What is Social Proofing?

Social proofing refers to the tendency of people to look to others for guidance when making decisions, especially when they are unsure or feel insecure. This behavior stems from the natural desire to avoid risk and validate choices based on the experiences of others. In essence, if a product or service is popular or well-reviewed by others, potential customers are more likely to trust it and make a purchase themselves.

Why Social Proofing Matters

1. Reduces Perceived Risk: Consumers often feel hesitant about making a purchase, especially online where they can’t physically inspect the product. Social proofing helps mitigate these fears by showcasing positive experiences from other customers, making the decision-making process easier and less risky.
2. Enhances Credibility: When potential buyers see that others have had positive experiences with your brand, it boosts your credibility. Genuine reviews and testimonials from real people serve as endorsements that validate your product or service.
3. Encourages Free-Form Shopping: By integrating customer-to-customer feedback, you empower shoppers to make decisions based on real-world experiences. This transparency not only fosters trust but also encourages more spontaneous and confident purchasing decisions.

Types of Social Proofing to Leverage

To fully harness the power of social proofing, consider integrating the following elements into your marketing strategy:

#1 Customer Reviews and Ratings

Positive reviews and high ratings from satisfied customers provide compelling evidence of your product’s quality and reliability. Feature these prominently on your website and product pages to build trust with potential buyers.

#2 Testimonials and Case Studies

Detailed testimonials and case studies offer in-depth insights into how your product or service has positively impacted real customers. Use these to highlight specific benefits and success stories.

#3 User Generated Content

Encourage customers to share their experiences with your product on social media. User-generated content such as photos, videos, and personal stories not only serves as authentic endorsements but also increases engagement and brand visibility.

#4 Influencer Endorsements

Partner with influencers who align with your brand values. Their endorsements can introduce your products to new audiences and lend additional credibility.

Implementing Social Proofing in Your Strategy

Here’s how you can effectively integrate social proofing into your marketing efforts:

1. Showcase Customer Reviews: Ensure that customer reviews are easy to find on your website. Consider implementing a review system that allows customers to rate and provide feedback on their purchases.
2. Highlight Top Reviews: Feature top reviews and testimonials on your homepage and product pages to draw attention to the most compelling endorsements.
3. Encourage Feedback: Actively encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews and share their experiences. Follow up with post-purchase emails or offer incentives for feedback.
4. Utilize Social Media: Share user-generated content and customer testimonials on your social media channels. This not only builds social proof but also engages your audience and encourages more user-generated content.
5. Monitor and Respond: Regularly monitor customer feedback and reviews. Respond to both positive and negative comments to show that you value customer input and are committed to improving their experience.

The Bottom Line

Social proofing is more than just a marketing buzzword; it’s a proven strategy that leverages human psychology to build trust, reduce risk, and drive sales. By incorporating authentic reviews, testimonials, and user-generated content into your marketing strategy, you can enhance your brand’s credibility and encourage more confident purchasing decisions.

Ready to harness the power of social proofing? Start by implementing these strategies today and watch as your brand’s trustworthiness and sales soar. For more insights into effective marketing strategies, stay tuned to our blog and explore how other innovative tactics can propel your business forward.

It’s no secret that user-generated content (UGC) has proven to be a powerful and valuable asset for brands. UGC exudes trust and authenticity because it’s content created by real people, with real opinions and experiences. It shows the brand’s product in use, shows the happy customer, provides shoppers with inspiration and ultimately encourages them to make purchases.

However, before your brand can use UGC, you’ll have to request the rights to use it. Just because a customer tags your brand in an image, or uses your hashtag doesn’t necessarily mean you can reuse the content.

How does Knexus’ content rights management work?

Knexus provides a couple of methods that allow your brand to reach out to content creators and ask them to grant you rights to use their content.

#1 Approval Hashtag

This method enables you to post a comment to the content (eg. an Instagram post) you want to request rights for. The comment includes a customizable request message that speaks in your brand voice, a unique hashtag (eg. #yesbrandname) and a link to your brand’s T&Cs. Content creators need to only respond to the comment using the unique hashtag to approve your rights request.

The latest improvement which went live on 1st April 2023 also enables you to automate bulk rights requests for high-volume UGC & influencers Instagram content with your business mention (@mentioned). All you need to do is select the Instagram posts and reels that represent your brand, configure a request message and a unique hashtag. Knexus will use the Instagram API to post your request message as a comment to all selected content automatically, saving you tons of time and effort.

#2 Rights Request Link

This method enables you to generate a unique link and send it as a personal note to content creators via direct message. When content creators visit the link, they will see a request message, a preview of content you want to request rights for, and a link to T&Cs displayed on a branded page – from logos to messages that reflect your brand’s tone of voice. Content creators need to only click the ‘Accept’ button to approve your rights request.

From there, it’s all over to Knexus, with the platform keeping track of when the rights request has been approved, automatically integrating UGC into each step of the customer journey, personalizing it to every shopper and making it shoppable to drive conversions.

Get in touch with Knexus today to arrange a demo to see how global brands are using Knexus platform and discuss how we can help you.

