How to Leverage Social Commerce to Drive Marketplace Growth: A Guide for Beauty, Health & Wellness Brands
The Funnel is Dead. Here’s What Comes Next
The traditional marketing funnel — awareness, consideration, conversion — is no longer relevant. It hasn’t just eroded, but been replaced. Today’s consumers engage with brands in a nonlinear, always-on journey. They scroll, stream, search, and shop simultaneously, collapsing the space between discovery and decision. For Gen Z, social media is a hub for inspiration, with 85% saying social platforms influence purchase behavior. Brands that cling to outdated models are losing ground to those that adapt to this fluid, real-time path to purchase.
During BeautyMatter's Future 50 panel, Monifa Browne (SVP, Digital + Brand at NuFACE) put it succinctly: “The funnel is: Shopper goes into Sephora, finds product, checks Amazon for reviews, watches videos on YouTube, and transacts on Amazon, while in Sephora.” The path to purchase is no longer linear. It’s a web of connected commerce touchpoints, and beauty brands must adapt or risk being left behind.
To win in this new reality, brands across beauty, health and wellness need a model that connects content, commerce, and conversion across every channel. And our team of future thinkers and innovators at Front Row know exactly what to do.
Keep reading to discover some of our team’s best strategies that could help your brand thrive in this new era of social commerce.
Social Commerce: More Than A Buzzword
With today's shopping habits, social commerce has become the engine driving beauty’s most exciting growth stories; consumers are now accustomed to seamless journeys from swipe to shop with no friction in between. But how are beauty brands like yours taking advantage of the age of social commerce? For example, by ensuring their products are available on TikTok Shop and Instagram Checkout, brands can allow their shoppers to purchase without leaving the app. Or, by creating affiliate links and creator storefronts, influence turns into instant sales, inviting community and conversation around specific launches or campaigns as well.
Our partner data shows the impact: affiliate campaigns tied directly to Amazon product pages routinely deliver highly effective ROI. Creator-led user-generated content (UGC) can lift conversion rates compared to brand-only assets. Consumers are moving from inspiration to transaction in seconds, not days, and it's up to your brand to keep pace.
The Proof is in the Product Page
Social proof isn’t just nice to have, but the single most important lever for driving sales in marketplaces like Amazon that have become social platforms in their own right. Beauty, health and wellness shoppers in 2025 require more from their product selection than shoppers of yesteryear:
- UGC in product listings: Authentic videos, real customer photos, and influencer testimonials go a long way to influence conversions.
- Product review velocity and quality: Lots of reviews (especially good ones) make purchasing even easier for shoppers.
- Follow-on searches from TikTok to Amazon: The “TikTok made me buy it” effect is real—tapping into a product's virality with affiliate links keeps the effect going.
Our Amazon Marketplace Growth team has seen firsthand how Amazon product pages with robust UGC convert better than those without. If your brand hasn't optimized your Amazon product pages yet, what are you waiting for?
Affiliate, Creator, and Retail Media: One System, Not Silos
Too many brands are still treating affiliate, creator, and retail media as separate efforts. But in our new reality, these silos are most powerful when they're brought together in a connected system. Our team likes to use frameworks that create data loops for our top beauty, health and wellness clients to yield even more conversions. Here's an example:
1. A creator posts a TikTok about a product and links directly to the Amazon listing.
2. The affiliate link tracks conversions, feeding real-time data back to the team.
3. Paid retail media amplifies the creator’s content on Amazon and beyond.
4. The data loop informs the next creator partnership, optimizing for what works.
We have built living, breathing commerce ecosystems off of frameworks like these; with such valuable data loops, there's nothing "one-and-done" about your spend. Every touchpoint is connected, every signal is measured, and every dollar works harder to maximize your profit.
Your Brand's Assignment
Here’s a quick checklist to future-proof your connected commerce strategy:
- Audit your UGC presence and review health on Amazon. Are you leveraging authentic content?
- Look closely at your creator base. Are your partners driving measurable affiliate impact, not just likes?
- Align your retail media strategy with social and affiliate moments. Are you still siloing your spend?
- Stop measuring in terms of funnel stages. Are you tracking signal velocity and conversion touchpoints across platforms?
- Embrace the Front Row Philosophy: “We don’t build funnels. We build systems that learn, connect, and scale.”
Feeling like your brand could use some help understanding the assignment? If you’re ready to move beyond the funnel and into the world of connected commerce, let’s talk. Your next wave of growth is just a swipe away.
Get in touch with our team of commerce catalysts today to learn more about our capabilities in social commerce and marketplace growth. Plus, we'll share a benchmark report based on our latest affiliate and social commerce tests, so you can see where your brand currently stands and where you still need to grow. Let’s build a system for your brand that doesn’t just keep up with, but defines the future.
