Top six digital commerce and marketing trends for 2017
We present the 6 main digital commerce and marketing trends to take into account this year. 2016 has been a strong year for digital commerce, it has registered a growth of two digits in the Singles' Day in China and an increase of the 50% in mobile sales during the Black Friday in the US.
Consumers will use their mobile phone to make big purchases.
The desktop has been the King in purchases of high prices, but in 2017, consumers will feel equally comfortable purchasing big-ticket items from their smartphone. In the second quarter of 2016, the average order value was 27% higher in mobile applications in comparison to desktop and during the same period, the average order value was only 9% lower on mobile browsers in comparison to desktop.
To capture the growing average order value, retailers should focus on consumer safety and comfort in the mobile payment process. Consumers will feel more confident at the end of a big purchase from their mobile phone if they experience an easy navigation and a shorter verification process.
Retailers will seek opportunities to join assets and face the growing competition from Amazon.
It will be increasingly more frequent to retailers to join their resources, and share customer data, to gain strength when it comes to compete with Amazon and decrease dependence on Facebook and Google. Amazon is expanding to new areas with strategies of diversification, by what in 2017 will be fundamental that those retailers seek the appropriate associations to compete against this digital giant.
The PLA (Product Listing Ads, known as Google Shopping) will appear as a key channel for the acquisition of customers.
In 2017, retailers will invest more in Google Shopping and expanded capabilities in Search to improve the discovery and customer conversions. As the paid search turns more competitive and the advertisers more sophisticated with the segmentation and the attribution, the channels of high investment must be more responsible of the results.
This reaffirms that the retailers should invest in channels of search, as PLAs that is directed mainly to the users in the phase of discovery, and in technologies that put data behind the efforts of acquisition of customers.
The advertising in video will take advantage of all the potential of the programmatic.
This year, the programmatic not only will be used for video ads, but also to automate the creation and optimization of ads. Thousands of dynamically generated variations by video announcements will allow to those advertisers run highly targeted campaigns.
Now, programmatic advertisers can create thousands of combinations of text and images overlapping in the video in real time to offer a highly personalized experience.
Brands manufacturers will require more transparency on trade marketing.
In 2017, the manufacturers will require more accurate and impartial measurements of the ROI on the large amounts of money they spend with the retailers. Thus, budgets from sales and marketing of manufacturers will converge as consumers are more easily identifiable across platforms, and media.
The competition in the expenses will increase as the budgets are refocus towards objectives of branding and performance (results). This assumes that, to compete by the budgets of trade marketing of the manufacturers, the retailers must have the adequate technology to measure with precision the ROI of the manufacturers.
Occident will also give priority to mobiles, imitating to emerging markets.
It is expected that in 2017 the majority of online retailers become brands 'mobile first'. In addition, the leader’s retailers in mobile web will see a 39% more conversions than the laggards.
With the mobile becoming the main digital channel to interact with consumers, retailers must make mobile a priority in their web designs. Being mobile responsive it’s not enough anymore, so it is essential for advertisers to learn the best practices in mobile first and mobile emerging markets only.
These predictions conclude that 2017 will be defined by significant changes in technology marketing and consumer behavior, so both retailers and marketers must consider:
- Develop skills to compete and to reduce the dependence of digital giants: retailers should invest in technologies that connect contact points online and offline to maintain their participation in commercial budgets of manufacturers.
- Advertisers should invest more in PLAs (Google Shopping), mainly for targeting users in the phase of discovery, and the technologies that put data behind customer acquisition efforts.
- Mobile will continue to grow to become the most important driver for digital commerce in 2017 and both retailers as marketers must ensure that they deliver a great mobile experience that allows consumers to complete more purchases from their mobile.
