In this Social Bite, we explore what live commerce can be and how it can help you not only activate your audience in the moment, but also build a relationship into the future. Discover the different forms of live commerce and the roles that brands and their ambassadors take to inspire their audiences.

Historically, live commerce has been most popular in China, where the format makes up 10% of the overall ecommerce market. Accelerated in part by the pandemic, live commerce has continued to gain traction in the Asia-Pacific region. Now, brands elsewhere around the world are taking note—and so are social and retail platforms, both of whom are experimenting with new features and revenue streams to bring live commerce to life. Serving the need for new ways to engage their customers in social, shoppable and entertaining experiences that blend brand love and conversion, live commerce combines spectacle, presence and interchange to build excitement among highly engaged audiences.

1. Amazon Live 

Recently announced, non-endemic clients can now use Amazon Live to launch new offerings and answer questions in real time. In 2023, the vertical view format in Amazon Live will become available for eligible advertisers. 

2. Sponsored Products: performance recommendations 

New performance recommendations, which are in-console, actionable best practices, were unveiled and are now available in ten countries. By troubleshooting in the background, advertisers can utilize these tailored recommendations to boost Sponsored Products ad campaign performance. 

3. Sponsored Products: campaign presets

Advertisers will now be able to create Sponsored Products campaigns with recently launched preset campaign settings, which include the following: 

• Daily budget 
• Bidding strategy
• Targeting strategy
• Associated bids 

These pre-populated campaign settings are based on historical performance and will be pulled to provide advertisers with estimated performance data, including impressions, clicks and conversions. According to Amazon, campaigns launched with presets observed positive results, including a 77% increase in clicks and a 29% increase in conversions.

Combined with expert knowledge, this feature can assist in selecting the right ASINs to run paid advertising. It's important to note that while advertising drives the most highly qualified traffic, your brand needs to be retail-ready to drive conversion and achieve the results you want. 

4. Sponsored Display: Twitch and non-endemic businesses

For non-endemic businesses in verticals not available on Amazon (e.g., restaurants and gyms), US advisers can run Sponsored Display ad campaigns to connect with audiences on Twitch. These campaigns are focused on driving outcomes and improving business performance on the Amazon platform, confirming Amazon's opportunities beyond its own ecosystem. SVP of Ecommerce John Ghiorso talks more about it here. 

While Sponsored Display ads already appear on the Twitch browse tab and directory page, they will now be integrated with Twitch live streams, which bring in 30 million daily visitors on average.

5. Rewarded Sponsored Display 

To incentivize further shoppers, shopping/streaming credits can be added to Streaming TV, Display, and Video campaigns. Brands can add an Amazon credit directly to Sponsored Display creatives, which shoppers can redeem by clicking on the ad and purchasing the advertised product. This will come in closed beta for US advertisers soon. 

To demonstrate the value and utility of this type of experience, a 2021 Amazon Ads survey of US adult Amazon shoppers showed that 92% of respondents are more likely to take action if offered an Amazon shopping credit.

6. Sponsored Display: Brand Store traffic 

To drive traffic and brand growth on the Amazon platform, advertisers can now use their video ads to redirect shoppers to the Brand Stores with Sponsored Brands video creatives. This new feature introduces a broader product catalog and increases engagement with shoppers without distractions from competing offers. 

7. Sponsored Display: video creative enhancements 

New video capabilities to enhance Sponsored Display’s creative allows advertisers to showcase products and the brand through immersive storytelling such as tutorials, demos, unboxing and testimonials. This means advertisers using Sponsored Display audiences can build awareness on and off Amazon with 45-second videos and link shoppers directly to the product detail page for further purchase consideration. 

It was also recently announced that non-endemic advisers will soon be able to run Sponsored Display ad campaigns focused on driving outcomes and improving positioning on Amazon O&O. 

For smaller brands with limited creative capabilities, a new beta Video Builder tool provides customizable templates to create ad campaigns in under ten minutes. Video ads can appear above the SRP for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display campaigns. As advertisers, it's still vital to keep in mind the importance of organic placement and avoid being a pay-to-play brand on Amazon.  

