What is a Multi-Brand strategy

Multinational conglomerates that have several brands generally try to follow a strategy to promote them all at a time, using a single campaign. This process is called a multi-brand promotional strategy. Multinational conglomerates spend huge ad and media budgets to build a powerful brand image for their parental company to make it a household name.

The audience can identify and relate to such brands or companies with ease. Companies with a strong brand image may launch a new brand or introduce a brand as an extension of the existing brand to extend their portfolio. Companies that try to adopt multi-brand strategies save considerable money and effort. They bank on the parent company’s brand image to promote the new brand. 

Is multi-branding confined to large corporate houses

Amazon, for example, is an e-Commerce behemoth that needs no introduction. It has expanded its reach from retail e-Commerce to Twitch, a video live streaming service. Of late it acquired MGM studio. Amazon owns brands, including Amazon.com, AmazonFresh, Prime Pantry, Prime Now, Amazon Go, and Whole Foods Market and it promotes innumerable privately labeled products through them. Multi-brand strategies are useful for such conglomerates. Even startups that hold several brands in their portfolio can try this but startups generally focus on building individual brand identities.

Types of Multi-branding

The marketers are keen on following two prominent forms of multi-brand strategies; the Brand House and the House of Brand.

The Brand House

It is one of the common brand architecture models used by companies that have multiple brands. Alphabet is the parent company of Google and Google offers multiple sub-brands like Chrome, Gmail, Meet, and Workspace. Google also offers various sub-products to facilitate our functions such as Google-Drive for data saving, Google Docs, and Sheets that allow file sharing and data sharing virtually with ease. Google need not publicize each one of its sub-brand, as they co-exist with the principal brand and there is no wonder if Google adopts a multi-brand strategy. 

House of Brands

If a company possesses multiple brands, and each of these brands maintains an individual identity, and competes for a marketplace among them and outside, it is called a House of Brands. 

Unilever is a multinational company that produces a lengthy product lineup, including Baby Care, Fabric Care, Feminine Care, Grooming, Hair Care, Home Care, Oral Care, Personal Health care, Skin, and Personal Care products. There are several brands under each category, and they compete with market forces with their brand power and personality. Unsilver projects multi-ethnic, and culturally diversified images of consumers for its skincare products and promote brand names like Dove, Rexona, Axe, and Lifebuoy. Each one of these brands does not resemble the other and do not rely too much on its parental company for their existence in the market. 

How do companies orchestrate such strategies

Each brand narrates a story that appeals to audiences it is intended to reach. Brands generally select a representative influential leader that is capable of connecting them with that community to narrate this story, using visuals, language, content, and a context to get emotionally connected with the intended group in a way that it is their go-to brand for that occasion. 

PepsiCo, in recent times, tried to sell four brands at one go. 

PepsiCo promotes branded carbonated drinks Pepsi, Ruffles chips, Tostitos dip, and Kacang nuts. The company released a campaign that features recently retired New York Giants Quarterback, Eli Manning, who is hosting an NFL watch party with his friends. The campaign narrates a story that such parties must keep boring and routine snacks away to enjoy watching the game. When Manning offered unconventional snacks as treats, the campaign refers PepsiCo brands instead. 

PepsiCo’s strategy

PepsiCo signed an agreement with NFL to the extent that PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay snacks and Gatorade energy drink, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this season act as the official sports snacks and drink of the NFL. The campaign projects the snacks and the drink as official partners to celebrate such parties amidst fun, featuring legendary Mexican broadcaster, Toño De Valdés in the backdrop as a commentator.

The essence of the Strategy

PepsiCo tied with the NFL as an official beverage partner and promoted its entire product lineup along with its snacks as the most eligible ones for watching football matches with friends. It roped in a popular football player as a host and football commentator to narrate the story to the audience. It has strategically used the NFL matches as the occasion to consume its products. Such emotions, for sure, are expected to stir the emotions of football fans for this purpose. Factors Encouraging Major Multi-brand strategy 

The below-mentioned factors are responsible for a widespread multi-brand strategy.

• The decline of brick and mortar companies and the emergence of digital platforms. 
• The current eCommerce landscape is promoting multi-brand strategies, as several brands co-exist on a single platform, fighting for their own identities. 
• Emerging social media trends like user-generated content and influencer marketing have promoted D2C marketing trends. Companies can now produce several brands and target customers directly, by eliminating several traditional intermediary channels. 
• As the company has a direct association with customers without mediators, they are collecting customers’ data and meeting their personalized needs with multiple brands, promoting them directly to the customers. 
• D2C promotions have also promoted trends like pick and delivery, complete online shopping, seamless user experience, checkout, and delivery, and reaching the last delivery point.
• Companies have shifted from static website promotion to omnichannel promotions and they are engaging customers at every point with multiple touchpoints. 
• According to a BrandTotal survey, 79% of respondents had new brands through companys’ sponsored content, leading to purchase.
• Practices like social commerce, mobile commerce, video streaming have opened avenues for multi-brand promotions.
• Companies are offering customers innovations including AI-based visual search, AR/VR enabled 3D models, interactive tools like chatbots to increase traffic and return on investment. 

Advantages of Multi-Brand Strategies

Strengthens Market Position as Market Leader

Multi-brand strategies are suitable for companies with multiple brands in their portfolio. When such companies set into extensive omnichannel promotions, they emerge as market leaders, because customers recognize the parental companies like Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon that have multiple brands and they are market leaders.

Beating Competition 

A company like Johnson & Johnson has multiple baby care products ranging from baby soaps, shampoos, earbuds, body oil, and towels, it occupies more shelf place. Unilever owns several body-ash brands that target a diversified audience, leaving little or no scope for others.

Limitations

• Difficult to maintain a distinct brand identity for each one of them, when they are promoted at once.
• Brands of the same company may compete with each other.
• Any damage to the parental company’s image will affect the entire portfolio.
• Customers’ expectations would be high for the entire line of products. Companies with multiple brands are expected to travel the extra mile to satisfy customers.
• It is difficult to build strong brand identities for each brand. Companies have shell huge money and resources to maintain the reputation of each brand in its portfolio.
• Brands may overlap each other 

Final Thoughts

The multi-brand strategy offers a unified customer experience, placing multiple brands at their disposal to select from a reputed parental company. They also offer a seamless customer experience by employing Omni-channel strategies. For more on multi-brand strategy, give a try to read our blog on Brand Anatomy.

The post What Is Multi-Brand Strategy and How Do Companies Evolve Such Strategies first appeared on Publir.

Brand Anatomy and its significance

Brand anatomy defines the brand in terms of its body, soul, and mind. Brand, as a product or a service, is a concept, conceived and conveyed in words, visuals, colors, graphics, and emotions to reach the intended customer. Brand anatomy carries the brand’s legacy, including the values it cares about, interests it caters to, and ideologies it supports. Well-drafted brand anatomy shapes its personality to make it unique in the crowded marketplace, where brands compete for their identity. 

Important Functions of Brand Anatomy 

Defines

Brand anatomy unveils the basic structure and features, including what it stands for in the market. When we utter the brand name “Uber”, with the tagline “Move the way you want.” This defines its business line, stating it is a rider.

Adds Value

Apple tops Statistica’s list of brand value with $263.4 billion, followed by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Several factors including brands behavior in the market and consumer’s perceptions towards it influence the brand value and its market share. Market share of Facebook for example suffered heavily in Q3 of 2021, following issues surrounding antitrust suits and paper leaks of the “whistle Blower” Francis Haugen. Its brand value declined following consumers’ negative perceptions. 

Fulfills your Promises

Brand names like Amazon, for example, allow the consumer to perceive the promises it made through its marketing communication, which ensures an easy online shopping experience and speedy home delivery of products purchased online, easy checkout, and a valid refund policy. These promises are inbuilt components of the brand’s anatomical structure and both the employees and the leadership must internalize these promises and should stick to them when it reaches the customer.

