Remington BeggThere I stood in the produce aisle at Publix when I saw a young woman walk by wearing the trendiest dress that I NEEDED to have in my closet. “Should I go up to this stranger and ask where she got it?” I thought to myself. Nah, it’s 2018, people don’t approach random strangers in the grocery store.
WHAT IF… I could low key take a quick photo of her dress without her noticing and my phone could just tell me where it’s from?
Great news, everyone.
Pretty soon, you can do just that using Snapchat!
Snapchat and Amazon’s Partnership
This past Monday, September 24th, Snapchat announced their partnership with Amazon and the new point-and-shoot shopping feature. All you have to do is scan an item or barcode using your Snapchat camera and you’ll receive a pop up window in the app that showcases the item, similar items, pricing, review scores, and Prime availability. Selecting a presented listing will direct you to Amazon or a website in your browser where you can purchase the item. Convenient AF.
Snapchat will be releasing this feature to a small percentage of U.S. users before they decide to expand to other countries. After recently losing a multitude of users and money (down from 191 million to 188 million daily active users last quarter while burning $353 million, according to Tech Crunch), this new point-and-shoot shopping feature could really help them bounce back.
Keeping Up With the Competition
With Instagram’s latest shopping tag feature and Shopping channel in Explore, social commerce continues to advance, allowing for an easier, more convenient user experience. Pinterest has also recognized this shift in social commerce by recently launching their Shop the Look pin, allowing users to tag the products showcased in their organic pins. With more than 250 million monthly users on Pinterest, more and more users are adapting to these changes.
What Does This Mean for Us?
In a world where people rely on immediate gratification, we, as marketers, need to continuously find ways to keep up with this fast-paced, ever-evolving environment, in order to keep our businesses thriving. Social technology is constantly changing and advancing. If we can’t keep up with the trends, we’re never going to grow as a business.
The key is to be susceptible to change and adapt to new ideas before they fully take off in order to put yourself ahead of the game. And like any new strategies you fit into your marketing plan, don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work the first time. Everything is trial and error, which is why I’m curious to see how this new Snapchat feature takes off.
While this new feature sounds incredibly convenient and awesome, I have a lot of questions about how this launch will turn out. Will old users who gave up on the app give it another chance? How accurate will the point-and-shoot listings be? Will competitors jump on this bandwagon and hijack their idea? Stay tuned…
Want to keep up with the marketing trends but don’t know where to start? Download our Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing for some helpful tips and tricks.
