It is no secret that social media had an incredibly fast evolution in the last decade—so much so we can only speculate how far the next few years will take us. Today, social content plays a fundamental role in the consumer journey. While new platforms and features are introduced seemingly every day, marketers must strive to be at the forefront of social media trends and make the most of the emerging technological possibilities like their brands depend on it—because they do.

A new white paper from IMA, our influencer activation team, seeks to guide brands through the next era of social media: shoppable content. Titled Influencers and Shoppable Content: the Future of Social Media, the report covers the habits that COVID-19 changed forever and how they’ve impacted the seamless fusion of content and commerce across platforms. It also provides a clear outlook on the role influencers play in virtual shopping and the era of everywhere commerce.

The Future of Shopping is Social

The paper starts by setting the scene with statistics on the current state of online shopping, and its acceleration during the pandemic. In a matter of months, skeptic consumers who were previously reluctant to adopt online shopping habits were suddenly “filling up their digital carts,” and by April 2020, online retail orders had grown 146% worldwide.

According to IMA, brands that tap into this new consumer behavior have the opportunity to “establish a robust social presence and take advantage of third-party ecommerce platforms.” But online shopping is no longer channel-specific. Both social and ecommerce platforms are already adding features that will revolutionize how consumers spend their time online and make purchases—allowing users to shop directly from social media channels and blurring the lines between content and commerce. Our BrandLab partnership with Mercado Libre (LATAM’s ecommerce giant) and L’Oréal Paris serves as a clear example: we developed an ideal “digital destination” for beauty enthusiasts with video tutorials led by recognizable influencers, which help differentiate the brand and its products while providing an improved user experience for shoppers.

Amazon is placing its bets on shoppable livestreaming through Amazon Live, too. The platform allows sellers to promote their products through their own livestreams with a smart addition: a carousel where shoppers can browse and seamlessly purchase featured items. Similarly, Instagram promises to amplify its influence in the shopping process with the “checkout” feature, which is swiftly “transforming the platform into an immersive storefront for people to explore and purchase” without leaving the app, according to the report.

Everywhere commerce will continue to rise in prominence and competitiveness, and platforms are also likely to incorporate AR and AI to increase customer confidence—enabling them to try before they buy. This will open a gateway to new entertaining shopping experiences that build user engagement as consumers share these virtualized experiences on their social media accounts.

From Awareness To Conversion, Influencers Conquer The Funnel

Of course, influencers will be key to brands as they envision how to show up in a revolutionized social media ecosystem. As deft content creators, natural conversation-starters and production powerhouses, influencers will become ever-more important for any brand’s social strategy—a must-have in any marketing mix.

As new, improved ecommerce functionalities are introduced, influencers are often early adopters who perfect delivering relevant content at speed. And they are the most proficient at doing so, too, finding meaningful ways that resonate with their audiences and enable seamless implementations that raise both awareness and conversions. Tapping into communities with a human touch, influencer-generated content is more likely to be perceived as authentic by the audience—especially within niche communities, where engagement levels tend to be higher. According to the white paper, 63% of consumers aged 18-34 years old say they trust what influencers say about brands much more than what brands say about themselves in their advertising. 

This authenticity that influencers bring to the table can help define brands’ success in a shoppable social ecosystem as long as the balance is right. “It’s important to keep in mind though that in order to maintain the genuine relationships between influencers and brands, these ecommerce features should be used in a meaningful way that resonates with audiences,” says Maddie Raedts, IMA Founder and Global Head of Social, Fashion  & Luxury at Media.Monks. “Don’t merely add shoppability to each post that features products, as it can come across very spammy and have the opposite effect.”

From livestreams with purchase options to Instagram posts with shoppable tags, influencer marketing will conquer the funnel from top to bottom—not only inspiring audiences but also driving direct, more measurable conversions. In addition to being at the forefront of social shopping, influencers are the enablers and catalysts of this evolution. For those who want to learn more about how shoppable content is revolutionizing customer behavior across platforms, Influencers and Shoppable Content: the Future of Social Media provides invaluable insights, and it’s available for download below. Discover the next generation of online shopping.

This past year, brands have wrestled with an urgent need to reach consumers online through ecommerce. But one of the key challenges for brands on any marketplace platform is standing out among competition within a rigid grid of product listings. What’s more, shopping behavior is typically defined by search, in which customer decisions ultimately come down to price and product ratings–not brand building.