Online shoppers want to be engaged at every step along their buying journeys, and they need to feel confident about their purchases before they buy. This is where high-quality video content helps brands begin increasing conversions, turning window shoppers into paying customers.

In this post, we’re going to cover the following topics:

• Why does social proofing visual content matter on PDPs?
• 5 major benefits of using video in eCommerce and PDPs
• The 3 biggest challenges brands face in implementing video on PDPs
• How Knexus increases conversions with hyper personalized visual content

Why does social proofing visual content matter on PDPs?

Did you know that customers who interact with YouTube videos on Product Description Pages (PDPs) are 84% more likely to convert than those who interact with Instagram content on PDPs?

Knexus analyzed data from approximately 7 million yearly site visitors on leading brand PDPs to better understand how integrating brand-owned, influencer, and user generated content (UGC) into customer buying journeys affects engagement and conversions.

PDPs are a pivotal stage in the customer journey, being both information-rich and closer to the checkout experience than many other stages. Customers on PDPs are still deciding whether to buy, and Knexus research shows that brands perform better when enriching their PDPs with authentic visual social proofing content, such as YouTube and TikTok unboxing videos, hauls, and how-to guides.

5 major benefits of using video in eCommerce and PDPs

Perhaps it goes without saying these days, but video is king when it comes to modern content marketing and increasing conversions. Here are the 5 biggest benefits of using video content on your eCommerce website and PDPs:

1. Improves SEO
   Videos give a big boost to websites’ search engine rankings and increase visibility. This is because Google and other search engines favor websites that have a lot of high-quality, engaging, and shareable content. As we all know, the first page of search results is the only one that matters, so it’s extremely important that brands aim to stay as high in these rankings as possible.
2. Instils trust and authenticity by educating customers
   Video can be a powerful tool for building trust and authenticity with customers, leading to greater conversions overall. By showing customers your products in action, or by providing detailed product demonstrations in engaging how-tos, you can educate customers on how your product will fit into (and improve!) their lifestyle.
3. Allows brands to target every stage of the buying journey
   Video offers a lot of versatility to brands along the buying journey. For example, brands can use different videos to generate awareness, build interest, and then drive action among potential customers. Buyers who remain engaged with your content from start to finish are far more likely to make it to the checkout page, successfully converted into paying customers.
4. Provides external encouragement to purchase with organic social proof
   Organic social proof is derived from user generated content (UGC), and nothing is stickier than video on social media. Video is easily shareable, and brands can leverage these shares to drive traffic and provide external encouragement to potential customers. ​​This is particularly helpful when trying to drive sales by eliciting FOMO.
5. Saves time, resources, and money on video production
   Brands can save time, resources, and money on producing expensive commercials by using pre-existing UGC on their product description pages to increase conversions. Popular UGC has the added benefit of being more trustworthy to potential customers. That’s win-win!

The 3 biggest challenges brands face in implementing video on PDPs

There are 3 common challenges brands must overcome when integrating high-quality visual content on their PDPs:

1. Not making content multichannel ready
   One problem brands face when trying to implement video on PDPs is not having content that’s ready for integration along multiple channels. This severely limits their videos’ effectiveness and impact. If you’ve successfully wooed a potential customer into visiting your website with content that reflects their love for hiking, your PDPs should keep showing them great hiking content. This helps solidify their personal interest in your product. When content doesn’t move seamlessly with customers along their buying journeys, key decision points are wasted and shoppers are more likely to abandon their plans to purchase.
2. Manually sourcing content and impeding scalability
   Fact: it’s extremely time-consuming and resource-intensive, if not downright impossible, to manually source high-quality video content at scale. This leads brands to create static, impersonal landing pages that fail to generate customer enthusiasm. Brands need to have a process in place, such as Knexus platform’s intelligent automation, to identify, curate, and manage up-to-date UGC, influencer, and brand-owned content in a way that scales with their business and delivers personalized pages for maximum engagement.
3. Lack of engagement metrics
   Engagement metrics are absolutely necessary in this fast-paced content-generation age. Brands won’t know if their efforts are resonating with customers or how they’re affecting purchasing decisions without measuring the impact of each video. This includes tracking engagement, conversion rates, and customer feedback on PDPs.

How Knexus increases conversions with hyper personalized visual content

Knexus automates the collection and integration of high-quality UGC, brand-owned content, and influencer content into your brand’s PDPs. Knexus makes all of these collected assets shoppable, matching each post to the appropriate products and updating PDPs with the most effective video content. This streamlined approach maximizes conversions by delivering hyper personalized pages to every single shopper.

Knexus makes social proofing visual content multichannel ready by automatically indexing and assigning relevant tags to each video. This means that every single customer receives a precise, matching set of social proofing visual content at each stage along their buying journey.

This automated process isn’t just extremely scalable, it’s also information-rich. The Knexus platform can deliver high-value insights into the impact of each piece of content, so brands can strategize according to hard data and encourage sales growth.

Knexus offers a highly dynamic and personalized experience to customers, breaking the mold from boring eCommerce sites that offer the same pages to each visitor. To learn more about how Knexus can improve the performance of your PDPs to drive conversions with high-quality UGC, influencer, and brand-owned video integration, contact us and book a demo.

