With the restrictions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, many consumers now leverage social media to interact and shop. People are now living digital lives, and social media has become an integral part of life.
To meet consumers where they are, brands leverage social media to connect with their target audience.
But with many brands available in social media networks, how can you be the best among your competitors? You need strong digital brand management to help you implement a marketing strategy that will help you stay relevant.
But that also means you must stay ahead of the online trends. Learn how below.
Why Is Keeping up With E-commerce Trends Important?
Today, there’s a lot of competition in the world of e-commerce. So, to stay ahead of this competition, you have to monitor the e-commerce trends. It doesn’t matter whether you’re starting up your business or already established.
If you fail to keep up with these trends, you risk dragging behind. You need to stay updated to ensure the future success of your business. Knowing the trends not only puts you ahead of the competition but also gets you fully prepared to manage your brand.
You need to analyze and adopt these trends in a timely manner for the betterment of your business. Here are some of the digital brand management trends you need to embrace and stay ahead of the competition.
Improved Digital Customer Experience
With many people interacting with brands online, you must work on your customer’s experience. This will help you improve your digital brand management. It’s clear that online sales growth is becoming unstoppable, and there’s no looking back. Your brand needs to be digitally mature by moving away from a reactive digital perspective to a proactive approach.
With proactive customer service, you’ll serve your customers based on an individual level. Your brand should be intuitive to match your audience’s lifestyle. This will help you deliver superior convenience to your customers.
Due to increased online shopping, ensure you provide comfort to improve your online sales growth. Many shoppers are flocking online shops because of their trust when buying online and the website experience. So, ensure you create a customer-friendly website to win more customers.
There’s Positive COVID-19 Impact on Digital Brand Management
One of the biggest impacts on e-commerce trends in the year 2020 was COVID-19. Governments have adopted restrictions such as closing stores, lockdowns, and restricting movements. This has seen quite a number of people resorting to online shopping to purchase products.
Furthermore, the impact of COVID-19 will not be a short-term boost to online businesses, but it’s going to stay for longer even after the pandemic. The reason is that people will find it a convenient and comfortable way of purchasing items online. Also, contactless payment benefits will make customers shift from physical stores to digital ones.
Leverage Experts Help
There are many companies out there that are experts in the digital field. For example, eReleases.com has been in the press release industry for over 20 years. These companies know some of the most important aspects of online business and can help any company specializing in that sector.
There is so much you can do in the world of business. If you have a specialized company already, you can educate yourself on navigating the world of e-commerce.
Improved Emphasis on Inclusivity and Sustainability
Today’s online shoppers are more concerned about issues related to inclusivity and the environment. Many digital consumers are shifting away from brands that don’t showcase diversity.
Ethnic minorities and LGBT groups feel like they’re left out. This is because many online shops don’t champion inclusivity in their e-commerce. Most digital consumers feel that businesses have the responsibility to help the environment.
Therefore, when determining your digital brand management, take these features into account. Sustainability and inclusivity should be part and parcel of your brand’s identity. This will enable your brand to remain relevant with this high number of online shoppers.
To show inclusion, ensure your branded content represents people from different demographics. You can also improve the perception of your brand by highlighting your company’s eco-friendly actions.
Visual Search Is on the Rise
Visual e-commerce is digital brand management that is gaining more relevance than ever. But one of the difficulties of e-commerce is the lack of physical interactions. And that’s where the visual search is coming into play.
Visual marketing is the next big thing in today’s generation. Visual marketing elevates your brand to a whole new level, not only using product photos to market your company.
In addition, visual marketing takes your business further by incorporating other types of visuals. These include interactive content, consumer-generated media, engaging videos, and augmented reality.
Visual commerce is slowly becoming an integral part of online business. To adapt to the change in user preference, Pinterest and Google ensure they provide more image-heavy search results to enable the same. These websites offer quality branded visuals to ensure a strong presence no matter how users search.
Companies can upload high-quality images with rich alt text, including target SEO keywords. You can also add an image sitemap to enable easy discovery of your images. This can, in turn, improve the value of your commerce brands.
No matter what social media platform you decide to use, video content helps you build better connections with your audience. It also boosts your engagement at the same time.
With social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, you can create content that inspires your target audience. You should enable them to interact with your brand.
Augmented Reality Transforms Digital Brand Management
Augmented Reality technologies will transform how we shop since they will offer a much richer buying experience. The retail workforce and online shoppers will be the driving force of Augmented Reality. However, the main worry about online shopping is the inability to see the product firsthand.
That’s where Augmented Reality will come in to bridge that gap. It’ll enable online shoppers to visualize the product that they’re interested in. This is going to be a game-changer for online customers.
