Social commerce strategy decides what a company sells inside social platforms, to whom, on what economics, and what has to be true for the transaction to complete without the customer leaving. It is a proposition decision with a checkout attached, not a media plan with a buy button added late. Vivaldi has worked on demand, commercial and brand strategy for consumer businesses since 1999.
- Since 1999demand, commercial and customer strategy
- 200+published case studies
- 10 officeson four continents
- No platform tiesour platform advice carries no commercial stake
- The Interaction Fieldwritten by our founder
When companies bring us in
- Social generates real attention and the revenue attributed to it is a rounding error.
- A pilot storefront launched, converted poorly, and nobody can say whether the problem was the creative, the offer or the catalog.
- Creators are being bought on follower count and the spend is growing faster than the return.
- Finance will not fund the next phase until somebody prices the platform take rate, the return rate and what is left of the margin.
- Buyers acquired in-platform stay the platform’s customers, so the second purchase costs what the first one did.
Why treating social commerce as a media problem does not work
In most commerce, brand and transaction are separated by design. Brand happens in advertising, transaction happens at the point of sale, and the gap between them is where consideration is supposed to occur. Social collapses that gap. The moment a customer meets what a brand means is often the moment they can buy it.
That collapse is why social commerce is not a channel decision. Attention converts when the meaning and the offer are the same thing. It does not convert when they are stapled together, and most programs staple them together because the content is built for reach and the offer is built for margin, by different teams, to different measures. The customer experiences the seam as an interruption.
There is a quieter failure underneath it. Social commerce is often run as an experiment owned by a team with no authority over pricing, inventory or returns. Every commercially interesting decision gets escalated, so nothing that would move the number actually gets made. The strategy work is partly an argument about where the decision rights sit.
What our social commerce strategy services include
1. Deciding what belongs inside the platform
Not everything in the catalog can be sold here. We settle which propositions can be understood and acted on inside a single interaction, without a comparison table, a configurator or a conversation with sales. That is usually a much shorter list than the one the commercial team arrives with, and agreeing it early is what stops the pilot from testing the wrong products.
2. Demand spaces and platform fit
Which demand spaces genuinely gather on which platforms, checked against evidence rather than carried over from last year’s plan, because the answer moves. Platform choice follows the demand map. It also has to account for what each platform charges and how much of the customer relationship it lets you keep.
3. Creator and community terms
Selection on fit with the demand space rather than on audience size, and commercial terms that make a creator a participant in the proposition rather than a rented audience. We design the selection criteria and the terms. We do not manage the creator roster or run the relationships.
4. Commerce infrastructure and platform economics
The strategy is worthless if the purchase cannot complete cleanly. We work through in-platform checkout, catalog sync and inventory truth so that what is shown is what can be shipped, returns and dispute handling for orders the brand did not originate on its own systems, and the attribution and customer data that have to survive the platform boundary. Alongside it, the economics: fees, take rates, the margin that is actually left, and what that implies for which propositions are worth selling here at all.
5. The measurement line
Lifetime value and economic profit, net of returns and platform fees, with the second purchase rate compared against your other channels. Engagement measures attention. Conversion measured only inside the platform hides whether those buyers ever came back.
Does your proposition survive being sold in three seconds?
A working session on what you could sell inside a platform, at what economics, and what has to be true for the transaction to complete.
How a social commerce engagement works
- Map where the demand actually gathers. We establish which demand spaces your growth depends on and which platforms those people genuinely use for discovery and purchase, as opposed to the platforms your competitors are visibly active on.
- Test the proposition against the format. We take a small number of candidate propositions and work out whether each can be understood, trusted and bought inside a single interaction. The ones that cannot are returned to the channels that suit them.
- Price the platform. Take rate, return rate, fulfillment cost, the data you do and do not keep, and the margin that survives all of it. This is the step that usually changes the shortlist, and it is the one most programs reach only after launch.
- Set the operating decisions. Who owns pricing, inventory and returns for this channel, what the measurement line is, and what gets escalated. Without this, the work stays a pilot.
Why companies choose Vivaldi for social commerce
We come at this from demand and proposition rather than from content. Our founder’s work on the interaction field describes markets where participants create value for one another and the brand is one participant among several, which is a reasonable description of what a creator-led commerce surface actually is. That lens makes the creator question a strategic one rather than a procurement one.
We also have no commercial stake in which platform or commerce stack you choose, and no media to sell you. A firm that earns on the buy has a reason to want the answer to be more buying. Our recommendation can honestly be that a given proposition should not be sold in-platform at all.
How to evaluate a social commerce consultant
- Ask what they measure. Engagement measures attention. The question is whether attention became a customer worth having, which needs lifetime value and returns data, not a dashboard of impressions.
- Ask how they choose creators. If the criterion is reach, you are buying media planning. The strategic question is which creators genuinely occupy the space you want to own.
- Ask who handles returns. A firm that has not thought about reverse logistics on platform orders has designed a launch, not a business.
- Ask what happens to the customer afterward. If the buyer stays the platform’s rather than yours, you bought transactions rather than customers.
- Ask what they will not recommend. A firm that has never concluded a client should sell less in-platform is not advising, it is selling.
Strategy firm vs social agency vs commerce platform partner?
| Criterion | Social commerce strategy firm | Social or creator agency | Commerce platform partner |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it decides | What is sold in-platform, to which demand space, at what economics | What the brand posts, who posts it and how much reach it buys | Which storefront and checkout technology you standardize on |
| Typical deliverables | Proposition shortlist, platform and demand map, creator selection criteria and terms, margin case, measurement line | Content calendar, creator roster, campaign reporting, media plan | Integration, catalog sync, storefront build, licenses |
| Who signs it off | Chief commercial or marketing officer with the P&L owner | Head of social or brand marketing | Digital commerce lead with IT |
| Commercial stake in the answer | None in platform, media or creator spend | Usually earns on the media and the roster | Direct |
| Best when | Attention is real, the commerce number is not, and nobody has priced the channel | The proposition is settled and the job is reach and execution | The decision is made and the transaction has to work |
Related work
Social commerce decisions rarely arrive alone. Where the question is adjacent, these are the services that own it.
- Connected commerce is the group this page sits in, and the place to start if the real problem is that customer context does not travel between channels.
- Marketplace ecosystem growth strategy if your question is about competing and growing inside third-party marketplaces rather than selling through social platforms.
- Social and digital marketing for what the brand says in these platforms, to whom, and how that builds the relationship. That is the content and messaging strategy; this page is the commerce side of the same surface.
- Commerce strategy if the prior question is where commerce growth comes from across every channel, not just this one.
- Digital, experiential and physical retail if the same proposition also has to work in a store.
- Dynamic customer journey strategy if buyers acquired in-platform then disappear into an experience that does not recognize them.
- Direct-to-consumer programs if the ambition is to own the customer relationship on your own channels rather than inside someone else’s.
Our argument that the attention internet is giving way to an intent internet sits behind a lot of this, because it changes what social reach is worth. So does the mechanics of live interaction, which is the same compression at its most extreme.
Social commerce strategy in the US and worldwide
We work with consumer and retail businesses from offices in the US, Europe and Asia, and most social commerce engagements are multi-market from the start, because platform behavior, take rates and payment norms differ sharply between regions. A proposition that converts in one market will not automatically convert in another, and the platform mix is rarely the same twice.
Engagements are run by partners out of Vivaldi, the strategy firm behind the Demand Landscape and the Interaction Field.
Start with whether the proposition survives the format
Before the storefront, before the roster, before the media. We will work through what you could sell inside a platform, what it earns after fees and returns, and who has to own the decision.