TikTok is appealing to brands because of its unique approach, giving a stage for everyday users to create engaging videos in minutes. This makes it the ultimate hub for user generated content (UGC) with high engagement rates. In a study by Knexus, 56% of respondents are more engaged with UGC due to the organic nature of the content which is more trusted and authentic and these respondents said that this type of content directly influences their purchasing decisions.

With the extension of Knexus’ inbuilt UGC rights management feature to TikTok videos, customers will now be able to request rights to use TikTok UGC with a generated Rights Request Link, which they can send directly to the UGC owner for approval.

Vivek Sharma, CTO of Knexus said,”With UGC often being fast-moving, Knexus does all of the heavy lifting when it comes to discovering all the UGC available to our customers, ensuring they can leverage the best content. Requesting UGC usage rights is incredibly simple. Once you’ve chosen content to use, all that’s needed is a message. In just one click, a Rights Request Link is automatically generated which you can send the message and link to the UGC creator as a private message. From there, it’s all over to Knexus, with the platform keeping track of when the rights request has been approved, integrating UGC into each step of the customer journey, personalizing it to every shopper and making UGC shoppable to drive conversions.”

Graeme Foux, CEO of Knexus said, “This feature is another important addition to our offering, providing brands an efficient way to scale rights management for TikTok UGC. No matter how many TikTok videos your brand is using, Knexus’ fully automated approach makes it easy from searching, indexing and tagging content, to integrating it into buying journeys and optimizing. Our customers have doubled their add to cart rates with personalized, shoppable TikTok videos. It’s an exciting space to be leading and supporting our customers.”

Get in touch with Knexus today to arrange a demo to see how global brands are using Knexus platform and discuss how we can help you.

Why the disconnect? Paid traffic is notorious for yielding low conversions and high bounce rates when websites fail to match their content with the intent of their visitors. Businesses can effectively solve this issue by creating highly personalized landing pages, serving potential customers exactly what they’re looking for every time.

In this post, we’re going to cover the following topics:

1. The advantages of paid search and paid social campaigns
2. 4 common challenges brands face when trying to convert paid traffic into sales
3. 4 tips for optimizing the onsite performance of paid traffic ​​with landing page personalization

The advantages of paid search & paid social campaigns

Businesses that invest in paid search (PPC) and paid social (PPM) advertising can enjoy a steep increase in traffic when these campaigns are executed effectively.

Some of the top advantages of PPC campaigns include:

• Higher visibility in search results
• More clicks from users already interested in the product
• A wealth of analytics

PPM campaigns offer several great benefits as well, including:

• A variety of ad options, such as images, carousels, videos, and AR/VR
• More loyalty from customers with the help of influencers and brand ambassadors
• Increased targeting that leverages social media platforms’ user data
• A lower cost per click (CPC) on average than PPC campaigns

4 common challenges brands face when trying to convert paid traffic into sales

Despite these enormous advantages, paid traffic can fail spectacularly at generating real sales when potential customers bounce off of a business’s landing page. 

Here are 4 of the most common challenges brands have to tackle when converting paid traffic into customers:

1. High bounce rates, cost per click, and low conversions kill ROI.

Prospects won’t stay on your paid landing page if it doesn’t match their initial search intent or the content of the ad they clicked on. And you won’t get the conversions you’re hoping for if the landing page isn’t personalized with social proof or validation in the form of User Generated Content (UGC), influencer content, or brand content.

2. Creating hyper relevant landing pages is time and resource heavy.

Visitors love seeing landing pages with visual content specific to them, but generating these personalized pages manually is extremely time consuming and expensive. Businesses that try to create a unique landing page for every paid visitor by hand will find it impossible to scale effectively.

3. Product-heavy landing pages are quick and easy to produce, but aren’t effective.

All too often, brands overcrowd their paid landing pages with uninspired product content, leaving their most effective earned and owned content (like UGC, influencer, and brand-owned content) by the wayside. Landing pages without social proof front and center are leaving money on the table.

4. Fixing a low Quality Score (QS) can seem daunting.

Many businesses overlook their Quality Score (QS) when trying to pinpoint failures in an under delivering campaign. But a low QS is a recipe for a low return on investment. Factors that affect QS include:

• Click through rate (CTR)
• Relevance of the researched keywords to an ad group
• Quality of the landing pages

4 tips for optimizing the onsite performance of paid traffic with landing page personalization

How can you ensure that your paid traffic doesn’t go to waste once customers land on your website? Here are 4 simple tips for creating relevant landing pages that will keep visitors on their buying journey​​:

1. Localize your content

Find out where your customers are visiting from and customize your page to their locale. This means tailoring everything from language and currency to featuring local UGC and influencers.

2. Make social proof a central element in your landing pages

79% of consumers say that UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions, while only 13% say the same about brand-created content. Putting relevant social proof front and center on your landing page is an invaluable part of the conversion process. It converts especially well if you can glean this content from multiple UGC sources (like TikTok, YouTube, or blog posts) and personalize it for each consumer.

