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In News

Hit them in the feels: how to generate emotive customer experiences

July 13, 2021 No Comments

It’s no secret that creating amazing customer experiences is a key component of all brands’ marketing strategies. If that’s not the case, then quite frankly you’re missing a trick. In 2021, where the majority of a customer’s interaction with a brand is online, customer experience (CX) becomes even more important. eMarketer’s 2021 Customer Experience report finds that 93% of US adults described themselves as very likely to make more purchases from companies across all industries that provided ‘very good’ CX. On top of this, the Global State of Customer Experience report tells us that three-quarters of consumers switch to a brand competitor after just one bad experience. In short, if you want to retain your customers and drive more sales, a positive customer experience is key.

Customer experience covers an extremely broad area, as it can be defined as every touchpoint that a customer has with your brand, from pre-purchase, to the purchase process (if they get that far) and consumption, to post-purchase interactions.

So, if you’re looking to improve your customer experience, where should you start?

Hit them in the feels

In my opinion, creating emotive experiences is one of the key considerations for driving exceptional CX. Customers respond well to brands when they feel heard and understood, or when they are surprised and delighted by the experience they have with a brand. A study conducted by Forrester and Focus Vision showed that the way customers feel during a brand experience (delight or disgust) has 1.5x more impact on the actions they take with that brand (for example, purchase) than the way they think about the brand (for example, it fitting in their with lifestyle). The study also found that increasing the average number of positive thoughts or feelings about a brand increases a customer’s likelihood to purchase in the next three months by 11%, and their likelihood to advocate for your brand by 15.4%.

Driving emotive customer experiences doesn’t necessarily come easily. I believe there are three key considerations to keep in mind to achieve this:

Empathize with your customers
Surprise and delight your customers
Make your customers feel unique

Empathize with your customers

The best customer experiences are born from an outside-in approach: listening to your customers and responding to their needs. Collecting data from your customers (including from social media comments and product reviews) is a great place to start. However, it’s not just about listening – it’s about hearing what your customers have to say and empathizing with them. Sometimes they will tell you something you don’t like, or something unexpected; adapting your strategy based on their genuine feedback is the way to win.

Bloom & Wild demonstrated a great example of this in 2019. Despite Mother’s Day being the busiest day of the year for florists, for some Bloom & Wild customers persistent email marketing reminding them of the occasion was upsetting. Bloom & Wild heard this and were mindful of the fact that Mother’s Day can be a difficult time for a variety of reasons. In response, Bloom & Wild adapted its CX, giving customers the chance to opt out of Mother’s Day-specific marketing, while still receiving the same offers and discounts. This resulted in 18,000 opt-outs of the Mother’s Day campaign, and over 1000 responses from customers to thank Bloom & Wild for its thoughtfulness – a perfect example of pivoting your CX through empathy.

Surprise and delight customers

Many brands now offer a similar standard of customer experience, especially digitally, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Driving joyful, unexpected experiences for your customer is a great way of standing out among competitors. No one particularly enjoys having to interact with brands, and contacting brands directly is typically out of necessity or to complain. Using a direct contact opportunity with your customer to surprise and delight them can tap into driving up their positive thoughts or feelings. As mentioned previously, this could increase the likelihood of future purchases and brand advocacy.

Octopus Energy have done a brilliant job here. Max McShane, head of digital, recently talked at Econsultancy Live about their focus on “outrageously good customer experiences”. Its strategy includes treating customers to personalized hold music based on the year they were born in a bid to up their positive feelings about the brand while they wait. This has worked wonders, with McShane claiming: “Every week we get a comment that says, ‘can you put me back on hold, I’m listening to an absolute banger.’” Identifying even the smallest moments where your brand can increase a customer’s positive feeling can be the difference between a good CX and a great one.

Make your customers feel unique

Staying on the theme of personalization, making your customer feel unique is another way of generating emotive customer experiences. Spotify has always done this well. Ever since it started creating its ‘Daily Mixes’ for its customers, personalization has been inherent to its CX. However, it took this up a notch recently by launching its ‘Only You’ campaign. This campaign uses your listening data to highlight the artists, songs, genres and listening patterns that are both unique and important to you. With this campaign, Spotify doesn’t just make the customer feel special – although it has done the same for everyone, there is novelty in the idea that this is ‘just for you’ – the content that comes with it is also very shareable. Spotify’s retention rate is also benefited by this unique customer experience, as the creation of ‘Only You’ playlists gives customers ready-made content that would be a lot effort to replicate on a competing music streaming service.

Key takeaways

The importance of great customer experience is not going away, so brands must ensure CX is considered as an integral part of their marketing strategy.
With that in mind, creating emotive customer experiences can be extremely powerful, especially as research has shown the effect positive customer feeling has on interactions with brands.
Collect as much data as you can that helps you to understand your customer’s needs and desires, and pivot your CX strategy accordingly.

If you are keen to explore how improved CX can drive growth in your business, then get in touch with Capgemini Invent.

Feature Image Credit: Capgemini Invent provides tips for marketers looking to improve their customer experience

By Hannah Atherden

Senior marketing consultant at Capgemini Invent.

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Why the pandemic has provided fertile ground for a renaissance in quality media

June 1, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from WNIP

It is no secret that trust in certain sections of the media are low, right at a time when the health and welfare of the globe is reliant on accuracy.

Whether cowed into submission by right-leaning politicians, or not helping themselves with ambiguous storytelling and a questionable relationship with the provable truth, the veracity of some publishers – particularly in the news sphere – is continually being questioned.