Shapes Consumers’ perceptions and experiences

When a customer buys a product or avail of a service they express their opinions as reviews or through repeated purchases. If the brand fails to fulfill the promises of its exchange or product return policy, the customer may approach a consumers’ forum or stop buying it again. A brand platform with solid anatomy honors the promises it made and delivers what it promises to drive the exceptional customer experience. 

Shapes the Brand Identity

Brands express their identities in the crowded marketplace using their logo, color, graphics, images, and visuals they project. Brands distinguish them using the elements mentioned above and communicate with customers through their commercials and other marketing communication, which are registered and copyrighted assets the brands own. Companies brainstorm to frame strategies with their think tanks to build solid brand anatomy.

Distinguishes and Highlights special features 

Brands convey their unique selling propositions (USP), which is an inbuilt component of its anatomy. While Netflix emphasizes delivering the best selection of TV shows and movies possible as its USP, Amazon Prime stresses unlimited free access to select items from its site in over a hundred cities. Brands can make a difference to their customers through such expressions and the services they offer accordingly, is part of the brand’s basic structure. 

Establishes Brands’ Market position

While Tesla, Ferrari, BMW, etc., are considered premium or luxury car brands, Mini Cooper, Chevrolet Malibu L, and Honda are classified as cars for middle-income groups. It is the brand’s anatomy that distinguishes a particular car as a premium category VS cars for the middle-income groups. Factors like product quality, price, and features position these car brands as SUVs, luxury, affordable for low-income groups, or cars for adventures like Formula One. Brand anatomy defines these features to position them as a product for a particular class or community.

Resonate with the messages the brands like to convey

Brand anatomy voices the message the brand would like to convey to its audience. Consider the brand names like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Barkley. They have already established their positions as institutions that promote innovation, groom entrepreneurs, and nurture students as formidable, independent, and self-reliant individuals. Institutions convey these messages through their brand images, features, activities, and gestures. These messages are embedded in the company’s tagline, positioning statement, brand promise statement, key messages, and marketing communication. Organizations work meticulously in evolving at a messaging strategy that helps them to get emotionally connected with their existing customers and to attract new customers.

Brand Anatomy Reflects Ideologies

According to a NielsenIQ report, sales of paper towels soared high in the US, reaching $3.45 billion during the first half of 2020, up 28% compared to the first half of 2019. Legacy paper towel brands like P&G’s Bounty, Georgia-Pacific’s Brawny, and Kimberly-Clark’s Viva have shared these profits, leaving serious ecological concerns behind, as they rely on the virgin pulp for making these paper towels. They are adding pressure to the already strained environment. Is there a correlation between the product sustainability report and “Brand Anatomy”? 

As the climate crisis is daunting the communities across the globe, brands have realized their social responsibility and have pledged to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Consumer awareness to this extent to boycott the brands that intensify climate crisis is emerging gradually.

Consumers’ Perceptions to Brand Statements

According to new Forrester research data, only 34% of consumers trust brands’ commitment to the climate crisis, and YouGov research findings have revealed that 68% of British consumers are skeptical in approaching brands to enquire about their commitment to the climate crisis. However, 74% of consumers expect brands to act firmly to reduce the climate crisis. 

How Brands are Reacting to Public Demand?

Brands are expressive in revealing their policies, attitude, and stance towards racial discrimination, inclusiveness, and diversity. Brands with a global reputation have started restructuring brand anatomy to win public trust. European companies, especially within the retail and financial services sectors have started engaging chief sustainability officers and diversity officers to retain consumers’ trust. 

Agencies’ Contribution 

Market research agencies are gearing up with a brand sustainability index to gauge whether or not the brands are adhering to the norms, such as brands’ stance on the fight against tobacco and alcoholism, greenhouse gas emissions, abuse, inclusiveness, and sustainability policies. 

Clean Creatives, is one such organization that exposed a list of 90 ad agencies and PR agencies holding clients that violated climate norms since 2008. The report listed companies, including WPP, Interpublic, Dentsu and Omnicom, and several independent agencies.

Employees Take Pride to Work for Brands that Honor its promises

Agencies and brands are also reluctant to work for brands that promote tobacco, alcohol, and substances that violate communal harmony, thanks to activism, increased consumer awareness on the ill effects of substance abuse, and growing public opinion against such brands. The Marlboro Man of the 1950s that sells cigarettes is no longer an iconic model for Americans today, as they are aware of the tobacco-related cancer deaths. Agencies are not ready yet to say a “Big No” to brands that fuel oil spills and climate crisis, as they dear revenue losses

Applicants in search of job and career opportunities are seriously examining the brand anatomy and statement related to its commitment to society. They are concerned about companies’ diversity and inclusiveness policies before accepting a role. Companies like Invitae, General Motors, Salesforce, Genentech, etc., have not only made explicit inclusiveness and diversity statements but also taken initiatives to include more women and people of color in the tech world and business.  A 2021 Pew Research reported that 76% of Gen Z considers climate change one of their biggest societal concerns, and 37% consider it their number one concern. They are not examining whether or not the brands have won awards, holding prestigious clients to serve. They are rather worried about the planet that remains sustainable for the generation next. 

How to Assess Brand Anatomy?

It is possible to assess Brand anatomy based on its stand, which is reflected in its mission and vision statement, followed by brand positioning statement and market proposition statement. The entire marketing communications, starting from brand logo, color, and the product’s appearance, and its packing offer important clues to assess band anatomy. 

How do companies Frame Brand Anatomy?

Companies start with a brand definition, painting the larger picture of their vision, mission, values. To have strong brand anatomy, brands develop a strategy that is strong, clear, and positions it as a unique entity. Brands must be quick to adapt to the ever-changing marketing landscape.

Brands must pose questions like where we are today, what is our market position at present, and where are we heading to shortly? A clear and satisfactory answer to these questions frames brand anatomy. Brands build a platform that reflects brand anatomy with all essential components to tell the audience a story that helps audiences to understand, and relate to the brand. Companies must convey these values through their marketing and business process and communicate clearly without any ambiguity

 Conclusion

The business must evolve a clear-cut brand statement to mature and remain sustainable in the market. Brands with a clear vision and purpose alone can win customer loyalty. According to Amy DeMartine, VP and Research director at Forrester, “Customers will only trust brands that honor their promises. Customers believe that brands should lead the change when it comes to burning social issues. For more on brand values and positioning, read our article on how cultural intelligence promotes brand loyalty.

The post Brand Anatomy: A Road Map to Understand Brand Journey in the Crowded MarketSpace first appeared on Publir.

Multinational companies are termed as global goliaths as they are steadily reaching global demographics with their activities in many ways. For them, Information, data, and technology are three major components to understand customers amidst gender, income, geographical, educational, physiological, psychological, and professional variations. People, who are the end-users of various products and services as employees, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders may have varied needs. Brands or companies constantly collect information on these segments to design products and services and to get connected to them emotionally by meeting their linguistic or cultural nuances.   

What is Cultural Intelligence?

Cultural intelligence is “the knowledge, skill, and ability to engage people of different backgrounds and cultures effectively and efficiently.” Cultural intelligence is needed to reach consumers, employees, and the community through nuances that may vary from person to person, and from place to place.  

Basic Components of Cultural Intelligence 

The three most important components of cultural intelligence (CQ) include cognitive, emotional/motivational, and physical aspects that influence the perceived service quality of a brand in reaching a specific group of audience. If a brand is successful in understanding the cultural diversities of its audience, it can develop products or services to meet the needs of that particular segment.

In return, brands win customers’ loyalty, essential for their sustainability. Factors like customer beliefs, product cost, and information on alternative products that the customer possesses, may also shift customer loyalty towards brands. Brands that hold command over the cultural intelligence of their target audience act accordingly to win their confidence.