According to third-party research from Wyzowl, 73% of consumers say they prefer video ads to learn about products and services, and 88% say video ads have convinced them to buy.

8. Amazon Demand-Side-Platform (DSP): performance enhancements 

Campaign improvements have been made to decrease setup time to 15 minutes, optimizing efficiency and productivity. A few notable changes include: 

• Addition of a "Change History" feature to track campaign changes and impact on performance 
• Updated algorithm to include "keep learning" and ingest more signals that result in better outcomes 
• Amazon Ad Tag is moving from IMG to JS, which will enable 1 pixel for all events that are being tracked and drive richer insights with no requirements of third-party identifiers.
• Amazon Audiences are automatically updated to improve signals beyond third-party identifiers
• Contextual Targeting (beta) based on Amazon's retail taxonomy and in-the-moment content consumption with 40K categories available 
• Amazon Brand Lift is now available for UK advertisers in Amazon DSP 

These changes show that Amazon DSP's extensive targeting capabilities will continue to evolve, allowing advertisers to dial in on what's working and what's not. 

9. Digital Signage Ads

Starting in November 2022, eligible advertisers can programmatically purchase ad space in Amazon Fresh stores by utilizing the new inventory opportunity within Amazon DSP. With these Digital Signage Ads programmatically placed in Amazon's stores, customers will see more relevant ads and have the opportunity to physically engage with brands. Brands and advertisers can customize ad placements, daypart and measure performance for meaningful results, which allows for efficient optimization and improved customer experience.

At unBoxed 2022, Amazon shared that Digital Signage Ads within Amazon Fresh stores resulted in a 40% sales lift for Kraft.

10. Streaming TV Ads

Along with Thursday Night Football, streaming TV ad placements during Premier League games are now available in the UK. Advertisers can also utilize incremental household reach, a post-campaign reporting solution, to measure incremental audience reached. By combining first-party and third-party signals, advertisers can ensure accurate, aggregated results augmented by machine learning-based projections.

11. Amazon Marketing Stream

Amazon Marketing Stream launched globally in October 2022, with the exception of India. By expanding to all countries within the Amazon Ads API, this new service delivers hourly campaign metrics to advertisers’ AWS accounts via a push-based model. It provides details such as targeting expression performance by placement and budget consumption messages. 

Advertisers can expect additional hourly Sponsored Display data to come soon, which can be used for further campaign optimization. Amazon goes on to say that brands can benefit from Amazon Marketing Stream in the following ways: 

• Optimize campaigns more effectively
• Respond quickly to campaign changes
• Improve operational efficiency 

12. Amazon Marketing Cloud 

Currently, Amazon advertisers can utilize ad signals of Sponsored Products and Amazon DSP media. With the recent addition of Sponsored Display signals in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), advertisers can dive deeper into cross-media attribution and better understand the customer journey. Along with the additional signals, companion instructional queries (IQs) were launched to guide advertisers on cross-media attribution, the overlap into Amazon DSP, and other common Sponsored Display analytics. 

Based on customer feedback, Amazon Ads has focused on building AMC capabilities across four areas: 

1. Signal coverage. Advertisers can now build queries to analyze bidding efficacy, cross-publisher attribution, and total reach through integration with Sizmek Ad Suite. These Sponsored Brands signals will be added in early 2023. 

This integration is valuable as it allows advertisers to measure the impact of non-Amazon media on Amazon conversions and achieve more comprehensive cross-channel attribution, further fine-tuning the planning strategy across each phase of the marketing funnel. 

Christina Bender, Director of Amazon Partnerships, noted, “If you use Amazon Attribution to measure the effectiveness of your non-Amazon media driving Amazon.com metrics, testing out Sizmek would be a natural next step to see how that data can be queried within AMC.”

2. Ease of use. Within the past year, AMC's Instructional Query library increased from 10 to more than 50 pre-built queries serving as advertising playbooks on AMC.  

3. Actionable insights. Brands will soon be able to manage their Amazon DSP audiences within AMC, enabling audience creation via an SQL statement. 

