Social Commerce is King
First content was king. Then it was commerce. Then content again. So what happens when a community comes together to create content and the transactional web? Social commerce. This was the subject of Tuesday’s session, “Social Commerce: Mashing up the Web,” moderated by Stephen Dimarco, VP of Marketing and Client Services, Compete, Inc.
The panel represented the varying opinions of Jeff Taylor, Founder of eons, Geoff Donaker, COO of Yelp, Nathan Freitas, Co-founder of Cruxy and David Andrew, CEO, Mall Networks. Dimarco asked that each speaker address one of these keys to social commerce success:
• Broaden appeal to new customer segments
• Get people to participate profoundly
• Win versus Yahoo! Google and Myspace
• Leverage your existing brand and customers
Freitas brought up the poignant concepts of the distributed marketplace with distributed tools and user-driven marketing. Indeed, most social sites lean heavily on the audience to build the content and evangelize. To do this, he emphasizes exposing consumers to a deeper amount of content to encourage additional engagement.
As representatives of start ups or growth firms, each of the panelists also spoke candidly of how they first grew their audience. Taylor, whose site targets the boomers, realized that much of his audience isn’t even online yet. Therefore, he has bought remnant TV spots to run a short commercial in small markets across the nation. Donaker, on the other hand, works exclusively through other brands’ affinity programs. Yelp pointed towards traditional marketing blocking and tackling, the power of natural search engine optimization and guerilla marketing.
So do you need to create a social commerce entity to play in the game? Most certainly not, the panel concurred. Of course, they would be much happier that you and your brand select to engage with their audience.