In a recent survey of more than 2,000 respondents in February 2021, only 44% of the British public trusted traditional media for news and information. The least trusted outlet was social media with just 19%.

These damning numbers would – and should – be an issue for any self-respecting media source, but during a pandemic, they are potentially fatal.

Media coverage has been shown to shape public opinion unlike any other form of mass messaging, as it moulds people’s perceptions and responses to health crises and other social issues.

Misinformation, bias and the formatting of coverage comes at a large cost, directly affecting the public’s notion of the pandemic’s dangers – or otherwise.

The Press Gazette recently spoke to leading editors around the world, as they outlined the biggest challenges for journalism in 2021. Surprise, surprise, truth and trust were top of the pile.

Gina Chua, global managing editor at Reuters, summed up the issues.

“With the rise of misinformation, the impact of social media and stark political divisions around the world, the erosion of public trust on the news industry will be a significant challenge to address in 2021. Fact-based and impartial reporting is more important than ever.”

Never underestimate the value of trust

As danced around above, the public’s perception of our media is not exactly exemplary. But there are publications witnessing growth and recognition despite these turbulent times.

New Statesman announced digital subscription growth of 75% in just one year, with subscription revenues up 77% in three years following significant investment in its journalism and the launch of new brands and associated digital services.

Registered users on its website rose by 83% to more than 200,000 from January 2020 to February 2021, and 86% of New Statesman’s circulation is now paid for.

By recognising the worth and need for fact-based independent journalism, the New Statesman shows a clear position on the use of hard data and truth-finding within its reporting is popular.

Yet, as Marty Baron, executive editor at Washington Post, told the Press Gazette: “The biggest challenge for journalism is that facts aren’t accepted as facts any longer. Societies can’t agree on a common set of facts. We can’t even agree on what constitutes a fact.

“We can certainly be more transparent, revealing more about how we go about our work.”

This could be a seismic change in journalism, and media in general. The more people understand and appreciate the processes and the raw data drawing indisputable facts, the better the trust.

Social media is not king

The elephant in the press room was brought out front and centre during Covid-19 times.

While individual social media platforms are vital for media outlets to reach all demographics in a modern world (there were 53 million social media users in the UK as of January 2021, according to DataReportal), they share this space with politicians, celebrities, non-celebrities and self-appointed spokespeople.

As an experiment, scroll through the replies to a Sky or BBC update on coronavirus cases if you want to gauge the public’s mistrust.

Accepting quality media will shape public opinion in a positive fashion is surely the best argument towards a modern-day renaissance.

New independent research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism suggests we already have a good base from which to build.

They found that ‘people are generally sceptical of information they see on social media and are broadly able to identify false or partly false information’, and suggest the use of ‘fact-checking’ labels.

Director of Reuters Institute Dr Rasmus Kleis Nielsen commented: “Most people are sceptical of information they come across online, especially on social media and other platforms, and research suggests that independent fact-checkers not only help set the record straight, but also have a disciplining effect on anyone who may be tempted to share misinformation.”

Commercially speaking…

One of the pandemic’s more positive offshoots has been to remind everyone within and outside the industry how crucial a functioning media industry is for society as a whole.

Despite the protestations of the anti-MSM cliques, it remains the first place people turn to when honest and accurate information is required.

It is for that reason media outlets have always been such a key part of the advertiser’s relationship with its customers.

After all, any renaissance’s main goal must be to reduce the general mistrust of the media, which in turn produces a ‘safe space’ for advertisers.

As Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford concludes: “Our reporting suggests that the coronavirus slump has been far kinder to the news industry than the last big downturn in 2008. Back then lasting damage was done to the media as property, jobs and car advertising disappeared from the news media never to return.

“Looking at the 16 leading news and information companies, they were worth $38bn more in April this year than they were a year earlier.

“While advertising revenue is down across the board, digital advertising is growing for everyone except local news brands. And the biggest and most positive trend to come out of the last year has been huge growth in the number of people willing to pay for news online.

“Press Gazette research shows that English language news websites now have more than 23m paying subscribers. Titles like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Athletic are proving that readers will pay a premium for high quality news.

“At Press Gazette we have hit record traffic numbers this year (more than 300,000 readers) but we are not focused on that number. Like many publishers we are focusing purely on serving our core market of media decision makers better, in terms that has paid off with a record quarter at the start of this year for commercial content deals.

“This has been helped by the fact that for the first time we are able to back our editorial commercial content product with Lead Monitor, a high-tech AI-driven marketing tool which helps our partners turn readers into leads.”

Phillip Othen
News Statesman Media Group

The New Statesman Media Group aims to tell stories about how the world is changing for the people delivering that change. New Statesman, the Group’s flagship title, is one of the leading progressive political and cultural magazines in the UK. The group has recently launched a number of ‘Monitor’ titles, headed by seasoned editors, covering Energy, Investment, ESG and the Technology sectors. These brands are Investment Monitor, Energy Monitor, Capital Monitor, Tech Monitor and Press Gazette. They offer content specifically created for high-value audiences, helping to attract the key players in the market and positioning clients in front of them as thought-leaders, across sectors such as luxury consumer lifestyle; public sector and government; technology; energy and infrastructure.

Sourced from WNIP

In News

Stopping misinformation means fixing the relationship between journalism and PR

May 12, 2021 No Comments

By Jaigris Hodson

Public relations and journalism exist in an uneasy balancing act, a relationship where they both rely on each other as part of a communication ecosystem.

It used to be that journalism was the stronger player in the relationship, but now as a result of cuts to newsrooms, PR is becoming more dominant. And this relationship could undermine already limited trust in news.