But Mercado Libre, the dominant ecommerce platform throughout Latin America, has mitigated these concerns by offering distinct, branded landing pages aimed at delivering a greater consumer experience. As part of the BrandLab partnership between Media.Monks and Mercado Libre, which highlights advertising opportunities within the platform, the L’Oréal Paris “Beauty Click” site was designed and developed as an ideal “digital destination” for brand and beauty product enthusiasts. The secret behind the L’Oréal Paris beauty hub is a balance of content and commerce that differentiates the brand and its products while providing an improved user experience for shoppers–putting information they need to make a purchase decision just a click away from the products they’re looking at.

Supporting an Evolved User Journey

The landing page isn’t just a product showcase; it’s primary focus is on providing tips and tutorials that inspire consumers and help them learn about the products used within each–which are just a click away to purchase. “The main focus was to provide the best user experience in the beauty category to shoppers on the platform, so we wanted to ensure users can easily find and purchase the featured products,” says Matias Herrera, Digital Producer and Media.Monks.

Pablo Tajer, the Creative Director at Media.Monks who leads our BrandLab partnership, notes how the approach is ideally suited to serving customers who have come to the platform ready to shop. “Mercado Libre is the perfect place to build the brand and bring in people who are lower in the funnel,” he says. “We’re building this hub inside Mercado Libre with beauty tips, content and different ways to relate with the brand, so it’s a different way to approach and have a relationship within the marketplace.”

“We at Mercado Ads have a full understanding of every step in the consumer journey, from search to purchase,” says Juan Lavista, Director of Marketing, Insights & BI at Mercado Ads for Latin America. “Knowing the audience in a category such as beauty is what gives an added value: L’Oréal Paris reaches the consumer, who is willing to listen and buy its products in a highly relevant context.”

A Fresh Design That’s Always On-Trend

The L’Oréal Paris brand page isn’t the first to go live on Mercado Libre, but the team did take special care to push both the platform and the brand forward, providing an experience that feels fresh and resonates with the way beauty consumers shop today. “The first point in the design was to connect with the audience that we want to reach,” says Herrera. “We went with a look that was a little trendier than most beauty brands on the platform.”

About choosing L’Oréal Paris for the partnership with Mercado Libre, Isabelle Dumas, Director E-commerce CPD of L’Oréal Mexico, explains: “As the emblematic brand of the company, we chose L’Oréal Paris to join our commercial partner, Mercado Libre, and offer Mexican consumers the best possible shopping experience, all in collaboration with Media.Monks, who was in charge of executing the project.”

But to speak the language of the consumer, one must read it first. “Together with L’Oréal, we have been working on a long-term partnership where we seek to promote the group’s brands and take them to the next level,” explains José Maceda, Country Head at Mercado Ads in Mexico. “This project is just one example of what we can do when we listen to the needs of our clients, come up with ideas, think with insights and execute creatively, prioritizing the improvement of the consumer experience—all of this in a context in which L’Oréal Paris reaches an audience with a purchasing mindset.”

And as trends change, so do the experiences that consumers seek out. It’s important to note that the L’Oréal Paris beauty hub isn’t a static page–there’s room to grow by supporting new tutorials and entirely new digital experiences within the page, keeping the brand at the forefront of emerging consumer needs. “Content and innovative tools for the brand will help improve its positioning on the platform,” says Tajer, who looks forward to seeing how the hub grows.

Influencers Bring Added Impact and Speed

Influencers played a critical role in bringing the content to life, creating a more realistic, relatable and attainable look for audiences. They also offered local relevance: “We decided to make videos with local influencers in Mexico to make the content more relatable to audiences,” says Herrera. “These are influencers who are very well-known and important for this category.”

Relatability is key: influencers are adept at showcasing product benefits in ways that are meaningful to their audiences. Often, these interactions take place on social, focused on building awareness rather than conversion–but when integrated directly into an ecommerce platform where consumers are ready to shop, such partnerships can help consumers easily identify the right products for their specific needs.

Influencers are also deft content creators. Each of the six tutorials–three for makeup and three for skincare–were made within COVID-safe standards, and at record time: from concept to execution, the entire L’Oréal Paris beauty hub came together in just three weeks.

In this respect, the beauty hub serves as an important example for brands that are focused on beefing up their ecommerce efforts with urgency as the customer decision journey moves increasingly online. As brands race to deliver differentiated ecommerce experiences to consumers–or balance content and commerce to reach audiences with added relevance–the L’Oréal Paris beauty hub showcases how BrandLab can help them achieve their goals at speed.

Sectors of the retail industry have been hit especially hard with many businesses unable to open their physical doors. These brands are left to rely on big name retailers or pivot their approach to increase reach visibility to convert consumers digitally. To do so, many are seeking inspiration from the direct to consumer model to engage directly with their audiences and make their products more widely available. While retailers and brands have both incrementally invested in digital platforms more and more, year after year, these challenges show how the need to digitally transform has accelerated to keep up with shifting user behaviors.