Importance of Cultural Intelligence for Brands

Horowitz, a market research company, for example, found that Black households of the US are disconnecting MVPD cords drastically since 2017. The study found that MVPD penetration among Black households has declined from 88% in 2017 to 61% in 2021, resulting in a 25% decrease in three years. Age and income levels were two decisive factors that have influenced audience loyalty here. 80% of the users that got disconnected felt that they have saved a decent amount because they fall under the low-income group. While older members of the Black households still like to have traditional TVs with antennas, younger generations are moving away from it. Cable TV providers and traditional TV channels must get clues from such intelligence to make appropriate changes to retain customers. 

How Brands can make the Best Use of Cultural Intelligence?

Brands constantly engage in market research to collect data on stakeholders and utilize them to design products and services to meet their immediate or future needs. They also employ these details for positioning the brand by targeting a specific group. Facebook, for example, is planning for corporate rebranding soon.

Facebook has got research insight that its products and services are not appealing to millennials and Gen Zers. Facebook is also tough competition from new and emerging interactive digital platforms like TikTok that have amassed fan-following among the younger generations. Facebook, therefore, has plans to redesign its products, renaming them with a new brand name.

Brand Positioning using Emotional Intelligence

Although several online video calling devices are facilitating live interaction of the families online, none of them have positioned their devices the way Facebook did. Facebook banked on emotional intelligence to promote its new video calling device portals, “Portal Go” and “Portal+” in the U.K. It developed the strategy around the insight that approximately 2 million grandparents can meet their grandchildren only once a year in the U.K. The campaign narrates the story of a grandfather getting ready to meet his granddaughter virtually.

The commercial projected a picture as if he is physically meeting her with a statement that “There are incredible mental and physical benefits the bond between these two generations can unlock when they’re able to connect more often.” 

How Cultural Intelligence Promote Corporate Image?

Companies engaged in tourism, travel, hospitality, food, entertainment, and logistics must interact directly with the end-users to deliver their services. Companies with cognitive, emotional, cultural, and intellectual intelligence on their customers would design promotional content that resonates with customer expectations.  Dominos, the world’s largest chain of Pizza restaurants, has built a corporate identity that loves to serve delicious food. It offers an extensive menu, featuring a wide range of pizzas, side dishes, refreshing beverages, and enchanting desserts and projects a corporate image of offering a complete meal experience to its customer. It also honors its customer’s values (Veg/non-veg), tastes, and preferences. It allows them to customize a pizza of their choice, where customers can choose the amount of cheese they want on a pizza, the kind of topping they like, and the kind of crust they relish.

Cultural Intelligence and Customer Loyalty

Brand Keys, a brand research consultancy that is specialized in predictive consumer behavior, brand equity, loyalty, and engagement metrics has announced customer loyalty rankings for the year 2020 and Amazon topped the list as NO1 online retailer and Apple, Netflix, and Domino’s Pizza have followed it, occupying the remaining three positions. Although Brand Keys has been releasing these rankings for the past 24 years, there was a significant shift in the consumer’s behavior in 2020, due to the sporadic spread of the pandemic and its related forced shutdown of the markets. Consumers were not loyal to a specific brand in this period, as they tried several new products, services, and brands, which offered to them. Yet, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix have done something very differently, what the others failed to do. 

Why did consumers embrace these brands amidst Pandemic-spurred chaos?

Apart from adopting several evolving technologies to drive customer satisfaction, these brands have grasped the cultural traits of their customers across the geographic locations and cultures, which are not similar. They have honored the linguistic, geographical, demographic, and cultural diversities and tried to reach the last mile in serving customers’ expectations when they are stuck during the pandemic. They have simply adhered to the traditionally acclaimed practice of collecting cultural intelligence to design products and services that appeal to the multiple, yet unique needs of customers.

Cultural Intelligence for Workforce in Cross-cultural Settings

At present, marketers and brands are forced to work under cross-cultural work atmospheres in customer centers and across the company’s overseas branches. Most of these interactions take place virtually, where non-verbal cues will be missing. Intercultural and cross-cultural service encounters are inevitable in the market and organizations, where customers and service employees from different cultures interact.

Unless these employees possess the skills and knowledge to handle customers of diverse cultures, companies may find it hard to sustain the brand loyalty of customers. In the wake of saturated markets in the developed world, companies are aiming at emerging markets for brand extension. The workforce needs to be trained to handle such cross-cultural work encounters. According to an American Express study, over 50% of Americans have canceled a planned purchase because of poor customer service. One-third of survey respondents said they think about changing companies following a single poor service experience. 

Leading Role of Technology in Meeting Cultural Transition

Companies are increasingly embracing AI-powered machine translation (MT), voice recognition, and computer vision tools for translation and localization of digital content. . Machine learning (ML) and the natural language processing techniques are equally effective in transcending cultural barriers through translation management systems (TMSs), for streamlining workflows, and to improve cross-channel localization.

Companies are getting equipped with voice assistants, chatbots, and real-time translation tools to engage customers with voice-first technology. These tools provide a rich and comfortable customer interface, as they understand, translate and converse in multiple languages. 

Final Thoughts

Despite technological advancements, facilitating cultural transition, companies need to adapt to the policies of inclusiveness by reaching out to historically underrepresented groups. It is equally essential to create awareness in the workforce to embrace cultural diversity, self-regulation by honoring other cultures, and remaining empathetic to other cultures. These policies must get reflected in companies’ marketing and promotional communication. Companies that have honored the cultural and emotional intelligence of customers can scale their business to diverse, global markets. For more on the role of cultural intelligence in promoting brands, read our blogs on Digital Grocery and social commerce experiences in emerging markets.  

The post Role of the Cultural Intelligence in Promoting Brand Loyalty first appeared on Publir.

How Market Predictions Went Upside Down

The Food Marketing Institute and Nielson have estimated that online grocery sales would reach $100 billion by 2022 in North America. Yet, the US digital grocery sales grew exponentially by 63.9% YoY by 2020 to reach $122.39 billion by 2020 itself and it is expected to grow further 12.3% in 2021, and it will be doubled to $243.67 billion by 2025. 142.9 million consumers in the US, equal to 51% of the US population have purchase groceries digitally in 2020.

Digital Grocery as a Global Phenomenon

Several emerging Asian markets including China, Japan, and the countries of Western Europe, including the UK and France have an impressive track record of providing efficient GCommerce services to customers. While 78% of online grocery retailers experienced a 102% increase in web traffic in the UK, 48% of consumers in France are buying groceries online. 

Differences between Online Grocery Sales and Digital Grocery

Is promoting or purchasing grocery online and digital grocery the same? Surprisingly, it is not. Selling groceries online using an eCommerce site involves product selection, purchase, and checkout, after making the payment. Whereas, digital grocery encompasses the entire digital environment, including but not limited to; Omnichannel strategies of the online grocers to reach the end purchasing point, websites that cater to the purchasing needs of grocery buyers, sites and apps that meet personalized recipe needs of consumers. It also includes social media feeds and stories on food and grocery, promoting digital grocery shopping through sales, discounts, coupons, and competitions.

How does it work

Technological breakthroughs are instrumental for the exponential growth of digital grocery. Unlike traditional eCommerce retailers that sell grocery online, players of the modern-day GCommerce use analytics and measurable tools to trace customer information, including their location, stores around them, grocery available in those stores, and the delivery mechanism to reach them. They apply this information for developing effective strategies to reach them with personalized messages as stories on area-specific food the consumers eat, including recipes, and eating preferences, influenced by the seasonal variations and culture. 

GCommerce is nourishing content and platforms surrounding the food the customers eat

Traditionally food magazines and online websites like Bon Appétit and NYT cooking have served content using text and images, following certain specific norms. Popular chefs of the prestigious restaurants of international reputation made their presence to deliver content in mainstream media like TV. 