Public relations and journalism

Public relations is defined as the practice of using communication strategies to build relationships between organizations (such as corporations, institutions and government) and the public.

Traditionally, one of the most important connections for PR practitioners has been those with journalism. PR professionals rely on their journalistic connections to help get their messages out, and journalists draw from PR to help find interesting stories, fill quotas and meet deadlines. In fact, according to the Canadian Public Relations Society, PR professionals tend to interact more with journalists than with any other professional group.

This relationship worked for many years because journalists had the upper hand. Journalists had a culture that made them wary of PR professionals, which helped to keep the PR industry in check. When interacting with PR practitioners, journalists would choose whether to pursue a story, and how much of the story suggested by the PR professional is actually worthy of column space or broadcast time. Journalists were likely to seek out different sides of an issue suggested by a PR professional, rather than just publishing a news release verbatim.

In return, the PR professionals could be reasonably confident the coverage would be trusted by the public. By choosing what to cover and how to cover it, journalism keeps PR accountable. If PR practitioners do anything to threaten their relationship with news outlets, they will not be able to work effectively.

However, in recent years, as a result of media consolidation and the rise of social media, the relationship between PR and journalism has shifted. While this shift seems to favour PR, in reality it has resulted in declining trust in news, and that’s bad for everyone. When the delicate balance between journalism and PR is upset, we end up with an information ecosystem that is less trustworthy because it is driven by organizational goals rather than the public interest.

A shifting balance

Now journalism is increasingly relying on PR to survive. As my previous work has shown, local news is facing unprecedented pressure from media consolidation and the social media business. As journalism jobs have dried up across North America, many talented and trained journalism graduates and successful journalists are accepting jobs in PR in order to make ends meet.

At the same time, many cash-strapped newsrooms are turning to advertorials or sponsored content to make up for shrinking revenues. As a result, more of the news media is implicated in spreading PR content that is often one-sided, incomplete information that favours corporate PR clients.

For example, when important information like COVID-19 vaccine efficacy is presented to the public directly from news releases, important scientific facts can be minimized or left out of the portrayal of the issue. That can contribute to eroding public trust in both the news story and the organization covered by it. While PR plays a role in ensuring the trust between organizations and the publics, some PR practices can lead to the decline in trust in news.

A group of journalists holding microphones during a media scrum. — Cash-strapped newsrooms are increasingly turning to PR to make up for falling revenues. (Shutterstock)

Other grey area PR tactics, like astroturfing, direct media attention to stories that journalists might not otherwise consider very newsworthy. Astroturfing entails using social media to create fake online grassroots support for an organization or issue. News outlets often cover a story that seems to be getting a lot of attention on social media. Unethical PR firms will often exploit this fact by buying likes, shares and engagements, creating fake hype for a specific product, person or organization that would otherwise not be covered at all.

Rethinking the relationship

Journalism isn’t perfect, but striking the balance between PR and journalism is beneficial for both parties. As this balance shifts in favour of public relations, it becomes harder for the public to trust news. That leads to more aggressive PR tactics, further eroding the public trust. Everyone loses.

Steps can be taken to rebalance the relationship between journalism and PR. Journalism must be strengthened, including local news, so that journalists have the resources to refuse sponsored content and push back against PR pitches. This means we all have a role to play in paying for the journalism we value, and new funding models should be developed to help provide resources to smaller and independent journalism in Canada and elsewhere.

To that end, entrepreneurship networks like indiegraf and other opportunities for independent journalism need to be supported by offering business training to journalism students, providing government resources to support journalism entrepreneurs and through our own habits.

Journalists who are brave enough to also become entrepreneurs by starting their own publications need us to pay for their content through Substack, Patreon or other subscription services. This will have a cascading impact as these journalist entrepreneurs create small businesses that can provide new job opportunities for other journalists and journalism students.

Finally, professional associations for PR practitioners like the Canadian Public Relations Society or the Public Relations Society of America need to do more to punish disreputable firms that use tactics like astroturfing to create fake influence. By strengthening journalism and putting limits on PR, we can reset the balance and create a healthier media ecosystem for everyone.

By Jaigris Hodson

Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Royal Roads University

Sourced from The Conversation

In News

How creativity can drive business results: Adobe, Lego, Unilever, IBM and Diageo will show the way

April 28, 2021 No Comments

By amit bapna

A year on from Covid-19’s first lockdowns, nations and economies seem to have better control and growth is on the mind as a semblance of recovery is in sight, particularly in Asia Pacific.

Even within this chaotic situation, the region has shown signs of faster recovery than many other parts of the world and are even providing learnings to other parts of the world on how best to navigate through the challenges. While that is heartening news, it also leads to the question on how ready are brands from a creative standpoint to navigate this new and emerging reality?

To help marketers unravel this critical puzzle, The Drum and Adobe have put together a power-packed panel with senior representatives from formidable brands like Lego, Unilever, IBM and Diageo. These top brand leaders will come together for a 60-minute session with live Q&A and deep-dive into the key challenges that the marketers and creatives are facing in producing content that engages customers as well as connects with them, at scale.

The session will discuss how a good mix of talent and technology can help in unlocking the answers to these challenges and allow collaboration to thrive in a new hybrid way of working. It will also look at the following key themes:

The changes that the brands have had to navigate and adapt to since the pandemic began
The evolving creative approaches
Raising the role of creativity in driving business goals
The emerging face of creative collaboration in the new world

The discussion, on 21 April 2021, will be moderated by Charlotte McEleny, The Drum’s Asia Pacific publisher, who will be joined by Michael Stoddart, director, strategic business development (APAC) at Adobe, Grace Astari Italiaander, creative lead – innovation at Diageo, Primus Nair Manokaran, head of creative at The LEGO Agency (APAC), Kartik Chandrasekhar, global brand vice president of Lifebuoy at Unilever and Isabella Bain, sales and creative associate director at IBM.

