Aiming to test the impact of a digital campaign on in-store sales during a special promotion period, a well-known retailer used Facebook’s proximity marketing to reach customers near the retailer’s stores, and targeted them with ads that highlighted large discounts.
Using Facebook link ads that promoted large discounts for its products, the retailer followed up with people who engaged with the ad, offering them directions to the nearest outlet.
This is the new era of marketing.
As retailers look for new ways to engage with audiences in today’s fragmented media landscape, digital and social media platforms are turning out to be new grounds for companies to build brands and grab consumers’ attention. Companies are also able to communicate in new ways to the consumer, thanks to businesses adopting social networking sites.
Friction points
However, the path to purchase (especially of apparel and fashion accessories) appears to be littered with several ‘friction’ points, which leads to potential loss of revenue for brands. These friction points can significantly hit a brand’s bottom line.
Pulkit Trivedi, Director, Facebook India, said: “Fashion spectrum in India has evolved so considerably that the apparel and accessory market is projected to reach $102 billion and $155 billion individually, by the year 2022. Today, mobile has become central to the way brands market and sell their products, and engage with customers end-to-end.”
Mobile influence
In order to help brands understand and eliminate reasons for consumer drop-outs, Facebook, aided by KPMG and Nielsen, recently conducted research across different cities in India.
Their study showed how brick-and-mortar brands are increasingly adopting digital channels, and how mobile platforms continue dominating apparel and accessory purchases.
The study notes mobile has the potential to create a sales opportunity of about $5 billion between apparel brands. Currently, nearly half of the apparel purchases are influenced by mobile.
According to the findings of the report, 7 in 10 fashion accessory purchases will be mobile-influenced by 2022, amounting to a $110-billion sales opportunity, nearly half of which will be driven by Facebook.
Additionally, mobile will influence two in three apparel purchases, amounting to $66 billion opportunity for brands, half of which will be driven by Facebook. Mobile platforms are expected to influence more than two-thirds of both apparel and fashion accessories purchases by 2022.
Meanwhile, mobile internet users in India are to rise to 677 million from 420 million in 2017. The study points out that brands have a $66-billion opportunity to re-look at their marketing strategies and adapt to the fast-evolving mobile-first internet economy of India.