How Agencies Can Enable Seamless Shopping for Their Clients Through Discovery Commerce by Facebook 

“Agencies have a unique opportunity to plug-in throughout this dynamic customer journey and help their clients unlock seamless experiences for customers.” Jessica McNulty, Agency Partner at Facebook. 

Mrkt360 is thrilled to have attended the “Leveraging Discovery Commerce: How Agencies Can Enable Seamless Shopping for their Clients” webinar hosted by Facebook on July 20.

The webinar gave insight on the importance of enhancing customer journeys by making shopping experiences smoother for end consumers and an agency’s role in creating meaningful interactions between their clients and those consumers. 

Josh Wolfson, Partner Manager at Facebook, introduced why creating seamless shopping experiences is vital for success. 

A New Mentality

E-commerce has grown over the years. It was initially developed due to the convenience it provided for consumers around the world. 

However, e-commerce became a lifeline for consumers to continue to shop and for businesses to survive during the pandemic. Shopping behavior like buying online and picking up in-store has become mainstream. 

“We have moved from a going shopping mentality and finding time in your day to get what we want to this always shopping mentality,” says Wolfson. 

We carry this shopping desire throughout the day because we constantly consume content, which results in finding something we may need rather than looking for something we want. 

This has caused people’s expectations around convenience to increase when shopping online. If the expectations aren’t met, they leave and exhibit behaviors such as cart abandonment. 

91% of consumers will most likely buy from a brand that provides personalized recommendations (i.e. Netflix and Spotify), and 84% of shoppers will take their business elsewhere if the brand doesn’t offer the safety and security they feel comfortable with. 

Businesses thriving today are the ones considering these consumer requirements. The consumer journey now starts before intent. Therefore, businesses must integrate themselves into consumers’ everyday lives to make money because consumers no longer look for the products they need. 

The product must find the consumer instead, and if you show up at the right place at the right time, giving consumers a frictionless way to convert, you will succeed. 

Discovery Commerce by Facebook

To integrate people and products better, Facebook has created a Discovery Commerce System. It’s an integrated solution that makes discovering products/services across Facebook accessible and impactful. 

They have invested in four pillars: 

1. Personalize campaigns
2. Inspire with creatives
3. Convert and retain
4. Learn and optimize. 

The webinar focused on shopping solutions that agencies can implement for their clients around advertising and conversion tools to convert and retain consumers. 

Jessica Weiss, the Agency Partner at Facebook, further discussed the four primary areas of shopping solutions currently being focused on and how they can be implemented through paid or organic methods. 

Personalization Engine 

Personalization is vital and is driven by machine learning to personalize campaigns for an interesting custom audience. 

Agencies can create custom audiences for their clients with consumers who interact with the product, which can further help remarket the product to people interested in the past. They can then use that custom audience to reach new people through lookalike audiences to grow your clients’ reach. 

Shoppable Content 

To reach all types of people and create shoppable content, people can upload catalogs to showcase offerings and leverage dynamic ads to make creatives effective for each consumer. With a shop, product tags can be used on Instagram to make it easy to shop at the moment of discovery, creating a seamless conversion. 

Product Tagging Tip: Post 10-15 unique shoppable posts a month and avoid more than 3 tags.

Creators

Leverage creators and influencers to promote branded content and reach new and relevant audiences. 

These partnerships can help build authenticity, tap into new cultures, increase discovery, and inspire shopping decisions. Integrate these promotions with product launches and product tags to drive immediate shopping and leverage a sense of urgency to shop. 

The Future of Shopping 

Agencies can be on the lookout for new features to enhance clients’ brands further. This includes ads with product tags on Facebook (currently being tested), visual image searches on Instagram and AR integrated dynamic ads on Facebook with custom filters and effects. 

Facebook looks to integrate creator live shopping to create frictionless conversions when engaging with influencers, AR virtual try-on software for Instagram shops, and incorporating branded content to Instagram Reels.

Brands and agencies have so much more to look forward to as Facebook adapts its services to evolving consumer behavior. 

We can’t wait to see the future of shopping. As a Facebook Partner, Mrkt360 gets access to all these services and beta programs being tested to offer our clients and enhance their brand online while driving sales. 

If you are interested in pioneering these new features with us, be sure to schedule a call with us.