By amit bapna

Sourced from The Drum

In News

How VW’s polarizing ‘Voltswagen’ prank went over with everyday consumers

April 8, 2021 No Comments

By E.J. Schultz.

Ad Age-Harris Poll shows VW did not help itself, but it did not hurt itself, either

Feature Image Credit: Stefanie Loos/Bloomberg

By E.J. Schultz.

E.J. Schultz is the Assistant Managing Editor, Marketing at Ad Age and covers beverage, automotive and sports marketing. He is a former reporter for McClatchy newspapers, including the Fresno Bee, where he covered business and state government and politics, and the Island Packet in South Carolina. He has won awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the Jesse H. Neal Awards, the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the South Carolina Press Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors. A native of Cincinnati, Schultz has an economics degree from Xavier University and a masters in journalism from Northwestern University.

Sourced from AdAge

In News

Can Out of Home ads really create PR fame – or will high expectations hurt the industry?

March 24, 2021 No Comments

By John McCarthy

Rarely a week goes by without an inspired billboard, bus-shelter poster or bus livery going ‘viral’ on social media. You’d almost think the work was made for that purpose. Social media’s provided somewhere for impactful out of home ads to further resonate but is the congratulatory feedback loop blinding marketers to the true value of the medium – reaching real people?

If you are in the smallish circle of social-media active marketers who gleefully share nice ads with captions like “clever that”, you’ll have noticed last week a clever exploding ‘dynamite’ Marmite ad, complete with a huge scattered lid, and a mocked-up ad for KitKat from One Minute Briefs contestant Sam Hennig, who was absolutely struck by the warm reception for his idea.

Both ads drove applause and debate. Only one ran in the real world.

Some onlookers questioned whether you even needed to run the physical OOH ad. Why not just mock it up and tweet it? More questioned whether the top of class OOH executions are supposed to reach real people – or merely awards juries.

In the last decade, the medium’s purpose has evolved, The Drum explores why.

Pain with gains

UK out of home ad spend was 61.5% of 2019 levels, even buoyed by a huge government comms drive, according to the IPA. Meanwhile, industry body Outsmart said the revenue decline in the first half of 2020 sat at 44.8% year-on-year. Lockdowns swallowed OOH footfall and strangled marketing budgets. Similarly, marketers were obsessed with finding at-home screens however they could.

Alistair MacCallum, chief executive of out-of-home specialist agency Kinetic Worldwide says footfall didn’t fall as low as many assumed. Only 30% of people could actually work from home, for example. “19 million people still went to work every day, 30% of school kids were still in school. Many of us went to supermarkets once or twice a day just to talk to someone.”

Not all regions locked down equally. Anonymised mobile data tracked population activity to offer helpful heat maps and work out worthwhile sites. Meanwhile, OOH networks worked to digitise their networks and buying platforms. Buyers can now run hyper-local campaigns within the hour without even lifting a phone. And digital out of home sites, have doubled in number in the last four years in the UK. They also account for a third of spend in the US. Marketers are also excited about the creative opportunities afforded by the outdoor screen.

There’s more incentive to show off, too. Over the last two decades, most people acquired phones, with cameras, linked to mass audiences through social media. People on ’active journeys’ could suddenly, and immediately, share good outdoor creative. In the moment they could be promoted to search a homepage or buy something. Some sites even had QR codes to encourage camera activity.

MacCallum says: “The role of out of home is far more multifaceted than it was. The ways you can utilize the channel is increasingly much more varied.”

Stunted growth

As we saw from last week’s examples, good OOH creative can inspire PR fame.

Real people engage with and share good OOH ads. They interact with said brand on social and even inspire earned media. If people are talking about a billboard, there’s a news story there.

MacCallum says: “There is no other channel that has the level of creativity and innovation. Nobody is taking pictures of banner ads are they?”

Kelly Taylor, head of new business and marketing at creative agency Creature, believes tighter budgets forced marketers to be more effective with the medium. But with the closure of the real world, marketers “finally grasped that social and digital are not add-ons to campaigns, but intrinsic parts of the comms, reach and amplification.“

Any outgoing’s on quality OOH would need to resonate beyond the street. Taylor says: “With the amount of time people are spending online up by 32mins compared to pre-lockdown, there are plenty of eyes looking for content to get them through the groundhog days. And OOH and social is the perfect pairing. Both rely on the ability to tell a story in a single impactful post and both want to grab as many eyes as possible.”

One example that cropped up several times was The Drum Out of Home Awards Grand Prix winner ’#MyHeroes’. It gave the public a platform to thank the NHS, bringing social content onto the big screens, and sometimes, back on to social.

It is a modern opportunity that understands that OOH, like memes have to resonate with a mass audience in a single frame. But Taylor warns: be wary of “viral success,“ and be wary of “brandter”.

“There’s a fine line between nurturing engagement and forcing it”, she says pointing to Marmite’s try-hard social team, which she says unfortunately “diminished the original work”.

An OOH campaign “must be able to work in isolation and deliver real results for the client to be successful, not just fame”.

BBC Creative’s award-winning Dracula placement evolves as day becomes night. It won headlines and drove a halo effect around a wider, multi-faceted campaign. It was more than a billboard.

Great ideas

Nick Ellis, creative partner and founder of brand agency Halo believes that OOH is the “pinnacle of the advertising craft, a single idea, executed with the acuity of message and creativity.” The best work is appreciated even outside of industry circles.

