The e-commerce segment experienced impressive growth over the past few years, especially during the pandemic. With shopping becoming much easier and customer-friendly, it will continue without any prospects of slowing down. The pandemic brought visible changes in people’s shopping habits and purchase decisions. The changes were so evident that rigid offline shoppers also downloaded e-commerce apps to shop safely from the boundaries of their houses.
Here are some ways that E-commerce will further grow in 2022:
Video Is The Next Evolution Of Retail Media
At this point in retail media’s evolution, static sponsored products and sponsored search ad placements are table stakes. As more retail media networks emerge, there will eventually be tough competition to unlock full-funnel brand advertising budgets. Not only will retailers need to prove they can deliver a positive Return On Investment (ROI) with clear access to customer data, but they will also have to deliver it in more innovative and engaging advertising formats so that they resonate with their consumers.
This is where the video comes in. Video advertising is a win-win for retailers, brands and consumers. Video ads support retailers and brands by compressing the purchasing process and combining awareness with product education as well as inspiration, followed by a clear path to purchasing the featured item. Video ads also create a better experience for shoppers as 73% of consumers prefer watching a video advertisement in comparison to reading about the same, and 88% of people want more promotional yet informative videos from brands in 2022.
Retail media video advertising won’t just stop at sponsored video advertisements that rose victorious over their static counterparts. Major retailers, including Walmart and Amazon, have already adapted to a live commerce strategy.
Retailers Will Look For Partners To Increase Demand For Their Media And Data
Gone will be the days when retailers worked with an exclusive retail media network partner. There will be a shift from retailers working with a single supply-side platform to joining hands with a number of retail media networks, solution providers and/or retail DSPs (demand-side platforms) to improve the demand for their retail ad inventory and customer access.
Expanding these partner relationships will also make it easier for retailers to venture into new ad formats, like in-app advertising, video, or CTV, but more partnerships will also indicate a rise in the retailers’ need for a solution to better mediate all sources of demand in order to maximize their desired KPIs and maintain control and full transparency for their business.
This is identical to what has happened in ad tech over the last decade. As the programmatic advertising industry gradually became complex, ad mediation emerged as a hugely profitable alternative for publishers. Mediation gave publishers the ability to effortlessly connect numerous ad networks and enable them to maximize fill rates and increase revenue.
Discovery Will Find Its Way Back To The Retailer
A recent study concluded that only 15% of total consumers ranked a retailer’s website as their primary method of finding new products, clearly indicating that most consumers (85%) aren’t discovering new products on a retailer’s e-commerce site. They instead discover new products on influencer recommendations, social media platforms, video content, and other more interactive platforms. Adding to that, the shoppers’ ability to quickly compare shipping speed, pricing, and availability across multiple retailers has also created enormous pressure on retailers’ e-commerce margins and profits.
In addition to discovering new products primarily off a retailer’s site, more shoppers are also completing their purchases through social channels pushing retailers to become nothing more than glorified fulfilment services at the expense of their control over the customer experience as well as customer data.
Retailers are also realizing that they need to do more to ensure that their website experience more closely matches with their shoppers’ preferred online discovery platforms. They will need to come up with an e-commerce experience that does a lot more than drive sales. They need to increase awareness, inspiration and knowledge as well. Retailers, like Amazon and Walmart, are managing this by joining hands with influencers on product lines or customized item collections, incorporating live streaming and video into their on-site experience and improving discovery with customized product recommendations. These upgrades to a customer’s online experience are just as beneficial as a sponsored product ad, but massively recondition what retail media can offer.
Off-Site Mobile Media- A Huge Growth Channel For Retailers
Retailers will have to dabble into off-site media if they are looking to grow the scale and reach of their existing media networks. Many retailers that extend their audiences to web or social banners are missing a huge opportunity to connect with shoppers where they are consuming content, that is within mobile apps. On average, Americans spent 4.1 hours a day on mobile devices last year, which was more time than they spent watching TV (3.1 hours a day), and brands are starting to notice that. As per estimates, 70% of CPG’s digital advertising budgets will go toward mobile.
Retailers’ access to first-party data and the ability to connect ad exposure to actual purchases make their audiences highly valuable to advertisers who are increasingly worried about availability and proving their return on investments (ROIs).
The Next Big Spenders In Retail Media Will Be The Emerging Brands
For a long time, retailers focused on acquiring funds from the top 10-20% of brands, but they also missed out on a large amount of collective revenue. Over the next year, emerging brands will stand side by side with the big players in retail media.
Marketers (shopper marketers to be more specific) are drawn to retail media due to their access to valuable and first-party consumer data. They can target the consumers that are most likely to purchase their product at the time when they are actively browsing a retailer’s site with the intention of making a purchase, and with the right retail media partner they can connect that purchase to media exposure.
To capture budgets from smaller brands, retailers will have to come up with solutions like self-serve ad platforms and allow brands to customize their media for revenue goals instead of impressions or clicks. The goal of every marketer is to have their media spending make an impact on revenue, but a lot of times, brands with smaller budgets have to prove their spending is providing results in order to unlock more funds.
E-commerce is a business where buying and selling completely depend on the internet. Therefore digital marketing comes into the picture, as it is the primary medium to help E-commerce businesses to grow. The speedy growth of smartphones and the internet give comprehensive access to selling and purchasing merchandise with ease.
Nowadays, digital marketing has penetrated every field, making learning opportunities like digital marketing courses all the more important. The primary reason behind this phenomenon is that business processes are evolving very quickly and there are a lot of experimentation and changes that are being done in the industry. We are constantly getting diverted by one or the other upcoming trends. When it to consumers, we can’t ignore them as their behaviour is changing almost too frequently. Digital marketing as a tool can easily adapt to these changes so what is trending today may not be the trend next month. While this is helpful, it is also creating a lot of challenges for different businesses.
Why Is Digital Marketing Integral To The Growth Of E-commerce Business?
Let’s say that your birthday is coming up but you have no time to go to a shopping mall, and you know that there is a lot that you need to purchase, from a dress to a pair of shoes and accessories to bags. What comes to help you in that moment of need are E-commerce shopping websites. It is a saviour even when you have guests coming home for dinner but you are out of groceries, your order and you get it on time. These are a few day-to-day examples and in fact, this has slowly become a part of our lives.
E-commerce is a business where the buying and selling of goods and services are completely performed on the internet. Therefore, digital marketing comes into the picture, as it is the primary medium that helps E-commerce businesses to grow. The speedy growth of smartphones and the internet give overall access to selling and purchasing merchandise at an ease.
With the help of digital marketing, E-commerce generates huge revenue as it helps to improve customers and brand value. Customers are no more dependent just on the content or word-of-mouth when it comes the decision-making before buying a product. They make sure to go through the reviews about a product on all the platforms that the product is listed on.
According to a recent analysis, 37 million social media visits led to approximately 529,000 orders. Out of others, Facebook helps to get more traffic to the website, leading to sales constituting an average of 85% of all the orders. It has become very important to grab customers’ attention as they get distracted very easily, which is where digital marketing comes in and helps E-commerce businesses to go through such challenges.