Something fundamental has shifted in how consumers discover and buy products, writes Paola Nannelli, CEO at Pulse Advertising.

Social media has moved from the periphery of the customer journey to its centre. What was once a brand awareness tool has become a discovery platform, a trust-building environment, and increasingly, a point of sale. 

American Eagle’s results illustrate this transformation: 790,000 new customers acquired in six weeks, denim sales up 34 per cent, products selling out within days.

Their approach, coordinated social strategy anchored by partnerships with Sydney Sweeney and Travis Kelce, demonstrates a principle that scales across budgets: treat social as a commercial channel, not just a communications one, and the business impact follows. 

Where discovery happens now 

Consider how your customers actually shop today. The average consumer spends three hours daily on social platforms. For Gen Z, 50 per cent now use social media as their primary product discovery tool, ahead of search engines at 44 per cent. This isn’t supplementary research. This is the top of the funnel. 

The dynamics are striking. A skincare brand might spend years building search optimisation and retail placement, only to watch a creator’s authentic TikTok review generate more qualified traffic in 72 hours than six months of traditional marketing.

The video gets saved 50,000 times (a signal of genuine purchase intent), commented on 12,000 times (creating social proof), and shared 8,000 times (extending organic reach). Within a week, the product is selling out. 

Brands that still measure social success primarily through reach and impressions are missing the critical shift. The question CMOs should ask isn’t “How many people saw our content?” but “How many people moved closer to a purchase decision because of it?” 

Building authority before conversion 

Here’s where most retailers stumble. They see social commerce as a feature to switch on, a ‘buy now’ button to add to posts. But conversion without authority is impossible. You cannot sell to an audience you haven’t built trust with. 

A UK fashion retailer learned this through experience. They launched shoppable posts with significant paid support but saw dismal conversion rates. The diagnosis was clear: they were trying to sell to an audience they’d never built a relationship with.

Their engagement rate was below 1 per cent, and their comment sections were ghost towns. 

After shifting to a six-month authority-building phase with creator partnerships and culturally relevant content, their engagement rate tripled, their save rate increased by 400 per cent, and their commerce conversion exceeded internal targets by 180 per cent.

The lesson: social commerce requires a sequential build. Presence first, then engagement, then cultural impact through shares and saves, then affinity and trust. Only then does conversion become viable. 

The cost of fragmentation 

Most retail marketing organisations are paying what could be called the fragmentation tax. One agency handles influencer partnerships. Another manages paid social. A third produces content.

Each optimises for their own metrics, but nobody can answer the fundamental question: Is this driving revenue? 

A European electronics retailer discovered they were paying for the same customer touchpoint three times. Their influencer agency negotiated creator partnerships. Their paid team then amplified that same content. Their e-commerce team retargeted those same users.

Three separate budgets, minimal coordination, no unified view of the customer journey. 

After consolidating under a single orchestrated strategy, they reduced duplicate spending by 35 per cent while increasing attributed revenue by 120 per cent. The difference wasn’t creative excellence or channel selection. It was simply coordinating the pieces they already had. 

Measuring what actually matters 

The measurement gap is where most social strategies falter. CMOs can’t defend the budget when they can’t confidently connect social activity to business outcomes. Vanity metrics don’t make it into board presentations. Revenue does. 

The retailers pulling ahead are building frameworks that track multiple dimensions: presence (consistent reach), connection (saves and meaningful engagement), impact (shares and video completion), affinity (sentiment and user-generated content), and conversion signals (attributed sales). 

A US sporting goods retailer implemented this framework and discovered something counterintuitive: their highest-engagement content wasn’t driving sales, while mid-performing educational content had 3x higher conversion rates.

Without proper measurement infrastructure, they would have continued investing in the wrong content strategy. 

They also began benchmarking themselves against competitors across these dimensions. When they could see they ranked 8th out of 15 peers in ‘connection’ but 3rd in ‘presence,’ it created immediate clarity about where to focus investment. 

What This Means for Retail Leaders 

For CMOs, social media is becoming too important to revenue to remain a dispersed, under-measured marketing activity. It requires the same strategic rigour as e-commerce or retail operations. 

This means confronting hard questions: Do you have unified measurement that connects social activity to business outcomes? Can you benchmark your performance against competitors?

Do your teams operate as an integrated unit? Can you articulate social’s contribution to revenue in your next board meeting? 

A global fashion retailer operating in 12 markets had each region running independent social strategies. After centralising their strategic approach while maintaining local creative control, they reduced time-to-market for new tactics from months to weeks and decreased cost per acquisition by 28 per cent. 

The retailers answering these questions aren’t just winning on social media. 

They’re building a structural advantage in customer acquisition that compounds over time. In an environment where customer acquisition costs continue rising and traditional channels face saturation, that advantage is becoming essential to growth. 

Social media isn’t replacing your other channels. But for the first time, it can stand alongside them as a measurable revenue driver rather than a brand-building expense. The question is whether your organisation is structured to capture that opportunity.

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