Augmented reality can change the way online shoppers perceive the products they want to buy. With this trend in play, online shoppers will understand their needs and check if the products they intend to buy meet their demands. Some online brands have already started experimenting with AR to enable them to stand out from the competition.
When you deliver more personalized experiences to your consumers, you’ll be able to improve online shopping. Augmented reality isn’t only going to help in enhancing customer experience. It’s also going to give shoppers the ability to test and explore products the same way they would do during an in-person shopping experience.
Increased Interaction
With many people spending more of their time online, online interaction will increase. Interactive content boasts a strong comeback, especially after 2020. This is where people had little to do instead of spending time online.
Interactive content such as quizzes, polls, and contests will improve your customer engagement. The more time customers engage in your brand online, the better your website will rank in search engines.
Interactive content will help you enhance and personalize your customer’s experience. It will make your product more memorable and make more users come back in the future.
Interactive content will enable you to collect valuable user data. The user data will help you understand the behavior and preference of your data users. With this, you can adapt future marketing efforts to make your website more appealing to your users.
Mobile Marketing Is Growing
Mobile marketing means reaching customers through smartphones and tablets. You do this as you promote your brand through text messaging, website, email, apps, and social media. With many people spending their time on mobile devices, mobile marketing will drive many online businesses.
In the year 2020, mobile sales came in at $2.66 trillion. But with the intense growth of mobile commerce, this figure is expected to grow to 18.8% to $3.16 trillion this year. It’s also expected to again rise to $3.79 trillion in the year 2022.
You cannot ignore these figures, especially if you intend to improve your e-commerce experience for your mobile users. Mobile marketing is a huge opportunity that you should tap in to protect your digital brand. The use of mobile devices has seen the improvement of e-commerce growth.
Consumers can use their mobile devices to check online before making a purchase. While online shopping trust increases, consumers start feeling more comfortable.
Millennials and Gen Z target consumers who grew up surrounded by computers and the internet. They’re using mobile devices to shop online than the older generations. Fortunately, more sites are now optimized for mobile use.
Ensure both your website and online store are optimized for mobile devices. This will make your online business accessible to a larger audience.
Businesses Are Leveraging on Social Media
The role of online shoppers is increasing. Social media is playing an important role when it comes to e-commerce. This is all thanks to the introduction of the buy button on Facebook and Instagram Checkout.
Since the rapid growth of social media, people have changed the way they live and how they buy things.
And this has given brands a great opportunity to start thinking about improving their position in social media. In addition, consumers can discover various brands through social media platforms. Today, consumers spend more of their time on different types of social media.
With the help of social media influencers, online businesses can get discovered by their target audience. Further, platforms such as Shopify can help businesses link their online stores with social media sites. This will help them to buy directly through social media.
Facebook and Instagram keep on updating their features to suit the needs of online users. But, you cannot forget the kid in the social media block: TikTok.
TikTok is the latest and rising social media platform not only for teens but also around Hollywood.
There is also a video-sharing app that is working to incorporate e-commerce elements. The app is testing a new feature that will allow users to use shoppable links in their profiles. This will enable the users to go direct to the URL within TikTok without leaving the app to access the site.
These social media platforms provide inspiration channels for e-commerce brands. They allow consumers to discover brands by scrolling through their feeds. As social media continues playing an integral part in daily lives, it’s influencing the increase in e-commerce trends.
And that’s why you’ll see brands adopting a shopping-focused approach to enhance their social media strategy.
Environmental Topics Influence Shoppers
Consumers are becoming more aware of green consumerism, and this is something that brands should consider. Unfortunately, poor environmental records are impacting the purchasing decision of many consumers. So as an online business, you need to create more sustainable practices.
Today, consumers have become more conscious about the environment than ever before. So e-commerce businesses need to step up and ensure they provide eco-friendly practices. These environmentally-friendly practices include sourcing products from fair-trade organizations.
This will help create a greener online business environment. There’s an increasing demand for e-commerce to start protecting the environment. In addition, consumers are leading the charge in championing a clean environment.
This, in turn, increases the demand for brands to take care of the eco-friendly needs of their customers.
Elevate Your Branding With Digital Brand Management
With the advancement in technology, you need to keep an eye on these e-commerce trends. Whichever trend you consider adopting, ensure you do it to provide quality brands to your shoppers. Your digital brand management needs to have all these trends in mind to succeed.
Are you excited about these online trends? Well, feel free to learn more from this website and take your e-commerce evolution to the next level. Our experts will always keep you updated with educational content like this and more.