3. Analyze user behavior

Businesses can leverage user behavior to generate even greater personalization on their landing pages. For example, a business that sells cell phone accessories might use analytics to learn which customers have iPhones versus Androids, and generate landing pages for each group accordingly.

4. Leverage automation to generate landing pages

Implementing landing page personalization manually is extremely time consuming. Businesses that need to hunt down individual pieces of UGC and influencer content one by one can’t stay competitive at scale. This is where automation makes all the difference. 

Improve conversions from paid campaigns with Knexus for Landing Page Personalization

Knexus platform automatically makes UGC, influencer & brand owned content personalized & shoppable, integrating it into buying journeys which inspires confidence to buy.

Knexus for Paid Landing Pages automatically takes complete control of landing page creation & segmentation, with dynamic landing pages which update to display the products, UGC & brand content best matching the social ad or paid search intent of each shopper. Learn more about how Knexus for Landing Page Personalization can help optimize the onsite performance of paid traffic, improving conversions & driving revenue or book a demo.

TikTok is so much more than a platform for dance challenges

While many still think of TikTok as a Gen Z platform for dance challenges, the app has long had a powerful effect on users’ shopping habits. Remember the TikTok Feta Effect? But until recently, that influence was indirect: users would learn about products through the app, but then head elsewhere to make their purchase.

In August 2021, that all changed when TikTok and Shopify announced a new integration that would allow for in-app shopping. Now users can click from within the app to buy the latest products. And boy, are people ever embracing it. The app surpassed $840 million in consumer spend worldwide in Q1 of 2022 alone, a 40% jump from Q4 of 2021.

TikTok is transforming shopping with the infinite loop

TikTok has proven that the eCommerce journey doesn’t end with a purchase – it loops back on itself, with users creating videos about their purchase, offering feedback, and spreading the word to their own family and friends. After a purchase, 1 in 4 users has made a post about their new product, and 1 in 5 has made a tutorial video.

TikTok’s influence is undeniable:

1. 67% of users say TikTok compelled them to shop – even if they weren’t planning to

2. 37% of users discover a product on the app and want to buy it immediately

3. 29% have tried to buy something on the app, only to discover that it’s already sold out

No wonder the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has received over 12.4 billion views (to April 2022).

But if TikTok videos are so influential, why aren’t more eCommerce brands using these videos in their buying journeys too? In this post, we explore why influencer and user-generated TikTok videos are so powerful for eCommerce brands. We also cover 3 reasons why eCommerce brands struggle to take advantage of TikTok and 3 tips for leveraging TikTok videos across eCommerce buying journeys.

The power of influencer and user-generated TikTok videos

Part of the appeal with TikTok videos is their immediacy. Viewers aren’t watching paid ads or product demonstrations, but real people sharing unfiltered opinions. This digital version of word-of-mouth advertising creates a sense of authenticity and trustworthiness: no one is being paid to say they love a product, so they must really, truly love it. The trick for brands is not to limit these videos to TikTok, but to bring them into the buying journey where they can speak to customers who are already on the product page – but this is sometimes easier said than done.

3 reasons why brands struggle to take advantage of TikTok

If TikTok can be such a windfall for brands, how come they aren’t tapping into its full power?

1. Brands struggle to scale TikTok videos across eCommerce journeys because the effort involved to do this manually is costly. time-consuming, and resource intensive.

2. It can be difficult to know just how much content is out there related to your brand. If you don’t have a clear understanding of what content is available from your customers, you’re going to miss the opportunity to leverage these videos beyond TikTok.

3. Brands often don’t dedicate the time or resource to surfacing the most relevant videos for each shopper. If they do embed these videos in their site, they will likely be static (the same video for every single visitor), rather than personalized on an individual basis.

Tips for using TikTok videos in eCommerce buying journeys

Harnessing the power of TikTok will make your products instantly shoppable, driving engagement, generating conversion, and boosting sales. Here’s how:

1. Add videos to your site: Integrate TikTok videos into high-traffic landing pages such as your homepage, category pages, and product description pages to offer the highly valued opinions shoppers trust during the buying journey.

2. Personalize videos: Make your videos hyper relevant to each shopper, matching the right video to the

3. Go beyond your site: Don’t stop with shopping pages. Leverage TikTok videos across all your other owned channels, including email newsletters, paid landing pages and your mobile app, so consumers get a reminder of what trusted customers and influencers think of a product.

How Lenovo uses TikTok videos as an eCommerce sales tool

Leading consumer electronics brand Lenovo uses Knexus to scale TikTok videos across their Student Store to provide inspiration, inspire confidence and foster product discovery. Personalized & shoppable TikTok videos have generated +152% add to cart rate and +191% check out rate for Lenovo across their Student Store. 

Take the first step to maximizing eCommerce performance with integrated TikTok videos

If you’re looking to take advantage of the success of TikTok, you need to be proactive. It’s exciting when TikTok users and influencers start featuring your brand in their videos, but it’s only the first step. You also have to surface relevant videos, connect them to the buying journey, and personalize them for each unique site visitor. That way, the videos won’t just be an added bonus in your marketing plan; they’ll be crucial tools in helping your customers feel validated and in control of their buying decisions, in turn improving eCommerce conversions.