4. Partner programs. Ask us about your Amazon services!

Final thoughts from Amazon unBoxed

With the recent updates, Amazon has laid a landscape that brands can utilize for incremental business growth. A revenue increase in Q3 turned things around for Amazon, who reported total sales of $127 billion (a 15% increase compared to last year), and a 13% jump in ecommerce sales YoY.

That growth brings opportunities for brands to end the year on a strong note. Not keeping up with Amazon’s innovations may lead to missed opportunities in revenue, especially as it remains the go-to marketplace in the US. Through the power of storytelling and advertising, advertisers can showcase their brand story and products without the distractions of competitors or offers, on and off Amazon. 

There is a lot to unpack here, but our team is eager to explore these new rollouts with you! Reach out to an Amazon Ads Specialist today to game plan a winning strategy on the Amazon platform.

Owned digital products designate every digital platform whose code belongs to the brand. The terms “platforms” and “digital products” are often used interchangeably, but while the former can be mistaken for third-party channels like TikTok or IG, the latter is, in my opinion, a better name for a brand’s unique spaces. Marked by flexibility and potential for personalization, these digital products encompass everything from dotcoms to TV apps—and can serve whatever purpose brands deem necessary in meeting their goals and keeping with consumers’ desires.

Because there are no intermediaries, you can have full authority over the brand image that your digital products project. And that’s a big responsibility. What the brand experience looks and feels like on these platforms is how people will perceive your brand to be, so what should you prioritize when it comes to building your own digital products? 

Functionality, efficiency and innovation.

Back in the day, websites were unidirectional and served mostly as a source of information. Now, standards are higher. Whether we’re looking at content hubs or a smartwatch app, successful digital products must strike the right balance between functionality, efficiency and innovation. Consumers won’t stick around for websites that make it hard for them to find what they are looking for—or even worse, that don't fully work—but they will remain loyal to those that provide a seamless user experience.

That said, building functional websites from scratch is no easy feat. Because of this, many brands resort to auto-site builders—especially when it comes to ecommerce integrations. While this may temporarily fix the problem, website templates are not a permanent solution because it begs the question of whether consumers are going to be able to remember it. As they search for product options and scour through multiple tabs, will yours stand out among the rest?

Innovation is about creating the “wow” moments that will remain engraved in people’s minds, and adding interesting features that make a platform completely different from those of your competitors—even if your offering is similar. HP’s Possibility City, for example, is not just another ecommerce platform. Rather, it’s a showcase of HP’s digital printing presses that doubles as a hub to house sales events—from product presentations and webinars to one-on-one demos. And while visitors explore the brand’s lineup, the platform learns from their interests and provides them with tailored content recommendations.

Data and personalization: the next frontier of loyalty.

Provided that your platform is intuitive in its use and delightful in its appearance, the next step is to offer personalized features that make the experience truly unique. To get there, you need the data analytics infrastructure to provide valuable information about your consumers and a team of experts who can turn that into actionable insights.

I always work closely with the data team on both the company and the client side to improve our customer understanding. On one hand, a strong first-party data framework can help you identify how consumers are moving across the ecosystem—where they click, how they behave and where they find friction points. By designing around these general trends, you can deliver a more seamless experience for all.

On the other hand, individual data unlocks a new world of possibilities in terms of personalization. With Possibility City, for example, we included a virtual assistant that learns from visitor preferences—whether they’re looking for efficiency, sustainability, security or other priorities—and guides them through the brand’s offering. We also tied the platform into a CRM funnel that helps automate the closing of sales, keeping us informed of customer needs and how to improve efficiency. 

Designing around your business priority.

In addition to collaborating with data experts, my team and I work closely with the business consulting unit, as they can provide valuable insights into a brand’s digital roadmap and long-term business goals. Digital products should be built around this vision—not only to help brands achieve their goals quicker; also, to ensure their platforms are one-of-a-kind. 

In working with multiple airlines throughout my career, for example, I found that while some needs were universal, no two business models were ever alike. Options like “book a flight,” “check-in,” or “see my reservation” were common currency—but while certain brands simply wanted a functional app to help travelers organize their trips, others sought to raise the average ticket value by encouraging consumers to opt for upgrades, extra bags and other add-ons. The mere act of designing around these priorities made each platform totally different from the next. 