Online platforms like YouTube and TikTok have completely revolutionized the content publishing on food. Publishers at present are monetizing the data they extract using analytical tools to dish out delicious recipes using streaming, videos, and short videos to drive digital commerce, like ads, sponsorships, endorsements, influencer marketing, and virtual food festivals. Home cooks as food critics and expert food makers are uploading user-generated content to attract the audience to buy products and services while delivering content on cooking.

Albertsons Inc., an American grocery company, for example, is planning to launch a shoppable video with content around recipes and meal preparation, using foods that are on its shelves by brands it supports. It aims to connect retail stores, CPG marketers, and clients with recipe tips through shoppable and video streaming.

A Great Shift from Ecommerce Grocery to Digital Grocery

There was a drastic shift in consumer behavior during the COVID-related pandemic shutdowns, leading to a complete disruption of the market scenario and on-store grocery shopping. Several bricks- and mortar shops had to invest heavily towards complete digital transformation to meet the growing consumer demands. 

From a mere 4% of consumers purchasing groceries online, more than 50% of the consumers started searching online for groceries. According to a July 2021 Inmar Intelligence survey among 1000 American consumers, 87% of them have purchased retail goods online and 50 to 75% of these purchases were grocery and 19% of the consumers have gone 100% online for grocery purchases. Mobile or in-app grocery shopping is on the rise among 25% of the respondents, purchasing at least 75% of their monthly grocery, while 20% of them making 100% grocery shopping using a mobile phone. 

Factors that Prompted Customers to Prefer Digital Grocery

Consumers that have shifted to buy online grocery is not willing to return to in-shop buying during the post-pandemic period when markets get reopened for reasons like;

• 28% of the shoppers would like to continue buying online, as it is very easy and convenient for them to purchase groceries.
• They can save time, sitting at home, browsing their mobiles to make a purchase. Offers like free delivery of the first purchase and discounts on purchases made are also attracting customers towards digital grocery.
• Digital grocery shops are offering great product variation that is not available in their favorite retail stores or supermarkets.
• While 28% want to continue buying groceries online for its easy checkout and payment process, 19% like the product selection online. 

Retail Digital Grocer’s Response to Changing Consumer Behavior

Not all the traditional retail grocers of the US were ready to meet the growing consumers’ demand for serving online grocery, as they were lacking logistics, and funds to establish infrastructure. Very few online retail giants like Amazon, Walmart, and Kroger have made efforts well ahead of the emerging market demands for online grocery shopping. While Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market in 2017, Walmart purchased Flipkart for $16 billion by 2018, and Kroger has expanded to 1,900 pickup locations for online orders. Walmart is expected to surpass Amazon in the US digital grocery market in 2021, comprising 7.5% of Amazon’s online retail sales and 50% of Walmart’s digital retail sales.

As consumer demand for same-day delivery raises, several Delivery intermediaries including, DoorDash, Instacart, Kroger, Shipt, and Uber have emerged. The majority of bricks-and-mortar stores that have entered the online grocery business have made arrangements with third-party services for speedy delivery. Those that are unable to invest in logistics have relied on third-party sources like Instacart to fulfill deliveries. In 2020, grocery sales through third-party delivery services were 215%, accounting for 39% of grocery delivery eCommerce sales and delivery intermediaries have earned $27.81 billion in revenue, up from $8.80 billion in 2019, and it is expected to fetch $68.24 billion by 2025.

Trends that Digital Grocery promoted

• Click and collect models, where customers buy online and collect at a point of their preference.
• Meeting the last mile delivery.
• Picnic, a Netherland-based supermarket, for example, has revolutionized digital grocery with 14 deliveries per hour.
• Alibaba’s Hema app delivers grocery and cooked food within 30 minutes to its customers.

The Future of Digital Grocery

Although digital grocery sales comprise 4% of the entire retail eCommerce volume at present, more than 50% of digital grocer buyers are fueling it further by constantly researching for products online, seeking advice, and gathering inputs, according to Deloitte’s “Grocery digital divide survey, 2018.” These informed customers are expected to drive a 23% increase in transactions and a 36% increase in basket size. Customers that are accustomed to the ease-of-buying goods online will continue to sail with it, inspiring others to drive further online grocery buying.

Final Thoughts

Grocery shopping online has taken the world by storm and people continued to buy online even after the post-pandemic market revival. Factors like increased social media promotions, user-generated shopping experiences, emerging food media that serve highly personalized content, using a story-telling approach, the emergence of modern technologies, and the evolving market to facilitate speedily, home delivery is all set to take the digital grocery to the next level.

The post Tracking Emerging Food Media and the Evolving Global Digital Grocery Trends first appeared on Publir.

Defining Conversational Commerce

Conversational commerce is entirely different from a purely commercial, sales, or business-oriented talk, where the sales personnel try to provide product details and try to convince the customer to buy. Conversational commerce varies from a targeted ad, and personalized email, as it is an interactive communication medium that provides live and instant information. It is a combination of chatbots, artificial intelligence, and shopping to create personalized one-to-one transactional experiences with consumers. It does not demand customers to check emails or download apps. It rather engages customers using existing and preferred communication channels, like a chatbot, SMS, or Facebook Messenger. In total, conversational commerce is a combination of technology that enables live, two-way customer interaction, and shopping.

Why should Brands Consider Conversational Commerce

Consumers are shopping online and offline today and they are demanding more personalized information on discounts, offers, product updates, and availability, instantly regularly, as they want to save money and time. According to Business Insider, only 22% of the customers are getting such personalized information and a vast majority is not happy with the way they purchased a product or a service. 44% of customers that received personalized product information are revisiting the brand for repeated purchases and conversational commerce is successfully leading to enhanced brand loyalty. 

How do Conversational Commerce Engage Customers

Conversational commerce provides a seamless user experience by capturing a shopper’s attention, before planning a shopping trip. Right from creating brand awareness, it walks the customer through various stages of shopping experiences. It takes up product research for the customer and offers information on product size, price, color, utilities, and product/service qualities, features, and availability of various alternative products. It encourages customers towards conversion, leading to a purchase, and offers post-purchasing services.

Brands can equally employ these apps for sending product information, recommendations; establish an intimate conversational channel to attend to their queries, complaints, and grievances. While interacting with the customer, businesses can cross-sell, and upsell, by placing the best products that match the customer’s expectations and become personal shopping assistance like in a brick and mortar shopping.

Best Conversational Tools

 Conversational tools are used to circulate product-related information constantly to create a need in customers to buy it.

Awareness

Brands that have realized the importance of personalized messages have invested in technologies to scale such as one-to-one consumer conversations to send product recommendations, updates on discounts, waivers, and offers. Brands must consider providing multiple consumer touchpoints to ensure the brand’s reach to the target audience at the perfect moment in their consumer’s shopping journey.

Research

Customers generally like to know about a wide range of product choices and would like to compare their features, including pricing, utility, warranty period, product installation, and other services. Companies can engage machine learning tools that process language in natural ways to provide texting or voice assistance. These technologies create a feeling that you are interacting with a human being. Both chatbots and voice assistants fall within the conversational UI category and create a lasting purchasing experience. Online shopping platforms are adding innovations constantly to provide a unique shopping experience to the customers. Adoro, an online fashion network, for example, engages a chatbot that assists customers’ search needs instantly. It responds to customers’ commands, looks for a product, and places multiple alternatives to choose from. If a customer places a command to search for classic Wedding wear for women, it places several options for the customer to select. 

Considering a product/ service for Purchase

When customers have a wide range of product options to choose from, they seek assistance in finalizing them. 

