With Facebook being caught up in the US Midterms Elections, you’d figured they will be too busy for any other shenanigans. You were wrong.
Despite having to put out fires all over the place, Facebook managed to launch 9 physical stores at Macy’s around the U.S., which will be opened until February 2019.
Why is the biggest digital marketing giant launching physical retails?
Despite this move, Facebook has clarified that they are not actually advocating physical retails or looking into one.
Every Facebook physical store contained products from small businesses, which have employed the advertising tools at either Facebook or Instagram. As a result, there were a wide variety of products from small businesses, including some rather peculiar ones as well.
The aim was to give small businesses a hand and provide them with a physical retail store, while Facebook covered the costs and decor. Facebook has always supported small brands in various ways, and it should not surprise anyone.
The surprising aspect is how they did it.
Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Advertising are some of the solutions they’ve developed for small businesses, and all of them are digital. With the exponential growth of ECommerce, Facebook utilising a physical store to help small brands is out-of-character for them.
What do these physical stores of Facebook imply?
Budget is what holding many eCommerce stores from having a physical store. If given a choice, small businesses would not mind having a physical store.
Physical stores are very helpful tools to have, and one of the key benefits is the boosting of brand profiles and reputation.
Having a physical store ensures the customers a contact point in the event of any issues, which puts their minds at ease. It also allows the experiencing of the products on a deeper and higher level, which a digital screen cannot afford.
Therefore, a physical store has many additional benefits for any brands and businesses looking to expand, making it a worthy investment.
Should brands be focusing on digital or outdoor?
If you have the budget to do so, outdoor marketing is an important and overlooked tactic to consider.
Our advice is to create a strategic marketing strategy that is consistent and connects with the audiences well, whether it is digital or outdoor.
The new-age marketing strategy should focus on utilising an omnichannel strategy – using multichannel to provide a seamless shopping experience. In fact, some brands have already begun rolling out this specific strategy.
However, this requires proper planning and tailoring the experience in every channel that suits your brand and resonates with your audience.
Want to create a marketing strategy that is worthy of your brand?
Speak to our branding team that has experience in handling both outdoor and digital strategies. We’re confident that we will be able to create the right marketing strategy for your brand that is creative and effective.
Table of Contents
Why is the biggest digital marketing giant launching physical retails?
What do these physical stores of Facebook imply?
Should brands be focusing on digital or outdoor?
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After Facebook’s recent scandal with leaked user information and the US Election fiasco, the social media giants have decided to become more transparent with their platform. In early April, Facebook announced they were making ads transparent and marking political ads as special cases.
This has been a long time coming, given the chatter on Russian meddling since the US Elections fiasco ended 2 years ago.
How does this affect your business?
Ad transparency means anyone and everyone can now view all the ads you are running. This includes your target audience and unfortunately, your competition. The good news is that they can only see the content and the type of ad but nothing on the data and statistics that come with it.
So what should you do?
The digital marketing industry has seen massive changes over recent years and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rising factor. Because of the expansion of AI, we are able to study and identify consumer trends when crafting marketing strategies. This is vital, as an effective partnership between AI and digital marketing results in a boost for performance and revenue.
In line with the AI rave, Facebook has acquired the genius startup, GrokStyle. Yes, the social media goliath has acquired the entire team behind the savvy invention. By emerging with a one-of-a-kind invention, Grokstyle has helped multinational corporations communicate with its consumers effectively. Their point-and-search functionality earned recognition when it was added to Ikea’s mobile application, Place.
Beyond enhancing its AI inventions, the social media platform is on a roll to get new technology to contribute to their AI capabilities. Brands and companies can continually adopt new technology to always be ahead in engaging its audience while exploring and tapping into new territories for digital marketing in the near future.
To fully maximise the use of existing social media features, speak to professionals who can craft a thorough strategy just for you.
So how should I utilise AI in my marketing strategies?
AI has evolved to be beneficial to many industries, as seen by Facebook expanding on AI’s creative abilities to enhance their consumers’ experience. How about you?