.

People really want to be seen. And then also creators. Treat them like collaborators, not ad channels. Give them a clear brief with three guardrails. The promise. What changes for the viewer if they buy the boundary? [00:12:00] What we can't or won't claim and the must dos Things like tag the product, disclose clearly ship one demo and one testimonial clip.

Let them do the rest of their way because again, the audience can smell brand control. The third C is conversion. So this is where Lux Baby absolutely flamed out. So attention without Operations is a bonfire and a paper factory. When a sale happens on TikTok shop or Instagram checkout, the work really begins.

You need those orders to be ingested into your system. You need the inventory to sync. You need payments, tax, fraud, fulfillment. Customer service returns, all of that, and you're doing all of that across channels that aren't yours. So it gets a little more complicated. So think about, like I talk about in the book, think about the data plumbing order ingestion.

How are you gonna pull social platform orders into your E-R-P-O-M-S or e-commerce platform in minutes and in hours? Use the official APIs where you can, [00:13:00] or a reliable connector. Also your inventory truth. This even goes back to a couple episodes ago. We were talking about Amazon. So important that across your website, across Amazon or other marketplaces and across social, you have one source of inventory with real time updates.

Also considering. Keeping a buffer, a safety stock or a shadow stock to prevent oversells during spikes. Especially if you're running some sort of social video content and a promotion on Amazon. At the same time, be careful about overselling. Also look at customer service visibility or CX tool absolutely must show social origin orders with full details.

You need to have the item, the discounts, delivery status, return eligibility, but also that customer's social information so that you can pull that into the customer service experience. Also, make sure that your refund and return flows match the expectations that social platform set. I would recommend pre-approving common [00:14:00] return reasons, make labels easy, so some operational guardrails.

Don't try to launch every single SKU into social commerce on day one. Cut and focus to a few specific SKUs. Start with the SKUs that you know are already winners. If you just try to push the whole catalog on day one, you're just gonna create chaos. Consider bundling for increasing the average order value.

Prebuilt bundles will lift your profit and also simplify the experience for the users. So also set standards and SLAs that you can keep. This is a case where you want to under promise and over deliver. If your average time to from order receipt to printing that shipping labels 24 hours, then claim 48 hours.

Also, really look at your fraud checks. I've seen people actually get in trouble with social commerce platforms because they're, credit card processing system had very slow a VS rules. And so the fraud [00:15:00] scoring and risk scoring was slow. And there are SLAs on those integrations with the social commerce platforms, and they actually will, especially if you hit a spike, you get a whole lot of orders and your payment processing platform can't keep up.

You will get in trouble with the platform and risk having your products no longer promoted or just being deprioritized. Also do capacity planning. Know your maximum daily orders you can fulfill before having to pay overtime and after paying overtime plan, at what point you will actually turn things off if you hit that thing that everyone thinks is so wonderful until it happens to them a sudden spike in demand in orders.

Also, I talk a lot in the e-commerce growth playbook about organizational design that does matter here to who owns the social commerce p and l. What I see a lot of times is marketing will own the content and ops will own delivery, and no one owns profit and it creates just a [00:16:00] total mess. You have marketing out there spinning up promotions that ops actually can't fulfill.

So create a cross-functional pod. Have a social lead, a merchandiser, customer experience lead, and an ops owner that are all focused on social commerce. They should have a weekly standup, one shared scorecard, one shared p and L that they look at. For that scorecard, I would recommend ha look at the top of funnel.

So impressions hook rate, watch time, middle of the funnel, product clicks, add to cart rate checkout, so conversion rate, cancellation rate. Post-purchase. Look at time to print that shipping label. Time to deliver. And where is my order? Contacts per 100 orders. Look at profit obviously. So contribution, margin after fees, return rate and refund reasons by code.

Also look at your customer acquisitions. Are these people coming back and buying again? What is the repeat purchase rate at 30 16, 90 days? Now, one more thing I wanna mention. [00:17:00] Platform risk. Don't build your whole house on rented land. So use social commerce to acquire, then earn permission to keep talking to them.

Pack the insert with a simple join our insider list. Offer. Run a welcome flow that adds value. Care tips, how to videos, community invites. You really want to graduate these happy social buyers into owned relationships on your own website. Now I mentioned the quick social commerce readiness audit. You're probably hearing a ton about selling on social.

You want to dive in before you dive in. Here are three things to check. Product fit for video. Some people have products that just don't make good videos. Can you show your product doing its job in 30 seconds? Can you demo it in a small space with common tools? If not, can you show outcomes, use cases or stories that will land in 30 seconds?

If you can't. Your product may not be the right fit for video. Maybe consider these things as you're designing or planning out your next product [00:18:00] line. Next up team capacity for media. Do you have the bandwidth to make the videos and to reply? You should reply at least daily. I mentioned earlier, try to reply within 15 minutes during business hours.

Can your team do that? Doesn't have to be perfect. The video doesn't have to be perfect. The replies don't have to be perfect. They just need to be consistent. Also, do you have someone that will get on camera? Do you have someone that will edit? Who is going to be replying to the comments? If it's not just you, keep it very simple, keep it very repeatable.

And then also look at your tech stack. Can you ingest orders and sync inventory in real time? Can your customer experience team see those orders? Are returns gonna work without having to write a novel of a support process for your team? If the answer's not yet, then look at that before you start launching these videos.

Overall, on these three, I would give yourself a red, yellow, green. You have two reds. Do not launch a social commerce effort yet. If you have one [00:19:00] red, then maybe and then if you do have those two reds or even one red pick one. And start working on it and then get to the point to where you feel like you can safely launch a social commerce channel.

I mentioned a quick 30 day social commerce sprint. I will actually write that up into a PDF and share that out with anyone who finds me on LinkedIn as Joshua Warren and sends me a DM and asks for the social commerce sprint, PDF from Commerce today, episode 1 45. Otherwise I will actually be back next week and next week.

We are gonna be talking about my favorite topic that I haven't mentioned in way too many episodes, and that is AI and Agentic commerce. So can't wait to dive into that with y'all. As always, please send me messages on LinkedIn or comment on these videos on LinkedIn. Love hearing from y'all and I hope you have a great week.