An SME looking for funding to expand its business may have several institutional options. Yet, it would generally look for loyal banking services that facilitate speedy and timely services with competitive interest rates. There may be challenges like products with insufficient or no insurance coverage, huge processing charges, hidden fee, legal implications, and sharp payment deadlines. Conversational commerce is handy in placing various alternatives that suit customers’ specialized personal needs. JD.com, China’s largest eCommerce retailer has developed a conversational commerce platform on WeChat, a Chinese conversational app that lets customers borrow, lend, invest, shop, and transfer money online. 

Purchasing Decisions

Since most of the conversational commerce takes place through automated tools, brands that deployed omnichannel strategies to engage customers have made 102% progress in their conversion rates in 2020. By 2021, mobile commerce rose to prominence and over 50% of the web traffic is routed through mobile. As a result, many companies have launched SMS marketing, texting, and email marketing strategies because responses to the text messages are highly effective, and more instant when compared to answering emails, which is generally taking 3-4days. Instead, chatbots can send instant messages to the customer on their mobile phones to get responses within 3 minutes.

Customers can get a wholesome shopping experience, including payments to purchase a product, using their mobile, without ever leaving the platform. 

Post-Purchasing Experiences

Customers do ponder about their purchasing decisions, by carefully weighing every single penny they have spent on the product or service. Interactive commerce tools can clarify the shopper’s apprehensions, if any at any stage of their shopping journey, including after the product purchase.  

Major Communication Channels Used for Conversational Commerce

Conversational commerce primarily relies on voice or text-based chats. Hence, automated communicational apps and tools are frequently used for this purpose. 

Chatbots

Chatbots are automated throughout and they can engage multiple customers at a time, rendering a relentless job throughout the day. What the enterprises need to do is to make a thorough and elaborate exercise of possible challenges the consumers may face across their shopping journey and be ready with suitable answers. Companies generally provide frequently asked questions as Q & A tabs on websites. They are not interactive sessions. Yet, based on such questions, companies can prepare content for a live chat. Chatbots, unlike web messages, engage customers with warmth, wit, and humor with great spontaneity. They are adding emotions through emojis, music, and sounds to make it more attractive. It is always desirable for companies to place these services under the supervision of back-end service staff to react immediately, in cases when chatbots are unable to react to a question that is not included in their memory. 

Messaging Apps

It is difficult to judge whether messaging apps have changed the way customers shop or conversational commerce has turned messaging apps pivotal to their operations, as they are integral to modern-day eCommerce operations. Facebook’s Messenger, Whatsapp, and Snapchat are the earliest platforms to embrace these features. While brands like Walmart and Alibaba have partnered with messaging application Tango, shopping app like Shopify has a deal with Facebook Messenger to promote interactive commerce. Live interaction via apps is driving more customer satisfaction as, 73% of customers are happy interacting through a messaging app when compared to 61% of customers, who preferred checking mails, and 44% of customers, receiving telephonic messages.

Messaging apps are meeting the shopping needs of customers in the below-mentioned ways.

• A communication channel to engage customers with a business in private.
• To make payments once the product purchasing completes ( E.g Facebook Messenger for Business and Snapchat’s Snapcash).
• Acting as a virtual personal assistant to serve customer needs
• Collects customers’ shipping addresses, personalized customer interests, streamlines payments, monitors delivery process, and maintains customer relations.
• Facebook M, for example, assists customers, right from product discovery to Payments through Facebook Payments.   
• Acts as a virtual employee for small business that operates with minimal staff in accomplishing several time-consuming tasks, like delivering campaigns.
• Meet the content needs of the brands and customers. E.g., Snapchat has added search features, along with photo-share and Buzzfeed added a Whatsapp button on mobile to attract more clicks.
• Quartz’s interactive app, ‘A Tidbit of News’ lets users read news on conversational mode, an innovative experience for readers where a bot responds to a customer’s request for news. It replies to their comments, and the chat interface will offer an exciting interactive user experience. 
• Brands can exploit its potentialities to deliver more personalized content to users.
• Messaging/chatting apps for diverse audience needs 

With 1.25 billion active monthly users, WeChat allows its users to perform various tasks through its app, including, but not limited to, booking a taxi, ordering food, making payments, buying flight or movie tickets, playing games, making investments (e-wallet), meeting people and many more. 

Voice-Based Conversational Commerce 

Marketers can provide customers with a seamless shopping journey across the channels by deploying automated ML and AI tools to connect with consumers. Companies have started using Amazon’s Echo, Google Assistant, Cortana, Siri, or Alexa to promote voice-based search, sales, and purchase. Linc’s voice assistant, Shopify Plus, and BigCommerce are some of the prominent examples of voice-based commerce. 128 million people in the US used a voice assistant at least monthly in 2020, up 11.1% from 115.2 million in 2019. Apart from smartphones, and smart speakers, conversational devices are present in cars and homes as smart TVs, wearables, appliances, and smart home components. It is part of the US mainstream commerce today, and people of all ages, including children, millennials, elders, and Gen Z are using them for work, play, education, entertainment, and business.

Brands and Platforms Integrated With Conversational Commerce

• Shopify offers a wide range of conversational commerce services from product discovery to purchase and delivery.
• Shopify plus for business is meant for enterprises that earn revenue of more than $2000, offer advanced online shopping features for customers, designed for higher volume stores.
• Omnisend, a platform integrated with conversation commerce tools handles the entire customer shopping journey and performs tasks, including marketing strategies.
• prAna is a brand that sells sustainable clothing has made conversational commerce an integral part of its marketing strategy.
• eBay deployed voice-assisted conversational commerce. It uses Google Assistant for its eBay Shopping Assistant program.

Future of the Conversational Commerce

By 2025, a 590% surge in spending on conversational commerce is projected and the market for a chatbot is expected to reach $145 billion. Chatbot occupies 50% of conversational commerce spend in the years to come.  

Conclusion

Conversational commerce has transformed the way consumers are shopping today and it is offering convenience and great flexibility, along with personalized feed on shopping. It is equally opening several avenues for the business to engage customers in more personalized ways by providing complete personal shopping assistance. There is a bright prospectus ahead for conversational commerce, as it is emerging as an effective tool to maintain customer relations using text and voice-based conversations in a more personalized manner. 

The post How Conversational Commerce Transforms The Shopping Experience first appeared on Publir.

Although social media platforms and apps are mushrooming in numbers, not every platform serves a purpose for the brands, which have to be choosy in picking the right one to meet their set goals. Irrespective of their operational size, location, and the nature of business, brands are keen on projecting their organizational images on LinkedIn, a professional network platform that connects industries, brands, organizations per profit and non-profit, creators, influencers, and employees.   

Why do Brands and Marketers keen on Making a Presence on LinkedIn

Established in the year 2003, LinkedIn has got more than 744 million active users as of 2021 and enjoys a global presence with members spread across 200 countries. This platform lures brands for obvious reasons, including but not limited to;

Source LinkedIn

• With 16, 000+ employees across 33 regions, LinkedIn is available in 24 global and native languages. 
• 73% of social media users in the US consider LinkedIn as the most trusted digital platform that honors user’s privacy.
• With 174 million users, the US is the largest market for LinkedIn in 2020, followed by Europe (163M), Asia Pacific (196M), and Latin America (107M), and 75% of LinkedIn users are from outside the US. 
• 44% of the Internet users in Canada are LinkedIn members, which enjoys 17 million audiences.
• More than 50% of LinkedIn uses are aged between 25 and 34 and they are in their early and middle stage career graph, which makes all spending-related decisions. 
• Industry leaders and influencers share their thought processes on LinkedIn. Brands can target high and middle managerial cadre, CEOs, and policymakers through this platform.  Bill Gates for example contributed 5 out of the top 10 articles on LinkedIn in 2020. 
• 57 + million companies and 65+million decision-makers are LinkedIn members.

