Clicking the potential

From Facebook to Twitter, FMCG brands in the Middle East should consider building up their presence and investing in digital channels to encourage and capture engagement.

Internet success stories across the globe would in fact suggest that online activities should now be hardwired into marketing strategies by default, even simply a dedicated URL on TV or print advertisements to encourage cross-channel promotion.

UK retailer Argos’ e-mail campaign requesting consumer reviews generated 90,000 responses in January this year.

The retailer used Bazaarvoice’s ratings and reviews service to provide online shoppers with feedback on products.

Argos multichannel programme and operations manager David Tarbuck said that the retailer had contacted more than two million customers via the campaign.

“Each review adds to the value others customers get from real product opinions. Since we introduced rating and reviews on the site we have seen volume and coverage increase substantially. The better the coverage of reviews, the greater the positive impact of the review information,” he said.

The feedback generated would be used to inform decisions within the business, he said, and the content would help to proactively inform the buying teams on which products customers really like, ensuring that “we keep in step with their expectations and continue to deliver a great product mix”.

Aevolve, the data insight arm of Aegis Media, considered five well-known retailers - Debenhams, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, the ill-fated Woolworths and Next - to assess the branding impact of online advertising for high-street retailers.

The research found consumers actively look for and passively consume information about high-street retailers from sources including advertising, PR, word-of-mouth and websites. Consumers' brand engagement with department stores centred around four key factors: image, quality, sales and service.
The research also found three key themes across the category. These were described as: emotional/intangible, including customer service, heritage, reputation, quality and trust; functional/tangible, including product range and presence of mainstream brands; and cues/prompts, including advertising, familiarity, nationwide presence and standardised layout.

The quantitative research was undertaken among 1,024 females aged 30 to 50, who had shopped in at least three of the stores in the past six months. The base level of brand engagement for high-street retailers, the engagement the audience would have with the brands if they avoided the other influences that were tested, was a third.

On average across the five brands, the study found online display ads contributed 40% of the gross communications effect, compared to 31% for press, 19% for TV, 8% for radio, and 3% for outdoor.

To trigger a high-level of targeted marketing and increase their visibility, retailers and brand owners worldwide are turning to online social networks such as YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Many FMCG brands have now used Facebook to pull their fan base, customers, and potential customers together. Facebook provides tools that allow users to play videos and allow businesses to send marketing messages directly to targeted audiences.

The website is now used by more than 150 million people to share personal information with friends online and continues to attract members with demographics that could serve e-tailers well in terms of extending market reach and increasing branding.

The web research firm Hitwise reports that, overall, Facebook was the fifth-ranked Web site in terms of total market share of visits in January 2009.

One of the greatest draws for FMCG players has been its viral effect. If any person becomes a ‘fan’ of the company’s page, a message is sent to all of that person's friends telling them about it, providing a great channel to get its message out to many people over a short period of time.

Online sales have proved to be bright spots in retailing in recent months, even in recession-battered markets such as the UK. Tesco plans to tap into the fast-growing market for online fashion shopping by launching a website this autumn that will sell own-brand clothing ranges like Cherokee and F&F.

The supermarket group said its decision followed a trial last year and the website would sell ranges of clothes currently only available in some of its stores.

The project is being masterminded by clothing boss Terry Green and is intended to have an entirely different look to the existing Tesco.com websites.

“Because online is a sort of microcosm of our overall business, we can sometimes learn things or see what’s working more quickly. In a nutshell, we are a hothouse,” commented Laura Wade-Gery, chief executive of Tesco Direct and Tesco.com, on the retailer’s online boom.

Online clothing sales have been helped by the popularity of sites such as ASOS.com. Founded in 2000 and selling copycat celebrity clothes, Asos has emerged as one of the few winners of the credit crunch in the UK.

Asos recently reported a 108% sales rise in the last nine months and claimed that 1.2 million people had bought something from the site in the last six months.

As shoppers in this region become more selective, retailers face up to increasingly challenging conditions, and ramping up their presence on the Internet could prove an important move.

Lynne Nolan is the editor of Retail News Middle East.

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