Ready to harness the power of TikTok videos? Learn more about Knexus today.

What is visual commerce?

Visual commerce is when brands use images, videos, and virtual reality to help consumers learn about, connect with, and purchase their products. Visual commerce works incredibly well because we are visual beings. In fact, more than half of our brains are dedicated to processing visual information. And we can process images 60,000 times faster than text. By including visual content at each stage in the buyer’s journey, brands can guide consumers through their entire shopping experience – from awareness to purchase. 

Why visual commerce is critical to eCommerce success

With eCommerce, you can’t touch a product, try it on, or test it out, so it can be hard for consumers to decide if the product is right for them. And it doesn’t help that eCommerce sites are designed with conversions in mind, making it difficult to enjoy the shopping or browsing experience.

This is where visual commerce really shines. By using images, videos and virtual reality throughout the buyer’s journey, you’re helping to replicate the in-store experience for your eCommerce consumers.

How visual commerce goes beyond engagement to impact sales performance

In an eCommerce business, engagement is great – but it doesn’t always translate to the sales volume you want or need. There’s nothing more frustrating than a customer leaving with a cart full of unpurchased items. But visual commerce can provide the social proof buyers need to hit “Buy now” and checkout with confidence. Here are a few stats that show just how powerful visual commerce is:

• Visual commerce boosts conversion rates by 5 to 7% on average and CTRs by 15 to 20%.
• 84% of millennials report that user-generated content on a brand’s website has influenced the way they shop online.
• 93% of customers believe user-generated content is very helpful when making a purchasing decision.

Gain insights into what type of content helps shoppers make positive buying decisions

More often than not, brands have no way of really tracking if their Instagram posts or TikTok videos actually generate sales. Typically brands measure the success of this content based on engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, or shares and not on sales impact.

However, if brands use visual content throughout the buying journey, they can specifically identify what type of content (whether that be a video, an Instagram post, a blog post, etc.) actually helps move the needle for shoppers and makes them more likely to buy.

The power of user-generated content in visual commerce

Many companies and brands still regard positive user-generated content (UGC) as a peripheral to their marketing strategy. Some brand managers view it primarily as organic product or brand awareness. It isn’t always seen as a call-to-action sales collateral. But some of the world’s most recognizable brands are using UGC to amazing effect. Think Glossier, Pantone, and Airbnb, for starters. Brands like these prove that exponential sales growth is proufoundly affected by inspirational visual content – brand- generated, influencer-generated and user-generated. 

Glossier is knocking it out of the park with its visual commerce strategy

Cosmetics giant Glossier is well known for its enviable visual commerce game. Its visually stunning, image-rich website is only the beginning. The brand’s social media, like its TikTok, YouTube and Instagram content, for example, also set the bar high. Glossier’s TikTok & YouTube feeds features beautiful visuals that highlight their on-trend aesthetic, but it also prioritizes “insider” content (like behind-the-scenes tours of company headquarters and peeks into their product development) and value-adding tips for consumers (like beauty hacks and tutorials). Glossier also takes advantage of user-generated content from YouTube micro-influencers under the “Get Ready With Me feat.” title, who advocate the brand’s products.

Glossier also taps into brand advocates for word-of-mouth marketing

Glossier’s use of UGC and their attention to consumer feedback are also key parts of their eCommerce strategy, helping to build a genuine connection with it’s digital community of customers – customers who have also become brand advocates.

When you make a purchase, you almost never make that decision in isolation. Statistics show that word-of-mouth marketing influences the purchasing decisions of 54% of consumers. In fact, a full 92% of people make purchases based primarily on the recommendations of family or friends. Glossier has long nurtured (and leveraged) its digital community, ensuring their customers feel valued, empowered, and represented in their visuals – and ensuring they have word-of-mouth marketing on their side.

For example, when Glossier launched its Mega Greens Galaxy Mask, users shared selfies of themselves in the mask with the hashtag #maskforce, which Glossier reposted on its own social accounts.The #maskforce selfies are right on brand for Glossier and gives every user a chance to be the face of the brand.

Ready for a visual commerce platform?

If you’re thinking about adopting a visual commerce platform, there’s lots to consider to make sure you choose the best fit for your eCommerce goals. Here are a few things to keep in mind: 

Automation: By adopting a platform which eliminates manual efforts (such as tagging and indexing content, tagging products, personalization), you can reduce costs and resources at the same time as scaling your visual content across more pages and journeys.

Conversions and sales performance: Lots of platforms may seem to offer the same things, however only a few platforms have advanced capabilities related to targeting, real-time decision making, and machine learning that deliver exceptional results and a greater ROI.

The future of intelligent, responsive eCommerce

Knexus platform automatically transforms UGC, influencer & brand owned assets into hyper personalized, shoppable content for ecommerce. Move visitors through inspiration to buying! Book a demo.

