Ecommerce and marketing leaders are under pressure. In May, a survey of 400 leading marketers at global brands across North America, Northern and Western Europe revealed that marketing budgets have been slashed to an average of 7.7% of company revenue.
That number decreased from 11% in the last four years before the pandemic. At the same time, C-suite leaders are asking marketers to deliver increased growth and profitability. The same survey found that 73% of respondents felt they were being asked to do more with less and 63% say they don’t have the budget to execute their strategies.
But, budgets are not the only problem. Content creation costs are soaring and leaders are juggling the management of global teams across various time zones.
The preferences and behaviours of different audiences are also continuing to change at speed across a growing number of platforms that marketers are expected to integrate into their portfolio of channels and optimise.
These are all being managed via multiple software solutions that require time and effort to run, making it difficult to measure and achieve ROI.
Brands are now turning to technology to work smarter and gain a competitive advantage. Emplifi is a unified social marketing and commerce platform that helps marketers reach, engage and retain customers via a single, integrated platform.
Content creation costs are soaring and leaders are juggling the management of global teams across various time zones
“Consolidating a brand’s tech stack eliminates redundant tools, streamlines workflows and consolidates all marketing activities into a single source of truth,” says Emplifi’s chief marketing officer, Susan Ganeshan.
“This reduces costs and allows marketing teams to scale their activity with what truly drives growth - data driven decision-making and engaging content”, she explains.
Many of the world’s biggest brands now have a presence across as many as seven social media platforms, with many also operating multiple sub-channels on the same platform. This means marketers must juggle content creation, community engagement and campaign performance analytics across multiple channels and software providers.
Emplifi is helping them to solve this problem by streamlining all three into one platform. This enables brands to easily engage with their audiences at scale, ensure consistent brand messaging, foster deeper connections with customers and drive higher conversion rates.
But even if all the pieces of the marketing campaign puzzle are connected in the same place, marketers must still work out how to create content at scale that engages and converts audiences effectively across different platforms.
With tighter budgets, marketers can’t afford to spend vast sums on external agencies to create blockbuster advertising campaigns or time creating large volumes of content in-house.
User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful social commerce solution. An Emplifi survey of 2,000 active social users in the UK and the US, in collaboration with Harris Interactive, revealed that 54% of consumers always or regularly research online pictures or videos of real people using or discussing a product before purchase.
This indicates a notable shift in the marketing landscape from brands telling audiences what they should buy to using their customers to authentically build trust in their products or services.
Social media platforms are awash with UGC content, with hashtags such as #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt spawning millions of posts about myriad products. Traditionally, marketing teams have been forced to sift through these hashtags or follower posts to find the right content to share.
But UGC platforms, such as Emplifi, enable brands to easily set parameters for specific types of UGC, such as pictures or videos, which are then organised into libraries to be reviewed. From there, brands can decide when and where to share the best content and track its performance via analytics.
For marketers looking to engage with their audiences and generate UGC content at scale, there are some simple and creative options. “Brands could create running contests or challenges that encourage users to create content based on a theme or hashtag, with a prize for the most creative or popular entry,” says Ganeshan.
“Brands can also simply re-post user content, such as sharing pictures or videos featuring a product or service, while giving credit to the creators.” Once marketers have decided which posts to reshare, they can even tag these posts to create a direct link to purchase, either via a landing page or a specific product page”.
Brands that leverage UGC content effectively can enjoy significant results. “On average, Emplifi clients permission 440 pieces of content per month,” says Ganeshan. “They can see an increase in average order value of 122% and many of our customers have also seen boosted conversion rates and more than five times the number of site visits”.
Emplifi customer Jones Soda Co implemented an augmented reality campaign to curate and collect UGC from its customers. The campaign resulted in a 55% increase in time spent on site and a 48% increase in average order value.
In the future, two things are certain: the needs of ecommerce and marketing leaders will continue to evolve, in step with fluctuating budgets and the changing behaviours and demands of consumers.
To adapt at speed and deliver ROI, leaders need a seamless solution that can help them envision the future before it arrives.
“Emplifi’s platform is designed to stay ahead of industry trends,” says Ganeshan. “We continuously enhance our platform’s capabilities through advanced analytics, AI-driven insights, and robust community management features. This empowers leaders to make data-driven decisions, foster brand loyalty, and drive sustainable growth.”
For more information please visit www.emplifi.io/
