Giving shoppers the ability to easily buy anything, anytime, anywhere sounds like a dream to brands and product marketers. That’s what contextual commerce is all about – integrating purchasing options into the online customer experience. It was one of our 3 big takeaways from the recent Retail Media Summit, so if you need a crash course, or you haven’t been engaging influencers to help drive your contextual commerce programs more effectively, keep reading.

What is Contextual Commerce?

It’s important to find customers during their everyday lives for advertising to be effective. Contextual commerce marketing (CCM) is designed to match peoples’ natural online behavior – where potential customers can engage with organic advertising while they scroll.

Let’s say you’re searching online for easy meals. You land on an article with the top 15-minute meals. As you scroll, you see an ad for a one-pan meal product that can be ready in 15 minutes. You click the ad and add the product to your shopping cart. That’s contextual commerce. 

It simply makes each ad more relevant to that moment, more connected to the viewer, and easier to shop

Why Contextual Commerce?

Encouraging high-intent shoppers is becoming increasingly difficult with shifting customer behaviors and stronger data privacy rules. Traditional advertising has had trouble reaching and engaging customers with restricted personal information online recently, leaving context out of the equation.

By serving the right content at the right time, CCM drives increased conversion rates on each ad. It’s a holistic approach that records high impressions among audiences who are already in a purchasing mindset.

When approached within the right context, customers’ receptivity to ad content increases by 60%. That’s a figure marketers can’t ignore.

Enhancing Contextual Commerce with Influencers

Without the traditional methods of providing context to your advertising, how do you approach it? Consider that up to a quarter of users online say they either only or primarily use social media as a search engine, and you have your answer. Influencers and creator-led content are pivotal in contextual commerce. They build trust and show authentic endorsements of products, creating a deeper positive connection between the product and the shopper. They open up opportunities for social selling that traditional ads just can’t replicate. 

With instant add-to-cart links and other down-funnel capabilities, we draw shoppers in with authentic content and make purchasing easy and even fun. In a recent campaign for Pacific Foods, we drove more than 17 million impressions and tens of thousands of dollars in carted products with perfectly-placed content across organic and paid tactics. 

When done strategically, influencer marketing can drive your contextual commerce campaigns far beyond social. SheSpeaks specializes in an omnichannel approach to influencer marketing, where our creators’ content fuels clients’ marketing efforts on social, brand and retailer websites, CTV, and more. 

Influencer + CCM is a powerful strategy that can increase reach, engagement, and conversion. Send us a message if you’re ready to learn more.