A good narrative is crucial to selling a product, and customers rely on stories to support their buying decisions. A targeted, trustworthy recommendation from another customer, as well as educational articles, how-to blogs, top tips, and company news, can all help validate a customer’s choice to click that purchase button. Integrating blog posts and articles more effectively within the shopping experience will help you grab customers’ attention and hold on to it through to checkout.

How to turbo charge the shopping experience with blogs and articles

You’ve got user-generated blog posts, influencer interviews, and tons of other fun content, but do you know how to use them to boost the shopping experience? Here are 3 ways to optimize the performance of site visitors by using blog posts and articles more effectively:

1. Chart a course from content consumption to purchasing, or vice versa

Some brands do a great job with content marketing, but their blog posts and articles are completely siloed from their products. A travel article with gorgeous photos may attract plenty of clicks, but it won’t do you much good if readers don’t stay long enough to buy the suitcase you’re actually selling. This can lead to high bounce rates as readers exit before they even know they’re supposed to click on your product page.

Make the blog posts and articles automatically shoppable by featuring the product within or alongside the content. This will encourage readers to click on the product when they’re most inspired by a story. Integrating blog content into the main eCommerce site will support customers’ buying journeys while allowing you to reap crucial SEO benefits.

2. Clearly feature user-generated content

50% of consumers trust the opinions and stories of other customers as much as recommendations from people they know personally, according to a recent study. If you’ve got blog posts and articles that include stories from your customers, consider featuring that content prominently on your product pages. This is a great way to show prospective customers how people like them are incorporating the product into their lives.

Think of food brands that post recipes using their products: if the recipe looks lip-smackingly good, you’ll want to buy the product to make the exact same meal. Adding user stories to your typical product descriptions bolsters a customer’s faith in your brand—and helps create a seamless experience between influence and purchase. It worked for somebody else like them, so it will work for them too.

3. Put articles about your values front and center

Consumers are much more likely to trust and stick with brands they feel share their values. In fact, people are 4 times more likely to purchase from a brand they feel has a strong “purpose,” according to the 2020 Zeno Strength of Purpose Study. But here’s the thing: your prospective customers aren’t likely going to your content hub to find articles or blog posts about your sustainability practices or your charitable giving, so consider surfacing these articles on high traffic pages of your site.

Think of Bombas, which announces on its homepage that it donates an article of clothing for every article you buy. Their donation efforts are one of the first things you see as a shopper. Also, Ben & Jerry’s, which creates original ice cream flavors to support progressive causes with this message being part of each ice cream flavor’s main description page.

Companies successfully integrating content and eCommerce for a dynamic buying journey

Take inspiration from these companies that have seamlessly joined content with eCommerce:

1. Zyrtec

The top allergy brand in the US market, has a wealth of information in the form of blogs and articles, on causes and treatments for allergies. Zyrtec makes its articles shoppable by displaying relevant products alongside content, while also allowing personalized articles to surface automatically during the buying journey.

2. Johnson’s Baby

Alongside science-backed products for babies, Johnson’s Baby offers a great many blog posts and articles designed to help parents with everything from pregnancy to raising a toddler. Each visitor is served the article/blog posts most relevant to them, making it easier for shoppers to find the inspiration they need. Relevant products are always displayed alongside stories, making it easier for shoppers to move from education to conversion, while personalized articles also pop up next to products.

3. Lenovo

Electronics giant Lenovo puts its story hub front and center so relevant press materials and engaging stories catch the eye of SMBs no matter where they first land. The hub also auto-integrates articles into site journeys for SMB visitors, and articles are personalized based on each visitor’s data, leading to improved onsite engagement and a lower bounce rate.

Your first step towards making blogs & articles a powerful eCommerce sales tool

When looking to engage customers, build trust and improve conversions, having clearly navigable and personalized eCommerce journeys, as well as engaging blogs & articles, is only half the battle. You have to join your customers in a way that feels natural so they can travel effortlessly between the two. That way, they’ll feel informed and excited by your brand, allowing them to trust their buying decisions and leading to much higher conversion rates.

Ready to optimize your blogs and articles to turbo-charge your customers’ shopping experience and improve conversions? Learn more today.

But away from the glitz of Glasgow and driven by changing consumer trends, brands too have been acclimatizing to new sustainable practices and they are making these known to consumers. In fact, 30% of Fortune 500 companies have set themselves up to achieve a climate goal by 2030, up from just 6% in 2016. 

Whether its big impact projects like P and G’s pledge for 70% of its sites to send no waste to landfills or even smaller-scale initiatives like IKEA providing all its employees with bikes to cut down on their carbon footprint, it’s likely that your favourite brand has in some way, embraced greener practices.

The cost of ‘Going Green’

However, ‘Going Green’ is not without its challenges. Brands can face numerous challenges such as:

1. Higher manufacturing costs due to committing to pay workers a living wage as well as less focus on goods produced on mass

2. A larger bill for sustainable practices like renewable energy. Although this is cheaper in the long run, it can be costly short term.

3. High costs for green licences like organic certification which are necessary to prove green credentials.

Seeing no other option as to pass these costs onto consumers, green products have an average of 75-85% premium rising as high as 200% for fashion and beauty products:

But how does this affect purchase intentions?

