"Clicks to Bricks" integration for FMCG brands' digital campaigns.

The growing importance of digital marketing is not lost on anyone. However, most brand marketers in the FMCG / CPG space find it difficult to justify the high engagement cost per consumer, especially because most current digital assets are restricted to creating awareness. 

There is now an option to change that. AaramShop has digitized the FMCG brands' existing last mile, thus enabling an integration of a “purchase now” prompt option within all digital assets. 

The consumers can now browse through all manner of digital communication, have the additional option to click on a “purchase now” tab, enabling them to order a brand from their preferred neighborhood retailer, who packs up and deliver in a matter of hours. 

Here is a neat example of seamless "Click to Brick" integration by Saffola (Marico Industries) giving its consumers a “purchase now” option on its website and at the same time it helps build a stronger bond with its channel by helping generate direct demand and action specific to the retailer outlets.

All digital assets of the brand like its websites, social media presence on platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc, review sites, blogs etc and and digital marketing campaigns can be now made to perform harder for the marketing dollar spend, and go beyond the just feel good awareness.

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The future of shopping.

Came across this wonderful article on HBR which talks about how every 50 years or so, retailing undergoes a kind of disruption. 

A century and a half ago, the growth of big cities and the rise of railroad networks made possible the modern department store. Mass-produced automobiles came along 50 years later, and soon shopping malls lined with specialty retailers were dotting the newly forming suburbs and challenging the city-based department stores.

The 1960s and 1970s saw the spread of discount chains—Walmart, Kmart, and the like—and, soon after, big-box “category killers” such as Circuit City and Home Depot, all of them undermining or transforming the old-style mall. 

 Like most disruptions, digital retail technology got off to a shaky start. A bevy of internet-based retailers in the 1990s—Amazon.com, Pets.com, and pretty much everythingelse.com—embraced what they called online shopping or electronic commerce. These fledgling companies ran wild until a combination of ill-conceived strategies, speculative gambles, and a slowing economy burst the dot-com bubble. The ensuing collapse wiped out half of all e commerce retailers and provoked an abrupt shift from irrational exuberance to economic reality.

Today, however, that economic reality is well established. The research firm Forrester estimates that e-commerce is now approaching $200 billion in revenue in the United States alone and accounts for 9% of total retail sales, up from 5% five years ago. The corresponding figure is about 10% in the United Kingdom, 3% in Asia-Pacific, and 2% in Latin America. Globally, digital retailing is probably headed toward 15% to 20% of total sales, though the proportion will vary significantly by sector. Moreover, much digital retailing is now highly profitable. Amazon’s five-year average return on investment, for example, is 17%, whereas traditional discount and department stores average 6.5%.

What we are seeing today is only the beginning. Soon it will be hard even to define e-commerce, let alone measure it. Is it an e-commerce sale if the customer goes to a store, finds that the product is out of stock, and uses an in-store terminal to have another location ship it to her home? What if the customer is shopping in one store, uses his smartphone to find a lower price at another, and then orders it electronically for in-store pickup? How about gifts that are ordered from a website but exchanged at a local store? Experts estimate that digital information already influences about 50% of store sales, and that number is growing rapidly.

Access the full article here on HBR

How Web Traffic is Driving Brick and Mortar Expansion

People will always want to shop, and that’s not going to change, but the online experience has raised shoppers’ expectations and made them much more discerning, so it behooves all retailers to know their customer that much better.  The Web is providing a much broader, more accurate and real-time picture of exactly who they are and where they live, arming retailers with the information they need to make smarter decisions about physical expansion — the most capital-intensive of investments.

Read more of this insightful article on Forbes here. 

This hybrid retail opportunity creates opportunities not only for retailers but also for the  brands. Data & trends provided by online retailing is a reflection of the offline consumer behavior and is far more accurate and trust-worthy as against data based on surveys and focused groups. 

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Digital Influencers of Brand Selection.

Here is yet another research that supports the need of multi channel marketing initiatives – especially from a digital perspective in the CPG / FMCG space. The fact that consumers have adopted the digital media in their daily life is not lost on anybody; however, it is important to understand that they use it in different ways and with different intentions.

The key for brands, marketers and manufacturers looking to capitalize on digital in the CPG environment, is to identify how each consumer group embraces digital media.

Clearly the 18 - 34 year old consumers are comfortable with digital technology and their use of digital resources has an impact on purchase. What is even more dramatic is the extent to which this group is influenced by product and brand recommendations from bloggers and social networking platforms. In-store digital touch screens and phone applications are also seen to address this group effectively and present immediate, high-impact brand marketing opportunities.

Another plus for marketers is that these digital-savvy consumers are often trendsetters and influencers in their own circles. Word-of-mouth and informal, viral marketing can make a huge impact on those that are fully engaged in digital media.

Download the SymphonyIRI Group Point of View report: Digital Dimension: Consumers Embrace Digital Media with Diverse Approaches from here (PDF)

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CPG & eCommerce - the new approach.

"The CPG of the future will rely on a sales ecosystem that integrates online interaction with in-store marketing. That will require sophisticated digital capabilities throughout the business, across all functions, including marketing, sales, R&D and supply chain. The companies that win will be the ones that aggressively exploit e-commerce models, integrating digital deep into their businesses to do so."

Really enjoyed reading the article titled "We are all eCommerce Companies Now" on the HBR  by Bonin Bough, Vice President of Global Media and Consumer Engagement at Kraft Foods. 

Mr. Bough's article is a validation of the business model created by us at AaramShop to address the traditional challenges faced by FMCG / CPG companies in leveraging the opportunities offered by eCommerce. For too long CPG companies have either tried to emulate the traditional eCommerce models (and failed) or have just kept away from it completely. However, now with the fast changing media consumption habits of the consumers reaching consumers at point-of-purchase is no longer simply a battle for shelf space, but a war to connect meaningfully across a wide range of digital platforms and delivery mechanisms. 

Read the article here to understand the opportunities offered by the hybrid commerce models. 

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