How does LinkedIn Analytics Help Brands Understand their Audience

Companies are keen on opening their LinkedIn account and getting them integrated with their official website so that visitors can visit its LinkedIn page for more product or service-related updates. 

LinkedIn Offers the Following Analytics for Business

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/4499/linkedin-page-analytics-overview?lang=en

These analytics provide useful information for brands to understand who their audiences are, including their geographical, demographic information such as age, region, location, gender, educational, professional, and income levels. Apart from the basic information on audiences, the below-mentioned insights are very useful for business;

• Number of unique visitors to company LinkedIn pages
• Profile views on LinkedIn
• Total posts/updates
• No of visitors to the post
• Audience engagement with posts/articles
• Growth in terms of clicks
• Comments
• Impressions
• Progress in the number of followers

This information is useful for the business to know more about their customers and tailor suitable content to engage them with personalized messages to retain them on its pages for a longer period

How Does LinkedIn Demographics Help companies?

Age Demographics 

It offers insights into the average age of the visitor, which is an important metric to target ads for companies. While the average age of a Fortune 500 company’s CEO is 58 on LinkedIn, the majority of LinkedIn members in the US are aged 45 to 56. However, millennials aged 25-34, with tremendous purchasing power are flocking into LinkedIn pages for job opportunities, training, research and development, and to meet and greet friends, colleagues, and fellow LinkedIn members. These metrics are useful for companies to target ads, brand promotion, and for designing a suitable content strategy.

Gender, Income, Education, Location, and Professional Background of the Visitor

Both the US men and women are equally representing the platform. However, 57% of men and 43% of women globally are LinkedIn members. Gender-based visits to company profiles help design products and services to meet the interests of a specific age group. 

While the income levels denote the purchasing power of the audience, educational and professional backgrounds are useful in assessing their specific needs and interests. Visitor’s location metrics shed valuable light on their place of origin, such as rural, urban, suburban, and remote. 

Unique Visitors to Company Page

 Analytics on the number of unique visitors each day and month provides companies glimpses on the increase or decrease in their audience base to take appropriate measures accordingly. Apart from giving businesses the numbers, LinkedIn offers useful information on visitor’s professional backgrounds. Companies can make out the quality of the traffic that is pouring in regularly. Companies can also assess the number of investors, CEOs, founder directors, and other qualified and skilled professionals like charted accountants or software professionals looking at them through this platform. Companies can reach out to these visitors directly, by connecting with them through messaging options, or indirectly by offering updates on the latest developments as posts and articles, using text and videos. 

Insights on Page Traffic 

Since 2018, 57% of LinkedIn members accessing it through their mobile, while the rest are using devices like desktops or laptops. Analytics on traffic offers insights on time, geographical location, and specific page visited so that companies can assess the audience’s interests such as the time spent on company pages and the appropriate time used to check your LinkedIn pages.

Metrics on Content Engagement

LinkedIn allows brands to share paid and organic content as text, graphics, images, and videos in the form of posts, blogs, ads, events, Livestreaming, and discussions. It allows companies to form professional groups, and communities to air promotional content to build their organizational image. Companies can join other like-minded LinkedIn groups also to meet their professional, training, investment, and promotional goals.

• Offers metrics on content such as number of viewers visiting posts, blogs, and articles
• Audience reactions in the form of likes, comments, appreciations, replies, shares, and re-shared posts elicit valuable insights on its popularity or the type of content the audiences are looking for.
• The number of enrolments/registrations for webinars and virtual events.
• Viral video or text content of the company that attracted LinkedIn member’s attention.
• It measures content impressions in terms of quantity and quality such as the number of opens, clicks, reactions, replies, and shares. Indeed, LinkedIn generates 9billion impressions each month.
• These insights are useful for lead generation. LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter. This information is also useful for;
• Brand promotion
• Attributions 
• Creating a purchasing intent from ad exposure
• Measuring conversions
• Calculating ROI
• To analyze campaign performance
• To elicit responses on newsletters and other communication tools

80% of B2B content marketers are keen on advertising on LinkedIn as they consider it as one of the top social networking sites for organic content. While 33% of B2B leaders rely on LinkedIn research for decision making, ads placed on this platform are reaching 13% of the global population, as its ad reach grew by 25 million in 2020. Brands are getting 7 times more reaction and 25 times more responses on LinkedIn streaming than from text or videos

Metrics on Employee Engagement

LinkedIn was successful in its transition from a mere recruitment site to a professional networking site that connects a diversified global workforce. It is not only allowing companies to reach out to these globally diversified and skilled professionals, but also allowing companies to engage their employees meaningfully. Employees, representing different companies are engaged in conversations, messaging, posting content on this platform. Companies can get measurable insights on factors like

• How its image is getting projected on LinkedIn pages?
• Response to its various programs and innovations from within and outside the organization
• Employee engagement on LinkedIn company activities
• Responses to organizational outreach and CSR activities
• Responses on awards, rewards, milestones, achievements, and accomplishments of the company.

  Employees serve as brand ambassadors to the company as they share their views on the company through various activities as posts, videos, comments, and messages with friends, family, and with the outside world, who are anonymous, yet they expect recognition. They reflect the organization’s work culture and policies through their attitudes, gestures, and behavior. Metrics on employee’s activities provide clues for the organization to focus on aspects like gender parity, equality, discrimination in any form, and the need to invest in the social and cultural wellbeing of employees. Employees might turn the organization’s mouthpiece if their efforts are honored and recognized. They might share information such as job promotions on professional network platforms like LinkedIn. 

Source: https://expandi.io/blog/linkedin-marketing-solutions/

Followers

Followers are valuable assets for the companies, as they would be closely observing all the minute developments of the company they follow, from close quarters. Your followers might be company shareholders, investors, employees, competitors, professionals, skilled workforce, students, and citizens with varied socio, economic, and cultural backgrounds. They may be following a specific company with keenness to secure employment, invest in its shares and securities, or intended to make a purchase. The company’s collaboration, partnership, merger and acquisition, and IPO needs can be met with the followers’ support and LinkedIn offers a great platform for companies to promote their brand image to grow their follower’s list.

LinkedIn follower’s metrics provide a detailed personality strait of the follower, including their gender, income, educational and professional background, their positions as directors, founders, CEOs, CTOs, Managing directors, senior or mid-managerial levels, trainees, internees, etc. This information is useful for all company initiatives like; 

• Planning new business initiatives
• Expanding existing business
• Organizing Live events like Podcasts, Seminars, Investor meet
• Cultural festivals, Promotional activities 
• Approaching a right mentor/influencer
• Advice and consultancy

LinkedIn is home to 61 million senior-level impactful leaders, 55 million companies, and more than 10 thousand software product pages. 92% of B2B marketers are using this platform to share organic social media content on LinkedIn.

Competitors

Analytics on competitors is always essential for the brands to compare their progress with that of their opponent and learn from the competitor’s best practices. 

Final Thoughts

If used thoroughly, LinkedIn analytics help companies to understand their audience to track its performance, measure conversions, and grab great business opportunities. After setting the company’s LinkedIn account, it must pay attention to factors like optimizing its LinkedIn page for the internet search and refresh its LinkedIn page with engaging content. Companies should learn to interpret the analytics to engage their existing audience and to extend their reach to the potential new target groups.

The post How Does LinkedIn Analytics Offer Useful Insights To Marketers and Brands first appeared on Publir.

The influencer economy allows individuals to create opportunities of their own, providing enough room for unveiling new ideas, create strategies, develop business plans, market innovative products and services. It envisages a vision to plan and execute strategies to explore new business frontiers. It is opening up new avenues for people to pursue their passions, skills, and hobbies differently, not as leisure time activities, but as a way to make money, earn a livelihood, pursue a career, and build a business line to excel.

