What’s one way the new buy button trend (on Twitter, Facebook and soon, Google) is going to influence e-commerce marketing?
1. Fewer Customers Lost in the Sales Funnel
The new buy button is a game changer when it comes to e-commerce marketing. It eliminates the steps where you typically lose a consumer during the sales process (from the first time they see the ad, to the purchase of the product). From a business standpoint, the new buy button will increase conversion and eliminate site infrastructure; something that many of our clients struggle with initially. – Andrew Krebs-Smith, Social Fulcrum
2. Consumers Will Have an Easier Time Buying
As a consumer, I’ve often been in the position where I want to purchase an item I come across in my social media feed, but have a difficult time tracking it down. This trend is going to make the purchasing process easier and more convenient for consumers, which is a huge win. I expect to see my clients making social media even a bigger priority now. – Cassie Petrey, Crowd Surf
3. Easier Flash Sale Engagement Options
The key to a thriving Facebook page is to have engagement with customers. If brands can start using this call to action to host exclusive deals or flash sales, it will help them leverage their fan page as well as sell more products. However, since most e-commerce sites sell more than one item, they’ll have to build a strategy around this concept. – Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
4. A Potentially Dangerous Focus on Lead Generation
Buy buttons will shift the focus of social media marketing from brand awareness to lead generation, but it’s not clear what the net effect will be. While your brand may benefit from an additional source of purchases, optimizing the buy button feature and encouraging its use might divert valuable resources from refining your website. I would consider it a tool and not a silver bullet for sales. – Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com
5. More Targeted Offerings
We’re going to see companies rolling out much more targeted offerings than before, leveraging user data from Twitter and Facebook with buy buttons. The proliferation of the buy button means that more companies will have the ability to be like Amazon in terms of harvesting data and personalizing their offers, and the companies that jump on it early will see early wins in sales as a result. – Mike Sharkey, Autopilot
6. Reduced Touchpoints in the Buying Funnel
By adding e-commerce to social media channels, it reduces touchpoints in the buying journey. Now Twitter, Facebook and Google will essentially become e-commerce players like Amazon, hoarding their traffic and keeping customers on their site longer. Sales originating from this site will increase as touchpoints decrease, and by keeping a percentage, these behemoths will get even bigger. – Marcela DeVivo, National Debt Relief
7. The Platforms Will Benefit Siginificantly
While these buttons encourage impulse buying and customer engagement online, they may not be as revolutionary as some predict. The entities that benefit the most from them are not the customers or merchants, but the third party platforms that host them. Platforms will likely push for merchants and businesses to utilize buy buttons, but it seems it will be at a high cost without a comparable ROI. – Jason Thanh La, Merchant Service Group, LLC & K5 Ventures
8. Increased Importance of Brand Loyalty
Companies will have to focus more on their brand and building loyalty if these buy buttons gain a foothold. If they do, customers probably won’t care where they purchase from, unless there is solid brand loyalty. Marketers can do this by upping their rewards programs or by getting more involved with social media marketing in the hopes that customers will more actively engage their brand. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
9. Increased Ability for Marketers to Report ROI
The buy button trend will help marketers, especially social media marketers, report the ROI of the e-commerce’s social media channels. From Instagram to Twitter, marketers can now report how many people they brought into the purchasing stage from a single tweet or post. – Shalyn Dever, Chatter Buzz
10. Decreased Importance Placed on SEO
SEO is about being at the top of search engines, including those on e-commerce sites like Amazon. But with the increase in people buying directly form Twitter, Facebook and other sites, it will be more important to figure out those social algorithms that control the newsfeed than it will be to understand how Google or Amazon’s search engines determine the top search results. – Mattan Griffel, One Month
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