Shoppable Videos—What They Are and Why You Should Try Them Soon

Modern digital brands must constantly innovate and experiment with new marketing strategies. A willingness to try new tactics and tools is often how contemporary retail brands unlock success and reach new groups of target customers. Flexible and creative marketing strategies often pave the way for increased relevance and even more leads.

As video marketing continues to accelerate this year (and perhaps beyond), brands are turning to new shoppable videos. This user-friendly video format allows customers to shop featured products directly, without having to jump through hoops to complete a purchase.

If you’ve got shoppable videos on your radar this season—and we hope that you do—this post provides a practical starting point. Learn what shoppable videos are, how to leverage them fully, and even how Rockerbox can help you measure results.

What are Shoppable Videos?

Shoppable videos are marketing videos that include embedded links to help users shop retail products directly from a specific video.

While YouTube is one of the leading platforms for shoppable video marketing, it’s certainly not the only channel that brands can use for experimentation. Other platforms include TikTok, Facebook Live, Instagram, and others.

Shoppable videos offer advantages to brands and customers because they directly capture the customer’s attention on an outlet that’s already in use. When brands include embedded links, it simplifies the buyer’s experience by taking them directly to the product that’s being featured. In other words, customers don’t have to navigate separately to a site, find the product, and make a purchase; this process happens in an uninterrupted process from the video.

Embedded product links also increase customer engagement by boosting return on investment (ROI). Since prospective buyers are already spending time watching video content, it’s natural to capitalize on that interest and excitement by offering a direct bridge to the product.

Are Shoppable Videos Right for Your Brand?

Shoppable videos take advantage of the fact that 80% of consumers are more likely to spend money on products when a brand offers interactive marketing assets. Different types of businesses can take advantage of shoppable video formats, including small online shops and large scale direct-to-consumer brands. Shoppable links also work regardless of whether a brand offers physical products or services, although they might be most effective when linking directly to featured products.

Additionally, shoppable videos can be a good move for any brand that already maintains an active presence on video-based platforms and wants to increase engagement and conversion.

Brands must be willing to build a “shoptainment experience” in comparison to a traditional entertainment experience in which interruptions are kept to a minimum. In shoppable videos, brands craft a spontaneous buying experience that eliminates many hurdles associated with adding products to the cart, submitting personal details, and then relocating back to the video that a user was previously watching. But in a shoppable video, the viewer gets a miniaturized version of the website for a streamlined retail experience.

Digitally Native Brands

Digitally native brands already know and recognize the importance of buying behaviors on social platforms. That’s why they’re launching interactive events and using shoppable videos to retarget previous customers and recapture abandoned purchases.

TULA, a current Rockerbox customer, shares how shoppable YouTube videos have helped the brand participate in creative seasonal events and deliver exciting customer experiences. In a recent interview with Glossy, TULA CEO Savannah Sachs shares—

“As a digitally native, social-first brand, we are always looking for new ways for customers to discover our clean, clinically effective products, and this live shopping activation allows us to bring Tula’s holiday shopping experience to life in a festive and innovative way.”

Other digitally native brands should consider forging a similar path, especially in light of increased traffic with holiday and seasonal buying timeframes.

Unique Shoppable Video Formats

For creative brands, shoppable videos aren’t simply a “one size fits all” solution to new marketing methods. Retailers can use separate formats to reach individual segments of their audience and increase customer conversion opportunities. Shoppable video formats can include:

• Standard videos – Mostly pre-recorded and produced marketing videos that are posted directly to a brand’s channel for continual engagement and viewing.
• Livestreaming – Special live events where brand representatives present products and share new content in real-time. Links to products may be shared multiple times throughout the live event based on viewer participation.
• Shorts – Specialized short-form videos, including YouTube Shorts, that allow brands to share content and links in brief snippets. Shorts are often linked to social media views and are designed to provide fast, easy conversion opportunities.

How to Make Shoppable Videos Successful

Even if you’re ready to jump on the shoppable video bandwagon, you should do so with a proven strategy in mind. Adhering to industry best practices helps you optimize each video and maximize the results you receive from your investment.

Check out the following tips to ensure your shoppable videos are as effective as possible.

• Leverage influencer marketing – Video marketing leaders have highlighted how important influencers are to the shoppable video strategy. For increased monetization opportunities, add shoppable components and links to all new influencer videos.
• Participate in virtual platform events – Social and video platforms like YouTube are ramping up promotion around features like shoppable livestreams. To get featured and take advantage of the hottest publicity, aim for participation in events like YouTube’s livestream shopping festival.
• Retarget and recapture – Use shoppable videos to recapture and retarget past audience interest within similar video content based on known user data. To do this successfully, new videos should offer new products and make effective upsells.

Measure Results with Rockerbox

A key part of introducing shoppable videos into your strategy is making sure you have a way to track their success. With Rockerbox, you have multiple options for following through on the impact of videos to your bottom line, including leveraging link tracking, promo codes, and post-purchase surveys.

• Links - Whatever form your shopping CTA link takes in your video, these links, and any others that you include in the comments or description of the video should include the right Rockerbox tracking parameters so you can track their performance. If a link is going to be visible, use a link shortener to make the link more attractive and clickable.
• Promo codes - If your shoppable video includes a promo code, you can track those with Rockerbox. Make sure to use unique codes for each campaign or influencer. If there are any affiliate or fixed costs, you can add those as well to understand your true CPA and ROAS.
• Surveys - If you want to add an extra method of understanding where your buyers came from, add a post-purchase survey from a platform like Fairing that asks shoppers how they heard about your brand. To streamline the survey, consider making a two-step question: if a user selects "YouTube Live," for example, ask a follow-up question about which stream they watched.
• Halo analysis - Oftentimes, top-of-funnel channels with high visibility have knock-on effects on other channels that may not be readily obvious. You might see an increase in branded and non-branded paid search or see your social prospecting campaigns performing better than before. With Rockerbox, you can compare a control period to your campaign and measure the "halo" impact on the rest of your marketing.

Discover Rockerbox for Marketing Measurement and Performance

At Rockerbox, we know how important it is to create digital marketing initiatives that keep pace with the competition. Whether it’s in seasons of high consumer spending (like the holidays) or any other time throughout the year, you need intelligent testing and reliable metrics that help you match effort with results.

Are you ready to take advantage of current digital marketing trends, including highly engaging shoppable videos?

Rockerbox delivers intelligent attribution so that your brand can test and spend more confidently. Join the ranks of global direct-to-consumer brands and take advantage of Rockerbox’s attribution models.