While 52% of consumers in the UK describe themselves as ‘green’ only 33% of us actively buy sustainable products. This gap between intentions and actions is known as the green gap and the underlying cause is premium placed on green products:

Ok… So how much are consumers willing to pay..

Most consumers are willing to pay about 10% more, only 15% of consumers are willing to pay 30%:

Higher prices must come with a purpose. Research shows that consumers will pay more when they know the details of the products being offered. Therefore, brands must start to articulate, in creative ways, the benefits of their green products such as superior product performance, organic ingredients, recycled packaging or social responsibility.

Enter Green Marketing

Green Marketing, also known as environmental marketing or eco-marketing, is the highlighting of environmental or green issues within campaigns when showcasing products to consumers. For instance, brands may curate content that advertises the reduced emissions associated with its new manufacturing processes or its commitment to recycled materials in packaging.

In doing so, it can articulate the unique benefits of its green products to consumers which can serve as justification for higher prices. However, while information is power, advertising campaigns must also seek to win consumers hearts and not just their minds. Therefore, green marketing must also be human, striking a chord with emotions and a higher purpose. Striking this balance can be challenging but is necessary to convince consumers to pay the higher premiums.

60% of consumers want to know what brands are doing to limit their carbon footprint, emissions, water usage and damage to the earth (Forbes)

52% of shoppers are attracted to brands that stand for something bigger than the products they sell (Forbes)

Go green and be seen

Here are a few examples of green marketing campaigns that caught our eye:

Dunkin’ Donuts x Airbnb: ‘The home that runs on Dunkin’

Dunkin’ Donuts invited its customers to live their tagline “Do more with less’.” As part of their campaign, they partnered with Airbnb to create a tiny house that runs on eco-friendly biofuels that utilises 65,000 lbs of used Dunkin’ ground coffee. This tiny house has been travelling across America, promoting sustainable practices and a stylish immersion into all things Dunkin’.

O’Neill’s Ocean Futures Campaign

As part of their green marketing campaign, surf-wear brand O’Neill’s released a video of a consumer engagement experiment they ran in Amsterdam to highlight the recycled plastic emergency. 

A brand ambassador invited unbeknown members of the public to take a selfie before throwing their sunglasses in a nearby trash can. He explained that plastic bottles and sunglasses are made of the same materials, yet you bin plastics but keep sunglasses. The ambassador then guided participants to a 3-D printer where their plastic bottle was used to make a souvenir. 

Check it out for yourself below:

Unleash the power of your green marketing content with Knexus

These campaigns from Dunkin’ and O’Neill’s are powerful strategies to capture the hearts of consumers while educating them about more sustainable practices. However, like many marketing campaigns, they drive engagement and impressions but can often fail at converting customers into sales.

This is because green marketing content, which can be described as validation & social proof, isn’t necessarily seen during the buying journey as it’s locked away on social media or your blog or any other channel for that matter. This means shoppers who are influenced by a brand’s sustainable practices or ethics and values won’t receive the validation they need to make a purchase. However, brands can leverage this content to validate purchase decisions in eCommerce journeys to give shoppers the confidence to purchase. How? With Knexus.

How it works:

1. Content intelligence

Knexus uses content intelligence to identify all content that’s available to your brand & creates a single dynamic view of this content. This can be your brand’s own content living in your CMS, blog, social channels, or influencer & user-generated content. Knexus uses AI to understand the content & automatically tags & indexes it to ensure it’s intelligently delivered to the right shopper.

2. Customer intelligence

Knexus uses machine learning to build intelligence around each shopper & customer through the use of transactional & behavioural data. With a single view of all content & an in-depth understanding of each shopper & customer, Knexus uses these insights to pick the most relevant influencer, UGC or brand content to deliver to the shopper at the key moment of their buying journey.

3. Make your green marketing shoppable

Knexus uses AI to match the influencer, UGC & brand content to the relevant product. At the same time as a shopper is consuming the content, Knexus delivers the personalized product recommendation alongside – fuelling product discovery at the same time as providing social proof & validation to inspire confidence & encourage purchases.

4. Real-time delivery 

Knexus delivers personalized content in real-time through dynamic widgets which update to show the relevant influencer, UGC & brand content based on each shopper’s unique profile. These widgets are added to an existing page(s) which can either take over existing sections on the page which are being underutilized or to create new sections. Widgets are SEO optimized & are fully flexible to suit the look & feel of your page & display the content type of your choice.

Interested in finding out more about Knexus and unleashing the potential of your green marketing content? Book a demo.

Influencer marketing – the latest weapon in a brands arsenal. But what really is an influencer? How do Micro and Macro influencers differ? Influencer content is powerful on it’s own but what are brands missing? Read our blog to find out…

The role of the influencer is yet to be defined…people say it’s someone with 20,000 followers, others, someone who is passionate about a certain lifestyle, or could it just be a knowledgeable individual brands utilise to promote their products? … There is no set definition.

But one thing’s for sure. They’re powerful. Very powerful for brands who want to create an authentic message and start a dyadic, personal relationship with their customers.

