Influencer Marketing Playbook - D2C Brands

1. Influencer
Marketing
Playbook
-D2C Brands
Social commerce & how to leverage influencer
marketing, social media, and its innovative
commerce features.
Straight from the horse’s mouth.

2. INDEX
Introduction
Influencer Marketing
Expert Advice.
Conclusion
- Social Commerce
- How brands leverage social commerce to
drive sales
- Influencer Marketing is not Pushy
- How Thought Leaders & Marketers leverage
Social Commerce.
- Impact of COVID on Social Commerce
- Future of Social Commerce
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3. Introduction
Social commerce is what happens when savvy marketers take the best
of e-commerce and combine it with social media.
Sell More. Sell Everywhere.
If you’re a brand looking to sell on social platforms, this playbook will
probably make you feel like that dollar-sign-eyes-green-tongue emoji.
What is Social Commerce?
Social commerce is the process of selling products directly by using online social
networks to help in the buying and selling of goods and services.
Whether you’re a small start-up or a large brand, social media is very likely to now
be a key part to your sales strategy – through both social media marketing and
social commerce. It’s not just about posts to advertise and drive awareness.
With social commerce, the entire shopping experience — from product discovery
and research to the check-out process — takes place right on social media
platforms.
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4. How companies are leveraging social
commerce to drive online business:
89% of consumers say that they will buy from a brand that they follow on social
media, which means that a robust social commerce strategy has become vital today
for every business. Many brands have already been using social commerce to drive
sales in recent times.
Elevating the customer’s entire shopping journey to a seamless one is the goal for
every brand, and social commerce is just the tool to do that. Through Social
Commerce the entire online shopping experience can happen without the
consumer having to leave the social media site they’re on. In essence, this can mean
less interruption for the consumer, allowing them to make an informed decision at
the moment, with fewer clicks and a hassle-free shopping experience.
More and more brands today are working with influencers. The influencer culture
associated with Social commerce helps consumers make informed decisions on
what to buy and where to buy.
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5. Influencer Marketing is not Pushy
Influencer marketing is radically different from traditional marketing methods simply
because it doesn’t feel pushy to consumers. Followers on social media willingly opt
to follow influencers and look forward to their posts.
Since followers are actively seeking advice and recommendations from influencers
of their choice it makes their buying decision a lot easier.
A huge part of the success of your influencer marketing campaign depends on your
choice of influencers. If you make the right selection, the rewards are immense. It is
important to work on building long-term relationships with them that are mutually
beneficial.
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6. Let’s hear from the experts themselves
on how they have leveraged Social
Commerce to drive sales and influence
purchase decisions.
Social media marketing is one of the most powerful ways for businesses
of all sizes to reach prospects and customers. Customers are already interacting with
brands through social media, and if you're not speaking directly to your audience
through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, you're
missing out! More and more brands today are deciding to work with influencers.
The influencer culture associated with Social commerce helps consumers make
informed decisions on what to buy and where to buy.
Brands have been leveraging these individuals to create awareness
and validation for their products and services.
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Social commerce is an advanced form of the oldest marketing method
i.e, "word of mouth". The difference is now people have bigger social
media platforms to express their thoughts on products, services, and
businesses, or anything they see around. It's human psychology to
believe in the people in our community than just seeing ads.
This really helps D2C brands to reach out to the audience in their pre-
ferred language/platform/content type they consume with the help of
influencer marketing.
Social commerce is the best way to cover top to bottom-funnel
approach in one go. It helps in reaching out to the broader audience,
drives traffic to the website, and generates sales.
Srishty Mishra,
Sr. Manager - Digital Marketing, Wakefit.

7. The exploding Influencer Marketing industry is attracting millions of dollars from
brands looking for solutions that support them in scaling
the creation and distribution of trusted consumer content.
India is a trust deficient economy and Millennials trust Millennials.
These two facts summarise growth of influencer industry.
Deepak Agarwal,
Founder, Auric
Since its inception in 2014, Juicy Chemistry has been a digital-first
brand. We’ve always believed in the power of digital and social
commerce and have worked towards cultivating an engaged and
thriving community. Be it Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or
YouTube, we believe in using social media to promote the idea of and
spread awareness about organic wellness and sustainable living.
Social media has become a powerful tool we leverage to talk to our
community about this. Through informative posts, live sessions, Qn
As etc. we actively engage our customers and talk about our products
and ideology.
With Covid accelerating the shift to online purchase , over 700 million
internet users have caused a tectonic shift in the way commerce is
perceived both by brands and customers alike. With more eyeballs
available online to showcase our products and brand narrative, we are
relying more than every to add new customers at the top of the
funnel through social channels.
Pritesh Asher,
CEO & Co Founder, Juicy Chemistry
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8. Social media engagement is more than just the accumulation of followers across
social platforms. It’s also a measurement of how many people are paying attention to
and interacting with your brand on a daily basis. The social media engagement by
delivering quality content, engaging with customers can bring remarkable success to
your business, creating devoted brand advocates and even driving leads and sales.
Social commerce makes shopping a social experience which removes
friction and offers an instant focus group. It helps hyper-target your
prime audience as Millennials and Gen Z shops here.
Huge opportunity for new-age brands as this is growing by leaps and
bound.
At Bombay Shaving Company, we engage with our followers, listen to
them strategically, encourage reviews, target the reach, remove
moments of friction and all these help our products move.
Ankur Varshney,
Associate Director & Head Institutional Business, Bombay Shaving Company
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Vikas Bagaria,
Founder, Pee Safe
We have always believed in the potential of social media and how it has
assisted us in reaching out to the masses through its broad reach. We've
also run a number of successful campaigns that have been heavily inte-
grated with influencer marketing, resulting in success in influencing
potential customers and putting our message forward in the most literal
way.
With Instagram releasing reels, we have made sure to leverage its
organic reach. By participating in trends and creating fun/informative
reels, we have increased our reach by 40%.
Influencer marketing also works because of the high amount of trust that social
influencers have built up with their following, and recommendations from them serve
as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers.

