Dana Todd from Performics is up first, looking lovely with purple hair again.

Panel for Social Commerce

Panel for Social Commerce

Time to rethink the shopping experience: Regardless of the medium, people crave participation with your brand – and each other.

Shows standard shopping cart experience and says “so why do we shop like this?”

Human participatory behaviors: #1 and #2 things to do are to go to social networks and look at pages and videos about products.

Showrooming – the idea that people go to the store to touch and interact with a product, and then go buy it online.

Some great stats:

  • 45% of people are checking in at stores
  • 41% using a search engine on mobile phone
  • 30% taking pictures and asking for comments on their social networks
  • 62% look for a better price online; you better show them some other reason to buy from you – experience, warranty, reviews, etc.
  • 46% percent of shoppers will eliminate possibility of purchase if they see negative reviews.

Tells story about a client who blocked mobile activity completely. So don’t do that.

Best Practices:

  • Be mobile ready
  • Reviews and comments are critical
  • Check to see what happens when people try to share, pin, like, etc.
  • Encourage check ins in your store
  • Facilitate in-store bar code scanning
  • Participate on social networks, search and shopping engines to foster positive chatter.

Emerging Opportunities:

  • Pinterest
  • Purchlive
  • RNKD (gamification)
  • Polyvore

Chad Childress is up now – from Crown.

sCommerce is the “Really Really”. Facebook and Twitter just facilitate our experience, they’re not the experience itself.

Social sharing occurs throughout the purchase cycle.

People ask “how can I make my brand stickier?”

Brand is no longer the 4 P’s of marketing, it’s the sum of those plus the collective experiences, emotions, and opinions formed by your customers. It can no longer be controlled through messaging, it’s got to be through experience.

Had audience think of exceptionally positive and exceptionally negative experiences. Says “a good experience doesn’t mean “premium”, it means “precise”. Focus on the customer, solve their problems, Innovate, Research, and surprise and delight.

If your customers don’t have a 9 or a 10 level experience, it might as well be bad. Only 9s and 10s get shared in a positive way.

Challenges businesses to have a CXO – Chief Experience Officer.

And wrapping things up… Mike Mothner, Wpromote

Think of social as a layer – it might be thin, it might be thick, but it is laid over your marketing.

Two examples: Google + button and Facebook Like button

“When you put buttons places, people click them.”

He reviews where buttons appear, and how they show up in search results on Google and Bing

Explanation of how social endorsements affect SEO and PPC:

Mike was looking for pants, and clicked a like button. His friend decides to look for pants (unrelated) and sees that Mike endorses Company A for pants. Therefore, he’s more likely to click through to that result. The increased CTR has a positive impact on SEO and PPC Quality Score.

Results:

  • More people click
  • Higher Conversion rate
  • Google raising ranking because my CTR is beating the expected CTR (this is controversial among SEOs)

“It is the mediocrity of Google+ adoption and use that makes it such a powerful marketing tool.”

Reviews:

  • You need to ask clients for reviews
  • Systematize it into your process
  • Address bad reviews with a generic “sorry, contact us and we’ll make it right”, then follow up privately