The bottom line is that digital products are as much the translation of your business as they are the embodiment of your brand identity. To get the most out of them, you need to understand your consumers and, above all, your own brand. In working with clients, my goal is to help them create differentiated products that drive their business forward, and it’s the brand’s values and identity that ultimately do the trick. By taking identifiable brand elements and combining them with functional, innovative and personalized digital products, we can create a truly memorable brand experience that forges deeper connections with your audience.

That said, economic uncertainty has prompted shoppers to search for the best deals and product value ahead of Black Friday, making the preparation window for sellers much shorter than in previous years. What’s more, Salesforce anticipates that 51% of consumers will purchase fewer holiday gifts this time around.

To help you reach consumers when they are ready to buy and make the most of this season, we built a list of tips that will get every aspect of your ecommerce business up to speed. With excess inventory, inflationary pressures and other unprecedented events, it’s vital to give your Amazon seller strategy the final tweaks it needs to positively impact your sales in Q4. Here’s what you need to know.

Consider these key seller dates.

According to Amazon, these are some of the main dates and events to prepare for. Be sure to mark your calendar so that you don’t miss any opportunities.

• August 3rd - Holiday promotion submissions open in Vendor Central and Seller Central.
• September 17th - Deadline to submit 7-day deals, Best Deals, and Lightning Deals.
• October 21st to November 17th - Inbound shipping cutoff for vendors: Deal inventory must be in transit.
• October 24th to November 17th - FBA inventory cut-off date for sellers: Shipments should arrive well before the key shopping dates for the holiday season. Inventory should arrive at fulfillment centers by this date.

Set relevant goals.

Once you’ve marked the critical Amazon holiday deadlines on your calendar, start preparing the required elements and thinking about budget allocation across this prolonged season. Amazon advertising and promotion budgets should be specifically planned around these peak dates. 

As you start campaign planning, it’s important to set realistic expectations and key performance indicators that you can regularly keep track of on your data dashboard. If you’re uncertain what those should be, consider building out KPIs for each one of the steps outlined here, and keep in mind that your numbers may differ from other seasons. Audiences are often subject to change during the holidays, which is why our experts recommend determining your audience pre-holiday season to better plan your campaigns and initiatives.

A good step is to leverage past sales data (including Prime Day) to inform your strategy and goal-setting for this year. This will also help when it comes to inventory planning.

Become retail ready.

As we always say, advertising drives the most highly-qualified traffic, and retail readiness drives conversion. But what does it mean to be retail-ready? 

1. Inventory management

First, ensure you have an inventory plan in place. The sooner you can determine which products you plan on selling and guarantee you're not facing any inventory issues such as spoilage, deadstock, or low or high inventory levels, the sooner you can plan your other business elements. A fundamental part of managing inventory is reviewing your past sales to forecast this year's. Analyze your products' historical data, their performance during Prime Day, and which of your items (and your competitors’) could skyrocket during the holidays.

The next step is to ship your inventory to Amazon fulfillment centers before November 2 for Black Friday and December 1 for Christmas. With shipping and inventory in place, you can move on to advertising strategies, promotions, product detail pages and catalogs according to the products you have in stock.

2. Optimized content on Amazon

Product detail pages are vital for driving conversions and building trust with your customers, so spend time optimizing your pages' critical elements, then split-testing your work. We recommend starting with your product detail pages and A+ content. Ideally, this should begin as early as possible as A+ content takes the longest to build out. We encourage sellers to start preparing their creative in September.

If you’re not sure whether you need to update your A+ content, ask yourself: are we using comparison charts? Are we using all five modules? What about Brand Story? If the answer is no, it’s probably a good time to take another look at your content. What’s more, you can take the opportunity to refresh your current images and add holiday themes and festive overlays. Your images should sell the product on their own. Once creative is produced, add it to the platform to ensure Amazon approves it in advance.