At a time when consumers are craving entertainment and connection while at home, livestream commerce—evoking the idea of home shopping TV programs, but made more interactive—is an intriguing solution for brands to directly and authentically engage with audiences. As a response to increased video viewership of at-home audiences, the strategy builds on recent trends in shoppable social content and the rise of influencer partnerships.

China is No Stranger to Livestream Commerce

While it may be having a moment right now, livestream commerce isn’t new; Taobao Live, the largest ecommerce streaming platform in China and owned by Alibaba, made $2.85 billion in sales on Singles Day (the country’s biggest shopping event) last year. The COVID-19-induced lockdown in China has increased the popularity of the platform even further; in February, merchants on the platform raised by 719%, according to Glossy.

Much of the appeal of livestreaming commerce is its ability to mix engaging, interactive content with brand stories. JD.com, another ecommerce platform in China, hosted online “e-clubbing” events featuring musical performances and DJ sets—and the ability to buy liquor in a few taps, replicating the social experience of being at an actual club.

How Western Brands Are Experimenting with Shoppable Content

In the west, Amazon has similarly mixed commerce and content with its “Twitch Sells Out” event for Prime Day, enlisting influencers and content creators in the gaming space to showcase items on sale that are relevant to the content they typically put out—for example, listing their streaming setup, gaming equipment or merchandise for a favorite game franchise. More than just a one-off event, Amazon employees livestream commerce on its Amazon Live platform, where brands and influencers broadcast content with shoppable listings underneath.

Elsewhere, other platforms have begun experimenting with shoppable advertisements. Instagram Checkout, lets users discover and purchase products right within the feed, and Levi’s has had success with a similar feature on TikTok. In the linear TV space, NBCUniversal has introduced NBCUniversal Checkout, making content across the brand shoppable. Emarketer’s Q1 2020 Digital Video Trends report notes that NBC’s Peacock streaming service will include shoppable content among the ads that it serves.

While these examples aren’t live, their development suggests there is a general growing demand for content that converts. MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar notes that for many brands, conversion-based content remains top of mind as they consider ways to pivot existing strategies or continue to engage with audiences digitally.

“Brands are asking themselves if they need to keep the ‘content machine’ running,” he says. “If ecommerce and conversion-based content is an essential bucket, we can help fill it faster and more effectively by shifting from traditional production to tapping into influencers and livestreaming.”

While Social Distancing, Video is King

Over the course of the pandemic, at-home users have flocked to video content. According to data from WARC, 38% of consumers are watching more online video content now than they had before the pandemic. Out of that group, 73% say they expect to maintain that higher amount of viewing time. Among the most popular video content that people want to watch are how-to and tutorial videos, according to data from Hootsuite, a category that lends itself well to influencer content and B2B stories.

In fact, influencers are ideally situated to engage with new and existing customers with creative and livestreamed content. They are adept at using their voice and authority to recommend products to audiences and have built loyal followings through tutorial content—for example, the lucrative beauty space on YouTube that has catapulted popular vloggers into full-fledged business owners.

In response to the challenges that brands and retailers have felt due to the ongoing pandemic, our influencer activation team IMA recently offered a few solutions, including multichannel influencer campaigns that amplify voice and awareness across communities, as well as partnering with existing product advocates to carry business momentum on social media. Such strategies enable brands to reach consumers authentically, backed by a consolidated effort to ensure working teams can easily continue production safely at home and produce the stream remotely.

Build Value Through Assistive Content

While brands and retailers are focused on solving the “now,” they must also look ahead into how they will serve consumers throughout what may be a difficult year ahead. As consumers seek out content and connection that helps them understand and make the most of a new normal—whether that means staying sane while social distancing or stretching the value of a dollar—livestream commerce offers a great opportunity to build a brand relationship.

Despite being a vehicle for commerce, it doesn’t have to be too salesy—think about a retailer offering a live cooking show focused on recipes using ingredients that are already in the pantry, for example, or a makeup artist giving tutorials featuring “dupes,” or greater-value versions of popular cosmetics.

“This is the new family dinner, this is how we watch movies together,” says ter Haar on the innovative ways that people are connecting. “We’re building traditions now that we don’t yet know are traditions. User behavior is being built that will change how we use these tools and how we create and connect together.”

Now more than ever, brands and retailers must be there for their audiences. Through livestream commerce, brands can accommodate new user behaviors that have emerged and engage in authentic, informative ways with video content. Accommodating a need for connection and entertainment, the format is well tailored to building strategic relationships into the year ahead.