15 Social Media Marketing Trends to watch out for in Australian Marketing in 2012

David
If I take how you describe social commerce I'm stumped as to why you use Noni B as an example?

Sure, they've got a nice Facebook footprint, they've got a webstore - but where is the integration between the two? There isn't...

There's very little mention of Facebook in the webstore, you can't purchase from their Facebook page, the links on their Facebook page are to their standard homepage, not the webstore, and you have to go into the specific product to see a Facebook like button. This last point astounded me. Pitching to that type of female audience, why aren't the social share and like icons everywhere?

There are better examples in Australia of companies getting close to a true social commerce model - Betts and Rushfaster spring to mind.

Lets compare two companies selling primarily to females - Betts and Noni B

I see two very different approaches. Betts are clearly understanding the power of their audience - with Facebook share buttons on list pages and product pages - social is immersed across the site - this is a good example - http://www.betts.com.au/catalogue/party_shoes.aspx

Now that I've talked up Betts - where do they fall down? Instore...They make little if any mention in store of their social footprint and how you can engage with them.

Social commerce and hyper targeting (basically harnessing big data) will be the two big trends for this year as they are the two that will deliver ROI the fastest. I think you almost need to combine hyper targeting with SocialCRM - as I'm not sure you can have one without the other.

cheers Mark

Hi David
I like the idea of social commerce being a big thing for this year - any chance to heap more pain on the legacy retailers needs to be taken...The reason I'm commenting though is that I just can't agree with you that Noni B is an example of a company either 'getting' or 'doing' social commerce. There's a couple of reasons why I say this.

Firstly, you have to go into a specific product page to find a Facebook like button - given their target audience, this isn't ideal. Whilst they have a nice Facebook page, it's FB101...even the info tab doesn't link to their webstore. I get the impression they've kind of given it some time but not bothered to sit down and really map out the bigger, integrated, consistent strategy.

There's many examples here in Australia of companies who are further along the social commerce road - Rushfaster and Betts are two that spring to mind. If we wanted to compare apples to apples - Betts and Noni B make an interesting contest.

if we compare what Betts are doing - in my opinion we see a better example of what you outlined in your SlideShare presentation - this page alone demonstrates much of what you talk about - http://www.betts.com.au/catalogue/party_shoes.aspx - social is immersed across the site - they've clearly started to harness the power of their audience to communicate and engage with their community - here's an audience that's doing a massive amount of free marketing for Betts...close to 2,000 likes on one page alone...

My only criticism of Betts is based on my limited experience in dealing with their retail stores - where their appears to be little if any integration of what they do socially to what you can experience in-store.

Finally, one trend I was surprised you didn't mention was big data - to harness hyper segmenting and socialCRM companies are going to need to rethink how they manage and utilise data streams that will be so big we'll need to rethink how we capture, store, and analyze these data sets - all under the umbrella of timeliness - with data ageing faster than we've ever seen before.

cheers Mark

PS. I left an earlier comment but it may have been lost due to a password issue.

Hi Mark

Many Thanks for taking the time to read the presentation and providing some feedback -Agreed there may be better examples of social commerce who are much further down the road that Noni B in this country But what I really wanted to point out is that if a brand can have as much success with a few small promotions through facebook and lunching a web shop just think what other brands in this country could achieve with a concerted effort to drive sales through recommendations and reviews. i think you'll find a more more detailed article on the subject with numerous examples
http://davidwesson.typepad.com/david_wessons_digital_cul/2010/11/social-commerce-strategythe-case-for-redesigning-the-shopping-experience-.html

But I would definitely be open to any more examples from companies in Australia making inroads into this space
thanks again for your input
cheers

David