9. As a content evangelist, and I firmly believe that great content keeps
the consumers within your social media ecosystem without distractions,
and thus helps amplify conversions on social media.
If your audience likes you as a brand, they would want to buy from you.
So leverage the power of stories and rich visual posts or videos to
connect with the TG to grow your D2C business. Invest in good content.
Payal Shah Karwa,
Content Director, TWJ Content Studio
It's been incredible to witness the dynamism & innovation in the social
media industry. The past decade has seen a steady surge in consumers
using smartphones, eCommerce, and social platforms.
This progressive shift gave D2C brands a platform to make it big and
compete head-on with traditional offline brands as well. Every technological
innovation in the past 5 years led to a beautiful convergence of social
platforms and eCommerce. This native integration that led to Social
Commerce has made it possible to make a direct impact to the entire
shopping funnel.
Creating a smooth & holistic shopping experience, developing a deeper
connection with consumers through apt content, effective & quick CRM on
social platforms, focus on data-based targeting, and acing the
product-demand mix - has all been major value adds to D2C businesses.
An important takeaway is to study different social commerce platforms
separately, build content, visual imagery, and rich video assets that connect
with consumers, and then natively integrate the social commerce tools in
your messaging to create a holistic shopping experience and cash on a
product sale.
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Resha Jain,
Head of Content Marketing, SUGAR Cosmetics

10. Here’s how influencer marketing & social commerce have helped brands
accelerate their selling strategy.
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Influencer Marketing and Remarketing campaigns have worked
wonderfully for WOW. These platforms have ensured that customer
forms a positive brand image. How influencer marketing has helped in
social settings. We have believed that in today’s digital-savvy world,
social content creators who have a niche audience add a lot of value to
the brand.
The high amount of trust that social influencers have built up with their
following, and recommendations from them serve as a form of social
proof to consumers. Future of selling on social platforms. I believe that
today social media is not only a place where the brand gets visibility
and engagement but also has very direct indicators that can foster sales
and drive revenue to the organization.
With new features and automation coming up, there will be highly
developed customer journeys that would map the activities of
consumers to the grass-roots level and will allow us more information on
how consumers are interacting with our products and services.
Rahul Agarwal,
Affiliate, Partnership & E-commerce, WOW Skin Science.
Social media is a direct avenue to develop social customer relationships and build a
familiar rapport with consumers. People are loyal to how they feel about a brand,
and brand love is largely driven by consistency, quality and presence.

11. The impact of social commerce for Ilana, well let's just put it this way that
Ilana would not have succeeded and impacted so many lives in a short
span of 3 years if not for social Commerce. The way it accelerated Ilana is
by Consistent audience growth, making us reach new audiences every day
and connect with people from unexpected, unknown places.
Customer retention is another key area where social commerce comes
into play as it helps in maintaining trust and loyalty which builds a long
lasting relationship with our customer.
The best part about Social Commerce has to be the enormous amounts of
metrics, analytics and data that let us decide and plan our future projects
in a seamless and efficient manner.
Amit Patil,
Co-Founder, ilana
The rise of social commerce has opened up new avenues for brands.
We have started looking at purchase funnels differently, and optimised
our social channels to drive direct revenue. YouTube has been a
particularly exciting vehicle for us, and we have been able to use
influencer marketing and social commerce to drive sales for the
company.
The onset of social commerce opens up new possibilities for brands like
ours. While social media channels were previously used primarily for
brand awareness and visibility, social commerce helps build our
community, convert them into brand loyalists, and also increase
revenues.
It helps people connect with the brand better, and thereby encourages
repeat usage and referrals.
Parasar Sarma,
VP Growth, Wakefit
Social Commerce is winning by going after the entire shopping experience, from
browsing to sale.
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12. Impact of COVID
The pandemic has accentuated the trend towards greater adoption of social media
and growth in sales through e-commerce websites. Shifts in consumption habits
have also been observed, driven by the need for sourcing essential items. Social
media and own e-commerce shops are important sales channels for the e-commerce
companies. Both channels have witnessed higher growth since the beginning of the
COVID-19 crisis.
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Social commerce connects Clients with a Business through two-way
communication. The idea of doing business without leaving the social
connect and with aid of easy to use apps has encouraged Users to make
it the preferred approach of doing business, more so the COVID-19
pandemic has put further strain on brick and mortar businesses. Now
executives are all in on digital transformation. According to a survey,
50% of millennial’s will purchase in-store after researching online and on
social media.
Social media usage is booming. A majority of consumers say that their
usage has increased over the past year owing to the long induced
complete Lockdowns worldwide due to COVID-19 pandemic, and I
expect a continued rise over the next three years.
With my sustained presence over the last decade in Social Media It
unquestionably does help in providing credibility to Our Products over
a vast sphere of Clientele market, thereby inducing the buyers to
connect with us in due course of time eventually increasing our Sales
and improving our Branding and Market Growth Strategy. I believe the
era of Social Commerce has just begun.
Abdul Bari Khan,
Founder,WOW| World of Women.

