Mobile Payments, Influencers Intersect With Moltin’s New Social Commerce Application

The notion of influence marketing in social media has been in vogue for quite some time now, with companies eager to take advantage of the perceived trustworthiness and authenticity of highly-viewed social media figures. Some companies have even gone so far as to offer support for such operations. Moltin recently dropped word our way about the Dynamic Influencer Program, which allows users to set up “brand-specific microsites” to take advantage of social media influence and turn it directly into mobile commerce.

Advertising, as a whole, seems to be losing some ground in the face of influencer marketing, as a recent study found that user-generated content (UGC) had at least some sway over purchasing decisions. Fully 53 percent considered it either very or extremely influential, and 90 percent found that it had at least some influence.

Moltin, therefore, stepped in to cut down the intervening time between when a user encounters UGC and when the user can make a purchase. When opting in, influencers can automatically create those aforementioned microsites, without cumbersome approval processes. It even automatically incorporates social media feeds, and the user can select which posts get included with a set of simple commands. Retailers, meanwhile, can interject with control over the branding, and all product content can be managed from a single common dashboard.

Moltin’s CEO, Jamus Driscoll, noted “…now, when friends and followers see a product they love, they can immediately buy it. This creates a seamless experience for the consumer and a new revenue stream for the retailer.”

It’s a common problem in marketing circles, though it shares its name with an online issue: latency. Latency is that time between interacting with a marketing effort—advertising, promotional offers, or as demonstrated here UGC—and the time when a purchase can be made. The longer the latency, the lower the chance of a sale happens, so marketers are eager for means to lower that latency. This program basically does just that, allowing customers to make purchases almost immediately after interacting with the UGC.

Lowering latency means a better chance at sales, so such a move should be helpful all around. Turning mobile content into mobile shopping—and turning to mobile payments to help out here—should turn this into a very valuable tool in the marketer’s toolkit.