He talks up executions that create unmissable moments like Carlsberg’s beer tap billboard. Few people may have seen it in the flesh, but on social, we felt the reactions by proxy.

“These moments transcend what we expect from advertising. And advertising itself becomes art. Instead of being intrusive, it reaches people in a truly creative and disruptive way.“

McCann’s Fearless Girl may be the ultimate example, he says “part of the fabric of a city and a significant cultural moment”.

It is because the idea was executed in real life that it “gives the brand a tangible solidity in a way social channels can’t“.

Jay Young, head of creative solutions at Talon, says the “the world literally is your oyster with OOH. You’re not confined to a certain number of pixels on a page”.

He’s used to thinking outside the box with the medium. He says it is big, unskippable, and real. It has power. And impact. And it reaches 98% of the British public (usually).

Extra love on social or adds value and “boosts the credentials” of OOH. In another broadcast media, TV, extra reach is sometimes wrongly called waste. Young’s sector clearly has a form of that too now.

He’s not worried that marketers will be photoshopping up billboards any time soon.

“You really do need to create something in real life for it to achieve the ‘Wow, that’s clever’ moment and escape our industry echo-chamber. People care far more about things that actually happened. They want brands to be honest and authentic.“

To show the impact of great work, he referenced the reaction to his Pepsi Max ‘Unbelievable Bus Shelter‘ campaign (we‘ll allow it). He acknowledges that bespoke builds are “tricky” to get right. They have to be bold and impactful, and people need to live with them. More often than not, they‘re worth the sleepless nights.

“We’re not working on a closed movie set. We’re likely working on the side of a busy road, in the middle of the night with multiple stakeholders to please.”

This old-school movie magic might clash with the industry‘s new hope, a reinvention around real-time buying for a generation of marketers raised on Facebook ads rather than 48-sheets.

But even in DOOH, PR and reactive marketing could play a larger part.

Young says: “You can see a cultural moment blow up on Twitter at 9am. You‘ll get a reactive ad on DOOH across the country by the time you log off for the day. I still love the Specsavers campaign we ran in reaction to the Moonlight Oscars blunder. We could never have achieved the same impact with static OOH going live days later.”

Marketers are giving real thought to optimising OOH creative based on location, time and the weather – there’s more opportunity for impact ahead. But they‘ll need to remember, real business outcomes are more important than LinkedIn shares.

Feature Image Credit: The Drum explores the relationship between social, PR and OOH. Above: Playstation‘s own OOH effort

By John McCarthy

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Social commerce: transforming the online shopping experience

January 22, 2021 No Comments

By Josh Tilley

Social media has been a key marketing channel since its conception and has increasingly played a role in how people shop. But up until now, shopping behaviour was limited to discovery and consideration, with purchase taking place off-platform on a brand or retailer website.

Today, social platforms look poised to ’close the loop’, meaning users will be able to browse, shop and purchase seamlessly and entirely within one connected social media experience. This development has the potential to fundamentally transform the way we buy online.

Welcome to the future of ‘social commerce’.

To better understand shopper behaviours, attitudes and beliefs in this space, we polled a nationally representative audience of UK shoppers, discovering that nearly two-in-three people would be more likely to purchase from a brand if they could browse and shop entirely within a social media platform.

From this, the evidence is clear: the winners of tomorrow will be the brands that embrace social commerce as a real tool for customer acquisition and retention. For those that fail to act, loss of market share could become a tangible concern. In a social world, learning how to navigate these waters is no longer just a ‘nice to have’.

The rise of social commerce

According to the latest research, social commerce is a market with a remarkable growth trajectory, with analysts projecting it could be worth $600bn in the next seven years.

As we’ve seen in the past year, Covid-19 has accelerated existing trends in shopper behaviour. The latest figures suggest an extra £5.3bn will be spent via e-commerce in the UK alone in 2020 as the fallout from the pandemic has forced more people online than ever before. Early figures suggest this behaviour is set to stay as we emerge from the pandemic.

Although shoppers are flocking online, social commerce is still a fairly nascent market in the UK and US. In fact, studies suggest that only 6% of UK consumers have purchased directly on a social platform, in part due to the lack of in-platform purchasing options in these markets.

In more advanced countries like China, however, social commerce is an integral part of the online shopping experience. Tencent’s WeChat delivered $115bn in social commerce sales in 2019 alone, while Pinduoduo, a group-buying app where friends can purchase together on social media, has grown from an innovative startup to China’s second most valuable online retailer.

As US platforms look to replicate some of this functionality, China provides us with a model of how social will likely evolve for commerce in the west.

Shopper thinking will be crucial to navigate social commerce

Today, brands have more opportunities to interact with people than ever, across an increasing number of digital touchpoints. Digital and social platforms have succeeded at meeting new customer expectations, with values such as convenience, ease of use, customisation and control redefining the shopping experience.

It’s not surprising, then, that social media is uniquely positioned to deliver on these needs. Based on our research, however, social will remain a nuanced and highly intricate channel. Careful consideration of different shopper motivations and barriers, as well as brand experience across the shopper journey, will be key to maximising shoppability across brands’ social media channels.

Consumer behaviour in this channel is anything but homogenous; in fact, our research suggests adoption of social commerce will differ by age. Being able to buy within platform would encourage 75% of 21- to 34-year-olds to purchase with a brand, suggesting that demographic differences will necessitate careful persona planning.

Price also seems to be a determining factor in whether or not someone would purchase on social, with our research suggesting that big-ticket items such as travel and luxury are much less popular than more affordable items.