13. Restricted physical mobility since the beginning of 2020 has
re-channelised all movement online. What that implies for the D2C
industry is a meteoric rise in e-commerce. Interestingly, it is not just the
movement of goods but also channels of communication, information,
and support that have overwhelmingly moved virtual. A Deloitte report
estimates that online shoppers are expected to constitute 50 percent
of India’s online population in 2026.
For us in the content services industry, this means that global
collaboration will be easier than ever as multi-cultural teams get more
comfortable with working together on a single project.
This will also give a boost to diversity, as the work environment now
allows for more flexibility with remote working, flexi time and policies
conducive to those with different needs. Overall, the move online is no
longer a part of a blended offering; it is the dominant or primary aspect
and will pave the way for healthier competition, rationalised pricing and
offerings of superior quality.
Sapna Gupta,
Entrepreneur, published author, business content specialist
Dipali Mathur Dayal,
CEO & Co-Founder Super Smelly
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As advertising channels proliferate, companies are spending more
money to chase each sale. The power of social commerce is really the
ability to use first-party data to find highly qualified shoppers. Social
commerce is blurring the lines between newsfeeds and shopping carts.
For a new brand like ours where education and use of the products
along with reviews is the combination needed to get each conversion,
social commerce brings it all together and reduces the attribution
window for us.
In October 2020 with Instagram expanding its shopping service onto
Instagram TV, it enabled people to watch a video and check out with
just a few clicks, and for our brand where the TG is GenZ, Instagram
remains the most powerful platform for both acquisition and awareness.

14. Like It. Click It. Buy It.
These words perhaps summarises social commerce for me. Whether it's
using influencer marketing (Nano/Micro/Cat B/Cat A), the shopping
features on social media platforms or using chat platforms like WA to
boost your commerce. Though social commerce has been gaining
momentum for a while it would be premature to say that it would
replace your own site. Your website comes with its own rules and
environment and ease that you can control and give better experience
to your customers.
While any social media platforms providing commerce feature will have
its own sets of rules which you need to abide by, it may provide ease of
shopping, quick peer consultation, real time reviews but it won't provide
the brand affinity or brand loyalty that your own website might
accomplish in doing.
In saying so, at TMC we have been using various new ways of bringing
high quality premium grooming products closer to men and gifting
options closer to men, women and others. The trick is to find the right
balance and know when what is enough push.
The line is thin but it's there. Knowing that ease of shopping is
something that a customer in a fast moving world would need but in
your face marketing is never appreciated.
At the end of the day we are as much marketers as we are consumers.
So do unto others as you would have them do unto you is the mantra.
Rumi Ambastha,
Director, Brand Marketing, The Man Company
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15. Social commerce will continue to grow, with both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar
retailers adopting it to drive sales. As and how social media grows, so will the idea of
social commerce.
The impact and potential of social and e-commerce is much larger than
the numbers and growth with which it is expected to grow in the near
future. At the base, it's revamping the Indian culture by empowering
each and every citizen to open up, think and innovate businesses from
home.
It's the decentralization of brand power and making India fly like a
golden bird once again.
Varun Chopra,
Co-Founder, The Teaser Company
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16. CONCLUSION
The Indian social commerce industry is enabling users to shop
instantly through AI-driven, brand-tagged user-generated
content and creating employment opportunities, making it a
win-win sector for India. Rapidly changing requirements of
consumers are expected to drive the growth of digital
commerce in India and fuel the emergence of new business
models. Given these trends and estimates, D2C brands and
social commerce are expected to play an important role in
the growth of digital commerce in the country.
While e-commerce brought in the first wave of online
customers, it is expected that discovery-driven shopping in
social commerce rather than search-based shopping will
bring in the next wave.
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17. THANK YOU
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