Combining discovery and purchase in an instant.
Welcome to Part 3 of our Meta Insight Series from leading Digital Agency Remap Online.
This four-part series brings you key insights from deep inside Meta’s HQ in Silicon Valley to help your Aussie business thrive post-pandemic.
If you missed Part 2, you could catch up on it here. We explored why creativity on mobile is just so important.
This week, three, we’ll show you how shops are entering a new era for eCommerce.
Consumers the world over have evolved from bricks and mortar to now include online shopping. But mobile has brought together the two most essential elements that underpin any transaction: Discovery and purchase.
Window shopping has always been an essential part of consumer behaviour, and it still is. The ability to browse, imagine, try on, and discuss an item’s potential with your friends is an essential precursor to a sale.
So, what’s changed?
Mobile’s ability to be with us 24/7 and 365 has brought the shop to the people.
Consumers no longer ‘go shopping’. Instead, they’re always shopping.
Platforms and their algorithms mean people no longer search for products.
Products now search for people.
No other platform does eCommerce better than Meta and Instagram.
Meta and Instagram Shops let you bring the checkout right into the moment of discovery. Product Tags means businesses can tag the products they feature in their posts to showcase prices and provide a direct path to purchase for consumers to shop right in the moment of discovery.
Mark Zuckerberg himself was quoted on a Meta conference call in July last year (2020), saying that Shops will provide “natural value for businesses” by helping them to better “connect [their advertising] with their Shops”. They were taking audiences from the top of the funnel in discovery mode, right down to driving actual sales. The best part was this statement he put at the end of his Facebook and Instagram Shops remarks. As far as Zuckerberg is concerned, Shops are “going to continue scaling.”
Shops now provide a single storefront for your business across all of Facebook’s Apps and Sites (Meta, Instagram, What’s App, and Messenger)—helping you bring the shop to the people.
Whether you’re looking to reach more people, drive consideration and purchase, or deepen customer relationships, the entire eco-system of Meta, Instagram, What’s App and Messenger provides a personalised place for anyone to start their shopping journey.
You can also use Product Tags in Ads to help people discover your products at scale. Putting some media spend behind your catalogue along with the power of Facebook’s data and targeting capabilities mean you can now match individual items to individual people. (i.e., Dynamic Product Ads).
Combining with Influencers means retailers can quickly build authenticity and promote their products to otherwise hard to reach audiences. Influencers will get your products in front of the people who follow them in new, socially interactive experiences. Facilitating this on mobile has become the digital version of window shopping with your friends.
They were discovering new products, learning more about them, discussing them with your friends, seeing their prices, and seeing a direct path to purchase if you want to buy it. Right there. Right then. You can buy it at the very exact moment that you discovered it and learned what your friends thought about it.
Mobile has brought the mall to the people. They can now go window shopping, along with their friends, while they’re on the bus to work, during the ad break of their favourite show on TV, wherever, whenever, 24/7 and 365.
Consumers are always shopping, so isn’t it time you brought the shop the people?
Learn more or simply check out our guide to Get Started with Meta and Instagram Shops.
The insights in this article were supplied by Stu Stevens, Managing Director of Remap Online, an official Meta Marketing Partner.