Different categories also differ in their appeal, with respondents ranking fashion, beauty, wellbeing and grocery as the categories they would most like to shop for on social.

Taken as a whole, these findings are representative of a shift towards social media as a new and growing e-commerce channel, but they also demonstrate a need for smart planning. For brands, understanding where, when and how to activate a social commerce strategy as part of a connected shopper experience will be key as we move into 2021.

Social platforms at different levels of readiness

Another consideration is that the platforms themselves are at different levels of ‘readiness’ when it comes to social commerce.

Instagram, for example, has beta-tested its Checkout feature, which allows users to search and shop directly within the app. The mass rollout of this feature will transform how people shop with brands online, making it more convenient to shop not only directly from a brand’s posts, but from influencer posts too. These platform changes will make the social shopping experience on Instagram feel effortless and seamless – all the way from discovery to purchase.

The rollout of Shops across Facebook, meanwhile, allows brands to create digital storefronts, with links to purchase products either on the retailer’s website or directly within Facebook itself.

Even YouTube and TikTok are experimenting with social commerce. YouTube Shopping allows customers to make purchases directly on-site by browsing through catalogues offered by sellers, while TikTok’s partnership with Shopify allows merchants to create and show shoppable content on the platform.

Even before these functionality considerations, each platform lends itself differently to the shopping experience and users’ openness to brand advertising. Instagram, for example, feels like a natural fit for commerce as its highly visual nature emulates a glossy magazine, where products feel native and premium.

This was validated in our research findings, which showed nearly half of all shoppers (45%) would prefer to shop on Instagram, with Facebook (41%) coming in a close second.

These two platforms appear, at the moment, to be far ahead in terms of delivering on shopper expectations, with YouTube (9%) and TikTok (5%) capturing a much smaller percentage of shopper interest.

The sophisticated targeting options available to brands through Facebook Advertising (which includes Instagram) and Google (YouTube) also present opportunities for personalisation and disruption along the shopper journey.

Moreover, social commerce is a particularly exciting development for brands that sell exclusively through retailers, since it presents an opportunity to provide shoppers with a more personalised experience (in lieu of a true direct-to-consumer offering).

We spoke with Joseph Harper, e-commerce marketing manager at Kellogg Company, who notes: “The way people shop in the future will be totally different – it will be completely interactive and personalised.

“We know that retailers are starting to see themselves as media platforms and media platforms are starting to see themselves as retailers. That, in essence, is the crux of social commerce.”

Creating a connected experience for consumers

For a marketing channel with considerable upside, social commerce looks set to have a significant impact on the way shoppers discover, browse and buy. E-commerce has already lowered the barriers to entry, enabling new digital startups to burst on to the scene while forcing legacy brands to rethink existing strategies.

Social looks set to do the same again, challenging traditional brand and retailer relationships and ways of marketing to consumers.

But for the forward-thinking brand, success will come from more than just taking advantage of new platform innovations. Brands need to build connected experiences across all touchpoints that deliver on the values of a new generation of shoppers.

Whether researching on Amazon, being inspired on Instagram, watching adverts on TV or unpacking an order at home, there’s an ever-expanding ecosystem of places shoppers can engage with brands.

Marketers need to focus on optimising the customer journey and include social commerce as a key touchpoint in this. In doing so, brands can take one step closer to delivering a truly connected omnichannel experience.

Feature Image Credit: Initials advise marketers to better optimise the customer journey using social commerce

By Josh Tilley

Josh Tilley, senior strategist at Initials.

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Why are businesses still taking a shot in the dark when launching a new website?

December 16, 2020 No Comments

By Rich Chapman

Since being in digital I have seen a standard timeline for businesses developing their websites. Make a new one every four or five years to experience an evolutionary leap forwards.

Is this still the right thing to do given the technology and options available to us today?

Basically no, it was never a great option anyway. Building websites, in general, is a difficult task and these days, websites are key revenue drivers for businesses, making it increasingly risky if it goes wrong. I still see cases where organic rankings plummet and conversion rates drop after so much hope has been pinned on a new site launch. It’s an emotional rollercoaster of stress, a sense of achievement on launch day and then panic.

Nowadays there is so much more available to us to mitigate the risk of launching a new website. Yet it is still untapped and companies are reticent to make the additional investment which is a small percentage of the overall cost. We all need to feel we are getting a good deal right so its an element regularly dropped from proposals.

So how do we improve this gambling situation? We need to be able to see into the future and find out how a new site will perform on launch. Good news! We can! Well, sort of…

No, we don’t have a time machine… but we can pre-test a website to see how it performs before exposing it to our entire user base and business to the new unknown. In my experience a lot of stakeholders want to have input on designs and battle for site real estate, this then defines how the new website is designed, from internal opinion alone and HIPPOs. To avoid this trap there are two ways which can give unbiased insight:

User testing

User testing outside of your own web environment can give you a level of feedback and information you simply can’t get from internal stakeholders and outside help. Even as an experienced CRO I can’t tell you for sure which new design is going to be better than your current one. We have to ask user testers what they think.

There are various techniques such as preference tests where user testers will vote for their preferred version, this type of feedback is great at the design stage of a website build.

Another is a click test, this involves finding out what a user would click on first upon landing on the new design. This ensures users are engaging and clicking the call to action most relevant for the business.

One of my favourites is the five second flash test. Users are shown the new version for five seconds and then asked some non-leading open questions: “What does the company do?”, “What would you click on first?”, “Which page element stood out the most?”. The answers from this type of test tell us how scan readers interpret the new design. Businesses can also run this test on the current version and see how the answers compare.