Self exposure

Brands can’t self-expose like real influencers can. Consumers are all too aware of a brands motive – sales and conversion. So, when it comes to advertising, consumers perceive a disconnect between what a brand says and what it does. This leaves consumers suspicious – is this actually a good product? Or are they just trying to sell me things?

Enter the influencer… Using influencers, brands can advertise to customers through a pre-established relationship that already exists between them and followers. This relationship is built on trust and goodwill. It’s evolved over time and so it’s authentic and increasingly real. 

Therefore, with a unique identity, influencers have perceived independence from the brands they promote. And so… their recommendations are more trustworthy, reliable and genuine compared to the brand line. And that’s the type of recommendations consumers want brands to promote.

Percent of consumers trust an influencer more than an advertisement

The Micro-Influencer

Trends in influencer marketing are changing. Today, 36% of brands now look towards influencers with smaller followership (less than 10,000) across social media channels to promote their content rather than traditional macro-influencers and popular celebrities.

So why is this the case? Isn’t this counterproductive to brands trying to amplify their message?

Well – The high life of Macro influencers and celebrities, with their millions of followers, private jets and extravagant lifestyle seems increasingly unattainable to the average consumer. Their product promotions on Instagram or videos on YouTube or TikTok can be construed as arrogant to a brands customer- it flaunts a lifestyle that consumers know is unachievable and so they become despondent to their message.

However, ‘micro influencers’ with their smaller followership and more grounded lifestyle, are perceived as ‘more like you and me.’ Their possessions are seen as increasingly affordable to the average person and so their recommendations are more attainable. What’s more, with fewer followers’ micro-influencers can really create that dyadic relationship central to the influencer-follower dynamic. This means their content is more intimate, more engaging, and yes, more impactful.

Micro-Influencers boast up to a 60% increased engagement rate compared to Macro-Influencers.

Ok…so influencers can engage…but can they sell and convert?

When consumers empathise with content from influencers they can often be inspired to purchase. But there are a few things that must happen first:

Integrate influencer content into eCommerce journeys for to validate purchase decisions

It’s often the case that all the great content a brands influencer curates can get lost within millions of hashtags and lost in the social media abys. This means some of your most influential social proof & validation content can be missed by the shoppers who need it most.

Given 85% of shoppers research a product before buying, this runs the risk of them stumbling across your competitors during their research. By integrating this content into ecommerce journeys it automatically provides consumers with the social proof & validation necessary for confident purchases rather than abandoning the journey to search for it themselves elsewhere. 

Deliver personalized influencer content to every shopper

When we talk about integrating influencer content into ecommerce journeys we don’t mean static images which are seen by every single shopper at the same stage of the buying journey. We are talking about dynamic influencer content which updates to reflect every shopper.

Males and females subscribe to different types of influencer categories. Women prefer beauty (56%), entertainers (48%) and fashion (48%). Men more commonly follow gamers (54%), technology influencers (46%) and finally entertainers (44%)

What’s more, is that different types of consumers prefer content across different channels:

Prove the ROI of your influencer content

Understanding what content drives value is vital but it is not always easy never mind understanding what influencer content actually generates sales. In fact, tracking the ROI of influencer campaigns can be a real headache for marketers. 52% say it’s the biggest challenge they face when running campaigns and even when they perform some analysis it’s often engagement and impressions based rather than sales and conversion:

Influencing buying decisions with influencer content

Knexus delivers personalized influencer content in real-time through dynamic widgets which update to show the relevant influencer, content based on each shopper’s unique profile.

How Knexus makes this possible:

1. Automatically surfaces, index’s & tag’s influencer content: Knexus uses content intelligence to identify all content that’s available to your brand. This can be your brand’s own content living in your CMS, blog, social channels, or influencer & user-generated content.  Classifying influencer content to make it structured, indexed and – ultimately – useful is a mammoth manual task. Knexus uses AI to understand the content & automatically tag & index it to ensure it’s intelligently delivered to the right shopper.

2. Unleashes influencer content from social media & integrates it into eCommerce journeys: Knexus uses machine learning to build intelligence around each shopper & customer through the use of transactional & behavioural data. With a single view of all content & an in-depth understanding of each shopper & customer, Knexus uses these insights to pick the most relevant influencer, UGC or brand content to deliver to the shopper at the key moment of their buying journey.

3. Matches influencer content to relevant product recommendations: At the same time as a shopper is consuming an influencer post or video, Knexus automatically displays the related product alongside – making your influencer content shoppable & fostering discovery for a seamless transition to customized products.

4. Understands what influencer content generates sales:Knexus understands what influencer, UGC & brand content actually drives value in terms of sales & conversions. Knexus’ unique content reporting allows brands to understand how each content asset is performing throughout individual customer journeys across the website, CRM campaigns, mobile apps or digital advertising campaigns. Don’t stop at engagement metrics, analyze content based on sales impact – allowing for better-informed content investments.

What’s more, is that the Knexus platform works across multiple channels and content (influencer, UGC & brand content) delivering personalized & shoppable content to the right shopper at the key moment of the buying journey – creating confident purchases. Book a demo.