A new report from Shopify suggests that brand marketers are turning to collaboration and social to optimize their resources and reach new audiences.

Social Commerce Takes The Wheel

For brand marketers, earned media is a powerful tool that stretches budgets, builds the brand, and delivers actionable audience insights that can’t really be found any other way. Social commerce combines much of the reach of earned media with the granular control of eCommerce. It allows brands, influencers, and retailers to collaborate and launch campaigns that let audiences discover new products, shop instantly and share their favorite content or streams with their social network. That makes social commerce a worthy partner for an earned media campaign and an e-commerce strategy. Social media can accelerate audience engagement, boosting sales performance, marketing and branding strategy for brand marketers and retailers. According to Shopify’s Commerce Trends 2023 Report, which quoted data from Statista, social commerce sales and brand spending on social media advertising strategy are surging in tandem.

The rise of social commerce in the world’s second-largest market, China, underscores this trend. 

“In the last 12 months, social commerce-based apps have taken a 10 percent market share away from traditional e-commerce platforms like Tmall in China,” stated Qunin founder Thomas Nixon, who spoke at the 2023 SXSW panel, Prepare for the Social Commerce Era and Look East!

It’s not just China seeing a shift towards social commerce. A 2022 report from Sprout Social revealed that 98 percent of all consumers planned to make a social commerce purchase that year. In addition, a recent report from FIS Global revealed that 78 percent of Gen Z predicted they would make a social commerce purchase in the next 12 months.

Collaboration Via Social Commerce Can Boost ROI

According to Shopify, brand collaboration through social commerce and other online channels represents a new wave of marketing innovation, allowing marketers to optimize their budgets by building their brand and generating sales simultaneously. In addition, according to a recent Sprout Social report, social media is now an essential product discovery tool for most consumers.

“The biggest opportunity flying under the radar is collaboration,” stated Alex Danco, Director of Blockchain and Systems Thinking for Shopify. “It’s the best way to have fan bases come into contact with new kinds of brands. Collaboration is truly the win-win way for brands to find new audiences in a way that doesn’t dilute your brand.”

Brands like Burberry and Roblox have launched campaigns integrating commerce and social media through a gaming platform. Other iconic global brands, like Jimmy Choo and Sailor Moon, continue to leverage the impact of social commerce to build brand experiences that shorten the sales funnel.