What is an Influencer Economy

The Influencer Economy as a concept is not an entirely new phenomenon for marketers as influencers co-existed in this space as brand ambassadors, selling products and services for a fee. They were, however, a creamy layer of class, who were athletes, celebrities, film personalities, politicians, and corporate leaders. The influencer economy at present is vast, diversified, democratic, and inclusive in many ways. Social media platforms, brands, agencies, influencers, and creators, who are also users of the platform and the content, are the important components of this economy. As of 2021, the size of the influencer economy is over $104.2 billion and it is evolving each day with innovation.

Factors like widespread internet access, the emergence of social media platforms in massive numbers have democratized and became more inclusive to absorb tens and thousands of people as performers, musicians, singers, artists. Every man and woman with the ability to influence and communicate with individuals, groups, and communities that hang on around social media platforms are influencers.  

The state of the Global Influencer Economy in 2021

Influencer Marketing Hub conducted a worldwide study among 5000 marketing agencies, brands, and professionals of fashion, retail, technology, beauty, and other industries to assess the state of influencer marketing as of 2020 and has submitted its benchmark report for the year 2021 with the below-mentioned details;

 The year 2020 is significant for the expansion of the influencer economy.

• The pandemic-driven online shopping boom has led to the exponential growth of social commerce, raising the dollar spent on influencer marketing.
• The influencer economy will generate $13.2 billion in 2021. 
• Influencer marketing budgets in 2016 were a mere $1.7 billion, and it skyrocketed to reach $9.7 billion in 2020. It is expected to reach $13.2 billion by the end of 2021.
• There were only 190 influencer platforms or agencies, back in 2015, and their numbers increased to 1120 by 2019. While 340 new agencies were added in this category by 2020, 240 more have joined the list in 2021.
• Over 75% of companies globally have a dedicated budget for influencers and 90% of them consider influencers as effective in reaching their target group.
• While Instagram and Instagram stories are the most opted platform for influencers, TikTok is ahead of others in the race and it is the most preferred platform in the US, as 68% of the US companies are willing to spend on TikTok in 2021. 

The State of Influencer Economy in the US in 2021

The pandemic is a decisive force in spreading influencer marketing in the US in 2020. Though there was an initial lull in H1 2020 with 42.9% (YoY) spending on influencers, there was a quick revival by December 2020 with a 20% YoY increase in spending, as traditional ad production got hampered due to lockdown-related closures. Marketers had to rely on social commerce platforms and influencers due to the pandemic-precipitated shifts in the social media landscape. Several new social media trends, including social commerce, live streaming, TikTok short video, and social audio have accelerated the need for influencer marketing. 

Major changes that swept the Influencer Economy by 2020

• Brands have realized the importance of influencers/creators and have intensified influencer-centric activities.
• Brands have partnered with influencers, and it is the major stream of revenue for influencers than affiliate marketing and ads.
• All major social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and LinkedIn have rolled out tools and plans to attract influencers to their platform.
• Social commerce is instrumental in shaping and strengthening the current influencer economy.  
• Except for YouTube and Instagram several major social media platforms were not ready to pay influencers for a long time.
• Clubhouse and Tiktok have introduced tools that allow fans to pay directly to their favorite influencers/hosts on the platform for the first time, where Clubhouse did not cut from the influencer’s revenue. 
• Instagram (93%), Instagram Stories (83%), TikTok (68%), and Twitch (13%) are the most popular social commerce sites for influencer marketing in the US.
• 62% of marketers across the globe have increased their influencer marketing budgets in 2021.
• Influencer-generated paid content represented 20% of US agency/marketing digital ad budgets in 2021, followed by paid search (14%), display advertising (13%), and paid social and video(each at 12%). 

Platform Evolution and Monetization options For Influencers

From the earliest days of weblogging to self-published WordPress platforms, the influencer economy has expanded to reach the wider public that owns a Smartphone connected to the internet. Social media-groomed platform superstars have minted seven-digit income with content to appease their followers.

YouTube for example has demonstrated how the creators and influencers can make content on niche areas of the audiences’ interest with Casey Neistat, a YouTube video maker that enjoys over 8,000,000 subscribers, and millions of viewers for his videos. With over 13 million subscribers, Depop is a social app store that handled $650m merchandizing value and has earned revenues of $70m in 2020. Adidas social app store for creator club members, with its record profit of € 225 million, in 2020 is yet another example for the niche social app’s merchandizing abilities, adding value to the influencer Economy. 

Today, we have the following categories of influencers;

• Mega-influencers enjoy more than a million subscribers on social media with the ability to influence the mass audience with their charismatic background. They are helpful in brand awareness campaigns. 
• Macro-influencers are those with a follower base of 100,000 to 1 million that are used to promote brands in specific markets. 
• Micro-influencers with 1,000 to 100,000 followers are used to reach smaller groups with highly authentic and personalized messages like a friend or a family member.
• Nano-influencers are those who have fewer than 1,000 followers with immense ability to reach a specific community like a community of lactating mothers with valuable information.
• Subscriptions, memberships, tipping, Gifts, partnership with brands, and sponsorships, are some of the key monetization options for influencers.
• BuyMeACoffee offer: When followers pay for coffee, influencers/creators will get a commission to make their living and pursue their creative skills, without being bothered about sponsorships.
• Platforms like YouTube pay for the number of clicks and views.
• Twitch, a streamers’ platform with over 6 million active users allows them to view and pay tips for other streamer’s games on the platform. 
• TikTok allows influencers to earn money through organic product linking, sponsorships, and TikTok Creator Fund.
• Twitter introduced tipping in bitcoin, NFT, and a fund for creators/influencers.
• Retail partnerships to sell exclusive brands.

Emerging Trends of the Influencer Economy

• Marketers are looking at micro and nano influencers to reach the audience, a brand’s marketing needs are different and varied. 
• Affordability, availability of influencer’s time, and suitability of a particular influencer for a brand are the determining factors than the number of social media followers they hold. 
• Apart from enjoying a great social media following, the influencer must connect with them to influence them personally.
• Brands are keen on employing micro and nano influencers for their influencer marketing-related pilot studies.
• Brands trusting micro and nano influencers for their authenticity and efficiency in reaching niche communities. E.g, “Mommy bloggers”.
• There are influencers with seven-digit income from social commerce platforms and they are seeking the help of fund managers and wealth advisors to advise their future business plans.
• Companies like Advsr.ch have emerged with efficient financial technology solutions to support, service, and satisfy clients of the influencer economy.
• Mergers and acquisitions of firms and agencies in this field indicate how the industry is gearing up to measure metrics and ROI on influencer marketing.
• CreatorIQ for example acquired an influencer marketing analytics platform Tribe Dynamics to develop the largest influencer marketing SaaS platform in terms of revenue growth, data authority, and global expansion.
• Influencer forums like FYPM have emerged to facilitate influencers and creators to discuss issues and challenges prevailing in the industry, like influencer’s tariffs for working. FYPM is more of a Glassdoor kind of forum for influencers to report abuses and the best practices of the industry.

Future of the Influencer Economy 

Most of the influencers that enjoy enormous social media followings own their brands like JLo Beauty, Makeup line. The economy is expected to expand further when more influencers start building their line of business and produce content to promote them. Apart from brand sponsorships to promote other’s businesses, influencers are hosting TV shows, events, podcasts, and publishing web magazines. Influencers are also making money by posting videos on cooking, parenting, child-rearing, traveling, and on a wide variety of subjects. In the future, CEOs, founders, and corporate leaders may also join in great numbers to introduce their products and services as influencers, as we are already witnessing cases of Neil Patel and Gary Vaynerchuk.

Final Thoughts

Influencer’s economy is expanding steadfast with new initiatives and startups, making a beeline to take advantage of the evolving market opportunities. Unlike the advertising and the other creative industries, the influencer’s market is not standardized with measures, metrics, royalties, deals, and other intellectual property rights that enable influencers and creators to safeguard their interests.