Any of the above can settle design debates and give real information on what users will respond best to. Designs can be updated and retested until 90% of user testers prefer a version. Not so much a shot in the dark now.

A/B testing

The other option is to start testing new designs and website experiences on the live website through A/B testing software. The software enables us to send a percentage of live traffic (usually 50/50) to a new version which is measured against the original. So let’s say designers have followed an internal brief, come up with a new homepage design and some stakeholders like it and some don’t, that’s normal. To find out if the new design really is better (and who is right) it can be tested against the original.

These rounds of testing can be done piece by piece on different layouts, images, fonts, branding, journeys and more. Gradually this gives valuable information on how users respond to the new design and importantly, to change.

Top tip

If you have a large user base and a high amount of returning visitors you can let them know that you will be launching a new website. Send them emails with a launch date combined with a promotion maybe.

One step further is to create a beta site and get feedback from users before the big switch is done. Companies like the BBC and Facebook regularly use this technique. It is a staple in the gaming industry, gamers are invited to use a beta version knowing it might break. Their reward for giving feedback is early access and feeling like a VIP, the game producers get free insight and debugging, win win.

Round up

Adding user testing and a/b testing does make a web build a more lengthy and expensive process. However, from experience, it is worth it. Web site changes can be vanity driven and a “need” to be done at a fast pace leading to errors. Going with a user led approach may be longer but it will help safeguard the business.

It’s also a mindset change, moving from completely changing a site every three to five years to constant tested small changes and evolution. An iterative tested approach removes stress, big lump sum costs and keeps websites up to date.

By Rich Chapman

CRO consultant at Impression.

Sourced from The Drum

In News

What is the future of programmatic media buying?

November 20, 2020 No Comments

By Mike Nutley

Programmatic media buying is on the verge of a new era built on collaboration.

This was the key thread in the panel session on the future of programmatic run in association with digital advertising technology provider PubMatic at The Drum’s Agencies 4 Growth Festival. Watch the fascinating panel here.

Although advertising as a whole has been battered by the pandemic, the use of programmatic media buying continues to increase. At the beginning of October, IAB Europe published its 2020 Attitudes to Programmatic survey, which showed that the number of advertisers spending more than 41% of their display budget through programmatic channels had increased from 55% in 2019 to 77% in 2020. Similarly, the number spending more than 41% of their video advertising budget programmatically grew from 50% in 2019 to 54% in 2020.

As programmatic grows, the way it’s being managed continues to change. The IAB survey found that the number of advertisers using hybrid models, where brands bring some elements of programmatic buying in-house, supplemented with agency expertise, had doubled since 2019 to almost a third. In-housing of programmatic, meanwhile, fell from 38% of advertisers in 2019 to 20% in 2020.

Speaking on The Drum panel, Richard Kanolik, programmatic lead at Vodafone, put this change down to the growing level of programmatic expertise. Programmatic used to be a “black box” tended by the agency, he said, but now advertisers want more visibility and control of their media buy, and they can hire in the people to deliver that.

But he argued that there’s still a need for agencies to fill in the gaps.

“Advertisers can underestimate what’s required to bring programmatic in house,” he said. “Hence the hybrid model.”

This view was backed up by Chris Camacho, chief performance officer at Mindshare. He pointed out that in-housing involves more than just a deal with a DSP provider.

“You also need to think about the set-up, data, tools and talent,” he said. “It’s not easy, but with the right infrastructure, the right support and the right agency, it can be done. There’s a lot of value to having a guide.”

Lisa Kalyuzhny, senior director, advertising solutions, EMEA at PubMatic agreed that working together is crucial, both across the business and between the business and its agencies.

“It’s about knowing what your strengths are as a brand, and being able to use the people you have on the ground internally as well the agency, and being able to really collaborate. That’s where we’ve seen the most success,” she said.

But brands and agencies working together isn’t the only form of collaboration that’s changing programmatic buying. Kalyuzhny pointed out that the introduction of header bidding revealed to advertisers that they could be using 20 or 30 different partners to buy the same inventory, and they started asking themselves what the benefit was.

“Supply Path Optimisation has become a catchphrase for many different adtech initiatives. At the core, it’s about buyers understanding and optimising supply. To deliver better media buying and selling strategies, the collaborative relationships and understanding of both buyers’ and sellers’ goals are a must have,” she said. “In digital advertising, brands and publishers are ultimately working towards the same goal: creating a transparent programmatic set-up that optimises consumers’ ad experiences and values inventory at a fair price for all.”

Kanolik argued that programmatic’s transparency problems were self-inflicted, the result of an infant industry prioritising technology and innovation at the expense of clarity. But he also said that buy and sell sides know that transparency is crucial to programmatic maturing as a medium, and that awareness is bringing the two sides together.

“For programmatic to evolve into a trusted medium, transparency is key,” he said. “We’re moving towards that, and it will kick off a new era of programmatic advertising.”

To watch the entire panel discussion on the future of programmatic media buying, presented in partnership with PubMatic, click here.

By Mike Nutley

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Podcasts for B2B: how can you cut through the noise?

October 5, 2020 No Comments

By Rebecca Peel.

n the last few years, podcasts have exploded – but you don’t need anyone to tell you that. Every man, his dog, and his competitor have launched a podcast recently, and it’s hard to know where to start.

Podcasting keeps making the headlines, too. Joe Rogan went viral when he signed an exclusive deal with Spotify, and the streaming platform doubled down when they also signed Michelle Obama. In fact, journalists actually listen to more and more podcasts now to source quotes from people for their stories, quotes that are out in the public domain. And to make the case for B2B, one statistic found that there are avid fans of business podcasts in a massive 13 million households.

Podcasts are ideal for brand awareness and managing your personal brand, in an on-the-go, busy lifestyle. How do you get yours noticed in a landscape where the top 0.1% most popular ones reign and the market becomes more saturated every day?

You don’t need to create your own show to thrive in podcast land

People, and brands, launch podcasts on social media almost daily.

While this should be rewarded, people only have so many hours a day to listen to podcasts and don’t always have time for new ones. Plus, you need a lot of spare cash for ads and need to be ready to make a big commitment, having people lined up ready to guest each week.

If you’re starting out, you should dip your toes into the water first. Podcasts are fantastic for small and medium-sized businesses and their executives to grow awareness. By taking part in podcasts and guesting on existing shows, you’ll get:

1. Free advertising/brand awareness

2. Likely a 15-30 second slot to plug yourself

3. To promote yourself as a thought leader

4. See how other people run podcasts, for future reference in case you set up your own later

5. An opportunity to network and connect with key influencers.

How do I become a guest on podcasts?

There’s so many of them out there, it can be easy to become a deer in headlights at the vast number of podcasts available, but it doesn’t need to be scary.

If you start your own podcast, you need to grow it from scratch, develop a long-term content strategy, and invest a lot of time and money. But if you start by guesting on others – they’ve already done the hard work for you!

Research relevant podcasts by searching key terms

As of January this year, there were more than 850,000 active podcasts. The easiest way to filter down to find podcasts that are right for you to be on, to get in front of your audience is by searching for the key terms on your podcast app of choice.

For instance, if you search ‘SaaS’ on Apple, Google, Acast, Spotify etc, it’ll show the shows which mention SaaS in previous episodes, or their titles. Search for your job title, or for your audience base. For example, if your core offering is smart pay solutions, you can search for:

Smart pay
Finance
Young people + money
Retail

There’s also nothing wrong with just searching for top podcasts in your industry on Google, too – but some of these lists may be outdated, and the devil moves quickly, but podcasts move quicker.

Look at their relevance, not popularity

With almost a million podcasts, it’s impossible for them all to have high listening figures – there’s only so many hours in a day. Many should look at the reviews and ratings on the podcast to see how popular it is.

But Megaphone collected data on the US iTunes store which found that 80% of podcasts have no rating listed. Think about podcasts in the same situation as a microwave – who actually leaves ratings? Usually it’s those who think it’s the best microwave they have ever bought and it’s life-changing, or those who actively hate it. The millions of people who bought the microwave and think it’s good won’t leave a review. The same can be applied to podcasts.

You don’t need to guest on a podcast with 100,000 weekly listeners. All you need to do is make sure that they’re relevant. Don’t feel like you can’t ask the host or organiser who their target audience is, just to be sure, as they’ll have more of that data than you will be able to see.

If you do want to see what Joe Public has to say about the podcast, you’ll have a better chance by searching the name of it on Twitter and LinkedIn, where people tend to post about things they enjoy that are relevant to them and to others in their industry. At Hallam, we noticed that The Goat Agency’s podcast, The 30,000ft View, was being spoken about a lot on Twitter, and so pitched Susan Hallam MBE in to speak on one of their next episodes – which they said yes to.

Identify your niche talking point

You want to be seen as the expert, and that won’t happen if you’re just repeating what everyone else is saying.

What can you tell their listeners that someone else can’t? Think of it like a speaking slot – what’s your podcast USP? To identify what your brand, and your people can talk about, answer the following questions which might help you to identify your key talking points:

Do you have any major thoughts or controversial opinions on recent news in your industry?

What are you doing about consumer behaviour changes? Can you offer your thoughts on this?

Everyone’s favourite phrase – digital transformation. What are you doing to cater to it in your industry?

Do you have any major company hacks that you can share which have helped you to become more productive/successful/happier?

Are there any new regulations you can comment on?

What do you see people doing all the time that is wrong or you don’t agree with?

Any cool customer data you can share?

Securing the spot

Search on Twitter. Set up an alert on ‘IfThisThenThat’ which will help you to get alerted every time someone includes the word ‘podcast’ with the hashtag #JournoRequest or #PRRequest. This will save you scanning thousands of tweets a day.

Once you know which podcasts you want to go on, reach out to them and ask. They’ll likely have a website with their contact information, or it will be on their social media. Explain why you like their podcast, and what you can offer to their audience.

Connect with podcast hosts on Twitter and LinkedIn, and follow them on Instagram and Twitter. If you start to interact with them and build up a relationship organically, you’ll likely be ahead of the pack when it comes to securing that coveted spot. Kieran S-Lawler, Head of Content and Social Media at Hallam, was being vocal on LinkedIn, and his connections at Pitch Consultants noticed him. As a result, they invited him onto their podcast.

Thought Leadership 2.0

We all want to be thought leaders, and get in front of our audience. Adding value to a podcast will have people searching for you and your brand after, and one guest appearance can easily turn into ten. Once people hear you on one relevant podcast, they might invite you on theirs.

Guesting on podcasts will allow you to broaden your brand and reach out and build your reputation on the topic in your industry, whether it’s digital marketing, SaaS, hair and beauty, or finance.

It will also help you to increase your exposure and develop personal relationships, There may be an opportunity, should you eventually launch your own podcast, to invite them onto yours – with their raised following, you’re more likely to get a higher number of listeners.

Feature Image: Hallam comment on the growth of business podcasts and suggest that now might be the time to get in front of new listeners.

By Rebecca Peel.

Rebecca Peel is senior PR and content consultant at Hallam.

Sourced from The Drum