The influencer market has already started taking initiatives to introduce analytics to measure the return on investment on influencers. Influencers have to plan their future business plans wisely to insulate from the market fluctuations and eventualities, as the influencer’s market is quite volatile and unpredictable. For more details on the Influencer Economy, read our blog on “What Influencer marketing is and How to develop your strategies?”

The post Exploring The Multiple Dimensions Of The Evolving Influencer Economy first appeared on Publir.

Beginning of Social Commerce

Brands’ efforts to sell products or services online, using a social media platform throughout, from the product search to purchase, and payment, providing a rich shopping experience to consumers can be rightly called Social Commerce. Brands and retailers have developed specific strategies to reach customers online during the COVID-19 forced shutdowns. Several brick-and-mortar companies that used to sell products and services for ages in stores have invested heavily in digital transformation to grab the retail opportunities out of this social and physical distancing era of the forced lockdown. Consumers from the urban and suburban areas have also flocked in massive numbers to these online retail stores, resulting in the emergence of several new online retail players, other than Amazon, including but not limited to Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Kroger, and others that have increased their online sales more than 85% in 2020. Consumers have spent a whopping $2.67 trillion globally on online marketplaces in 2020. 

Takeaways from this Massive Consumer Shift

• Consumers in the US alone have spent $791.70 billion on online retail shopping in 2020, and it is expected to reach $933.30 billion in 2021, contributing to 15.3% of total retail sales. The story is not yet completed and it is still unfolding several other new dimensions of the same coin in the form of social commerce evolution and explosion.
• Accelerated time spent with social media platforms
• Increased click-and-collect consumer behavior
• Enhanced and enriched consumer shopping journey online with social media platforms unveiling new shopping features.
• A projected rise in online retail sales equals $140.96 billion by 2024.
• Increase in the US Social commerce sales from 35.8% to $36.62 billion in 2021.
• One in four digital buyers will adopt the buy now, pay later (BNPL) service.

Factors That Favored the Emergence  of Social Commerce

Exploiting the Cowdcultural space of the shared networks is the most prominent feature of social commerce. Brands have realized the importance of this space, as the branded and sponsored content and ads are not paying them the expected ROI. The following features of the social media platforms are responsible for the global social commerce explosion.

Massive Follower Base

Social media platforms have amassed a huge follower base. The below-mentioned details provide glimpses on the daily/monthly active users of the popular social media platforms globally, by 2021.

• Facebook: 2.85 billion
• youTube- 2.2 billion
• Instagram with features like Checkout, Instagram Live Shopping, Instagram Shopping From Creators, and Instagram Stories 500+ million 
• Pinterest Shop From Boards, Search, and Pins.- 478 million
• TikTok-689 millions

Ability to Form Communities

Social media platforms have segregated the audience as communities. They are a diversified mix of demographic and socio-graphic groups with a rich cultural background. Social media users have followers and they equally follow influencers, who are thought leaders, celebrities, athletes, and members of their own family, and friends. Influencers with a significant social media follower base recommend products, post product reviews, and endorse brands for a fee. 

Leveraging the Power of Influencers

While the star sports personality Cristiano Ronaldo alone enjoys over 500 million followers in various social media platforms by 2021, the other prominent personalities and celebrities including LeBron James, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Justin Bieber,  and Pope Francis have their own set of followers. Social media platforms are engaging these fans and followers with personalized content that appeases their interests to retain them for a longer period. Brands are doing their best to push their product updates, via these handles, thus contributing to the growth of Social Commerce.

Attractive and Innovative Shopping Features

Social media platforms are evolving constantly by adding innovations to promote brands. Some of the top features are,

• Adding shopping features that display products for sale.
• E, g, Shopify’s new global hub to promote cross-border commerce I billion brands across the globe,  Instagram Live Shopping, Pinterest’s Buyable Pins, and product Pins, etc. 
• Collaborated with sites to enable shopping features, such as TikTok-Shopify partnership
• Provide product reviews.
• Interactive features for consulting peers, friends, and followers.
• Photos, videos, and streaming, featuring or narrating product stories and details.
• Chatbots, AR/VR features for an enriched shopping experience
• Shopify, for example, added conversational features in local languages and payment in local currency.
• Product discovery and research features.
• Recommendations and endorsements.
• Incentives, as discounts, points, rebates, free shipping, and more.
• Payment and checkout options from their favorite social media sites.

Interactive and User-generated Content (UGC)

The popularity of social media platforms stems from their ability to promote interactions with users from within and outside the community. While TikTok allows users to upload short videos of 1 to 3 minutes, YouTube is the home for video channels of individual star influencers that promote ideologies, products, services, lifestyles, educational practices, tutorials, and many more. Brands are tapping these opportunities to showcase their products, where users add their own creative and interactive ways to display or share content to their followers as songs, dance, performance, chats, discussion, conversations, and what not? The sky is the limit for the users, who can exhibit their native language, word power, popular culture, and lifestyles to attract viewer’s/follower’s attention and promote brands simultaneously.  Users are allowed to display disclaimers denoting whether it is paid or organic content. There is no wonder to claim exquisite social commerce promoted trends within the US and from across the globe. 

Social Commerce unveiled new shopping trends and buying behaviors

• There are exclusive TikTok stores to sell products displayed on these platforms in the US.
• Product sales have got more than doubled or went out-of-stock, thanks to the publicity TikTok extended.
• Inspiring stories on how social media enhancing commerce is providing livelihood to the pandemic stuck communities and drawing more visitors to these platforms to try their luck or to exhibit their creativity.
• Apart from visiting social media platforms, users are engaging themselves with the shopping features projected on the platform in-person and they are eager to perform the feats exactly, the way it is shown on the digital platform.
• Users are drawing immense satisfaction from views, posts, and comments for their narration and they are spending time and money to make a purchase.
• Users are enticed to generate content as they are getting paid for it. 
• Having built a solid social media follower base, people are making their online or real-time business efforts.

Industry Reaction to the Social Commerce

Retail social commerce is a multibillion-dollar industry in the US with nine out of ten North American businesses making an effort to reach customers via social media platforms. A 2021 survey has projected 75% of the US companies have already exploited the commerce potentialities of the social media platforms, while the others trying to join the bandwagon.   

Major Social Commerce Statistics for Brands and Marketers

• China is the world’s leading social commerce market, with $351.65 billion in sales in 2021, followed by Russia.
• While 51.5% of social network users have purchased via a social channel in China, 49.5% of Russians used these platforms for shopping.
• Social commerce sales of the US will be $36.62 billion in 2021, up by 35.8% from 2020.
• Facebook is the leading social commerce platform in the US, with 56.1 million buyers in 2021, followed by Instagram (32.4 million), and Pinterest, (13.9 million). 
• TikTok and Shopify are the latest entries into the social commerce space and they are expected to surpass others soon in this race, going by their social media user behavior.
• Livestreaming commerce is the dominant form in China, which is expected to generate $131.52 billion in streaming social commerce sales in 2021. 
• Livestreaming commerce is in its infancy in the US
• Social commerce is popular among the US adult Gen Z uses. 
• Over 50% of US social media users aged 18 to 24 have made purchases via a social commerce channel.
• The majority of US millennials are considering social commerce sites as a useful source of shopping information.

Final Thoughts

With irresistible popularity and an ever-growing user base, social media shopping sites are here to stay and companies cannot afford to ignore them, given the power and reach of the shared community networks. Brands, for sure will have to allocate an exclusive budget to meet their social commerce marketing strategies, as they are galvanizing massive sales through their huge active daily and monthly users. Platforms are equally reciprocating with updates to grab the existing and future social commerce opportunities by adding innovations and product updates. For more analysis on social media platforms and commerce, explore our blog!

The post Social Commerce in Emerging Markets and its Impact on Online Community Engagement first appeared on Publir.