Brand Stores should also be tailored for the holiday season. One strategy for your Brand Store is to create "store versions," where you can duplicate a page in your store, update the images, videos, or layout and schedule that version to run during a predesignated period. Store versions are helpful for quick updates that you wouldn't want to carry over into the new year or past a specific peak season. Another strategy is adding a Holiday Favorites page and running Sponsored Brand Ads. These should be done at least a month in advance. 

Our tip for optimizing copy is to review your top ASINs ahead of time to determine the top sellers and ensure they have robust titles, bullets, and descriptions. Be careful when adding keywords like "gift" or "present" in your listings during the holiday season, as it goes against Amazon policies. Instead, be strategic in how you are updating your listing copy and backend terms, determine what highly qualified keywords competitors are using and aim to be informative to your target customer.

3. Keyword Research

The months leading into Q4 and the holiday season are great times to conduct keyword research, update your current list and search for holiday-centric keywords to evaluate every opportunity.

Develop a competitive promotional strategy.

We can’t depend on consumers searching across e-retails, we need to stand out among the competition with an attractive promotional strategy. Some of the Amazon promotions that can come in handy during this long holiday season are:

1. Amazon Coupons (run time of up to 90 days)

Flexible and low-cost, these are great for driving velocity and increasing sales.

2. Best Deal/7-Day Deals (run time of up to two weeks for Vendors and one week for Sellers)

These are brand awareness tools that are better suited for well-established brands on the platform. The discount minimums are high, and merchandising fees are required.

3. Lightning Deals (run time of up to 12 hours)

Similar to above, these are high-cost brand awareness tools. They also have rigid approval policies and, even if approved, they are not guaranteed to run. Longer run times allow for more traffic to be driven to detail pages.

4. Promo Codes (run time of up to 120 days)

Great for brands with a strong social media presence or marketing campaigns. These can attract customers to buy on the channel and capture new purchases. Promo codes are the best option for specific targeting and having more control over the audience you reach.

It’s important to keep in mind that deals have a submission deadline. This year, it fell on September 17th for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Also, review run times to better plan out your season’s promotional strategy.

Consider these Amazon Advertising best practices.

Once you have everything in place to be retail-ready, Amazon Advertising is necessary to unlock growth over the holiday season. It will not only help with competitive visibility; it can also improve organic rank and drive incremental sales when done correctly.

Considering the budgets you have determined in your goal-setting phase, you should start building your advertising campaigns based on your objectives. If you are a new seller with a new product, we recommend you begin your advertising efforts as soon as possible. Three months is the minimum to gather data and gain relevance within the algorithm. 

For sellers with existing products, give yourself at least a month in advance to begin new campaigns or refresh your current ones. Your products have triggered the flywheel or rank organically, so they will have an easier time staying relevant during the holiday season. Build awareness in advance through high-volume seasonal search terms—leading up to higher-converting campaigns to retarget and capture those early visitors when they are ready to buy.

Last but not least, examine your data and metrics regularly to ensure your holiday advertising strategy is as optimized as possible throughout the season. 

Recap the peak season.

The work you or your agency have to do on Amazon doesn’t end after the holidays. It’s fundamental to look back at your wins and losses over the last couple of months to guide your 2023 planning and continue to drive visibility on the platform.

Some ways to recap the season include:

• Reviewing analytics to measure your successes (or failures) and your competitors’.
• Paying attention to customer feedback through reviews, cancellations and returns.
• Applying learnings to your New Year planning.
• Refreshing your keyword lists, ads and content to remove seasonal copies and imagery.

All in all, it’s never too late to set your business up for success. While the task may seem daunting, spending your time and effort on a brief list of products that move the needle is what will pay off. Follow these steps, make relevant optimizations and results will follow.

Learn more information about our Amazon Services.

Each one of these events has attained international relevance, playing a fundamental role in the sales of brands everywhere. Yet in the race to capitalize on them, many campaigns fall short of their true potential—whether they know it or not. The fact is, Black Friday can be much more than a one-off event to boost your sales for a few days. It’s a priceless opportunity to establish a lasting relationship with consumers all year long. 

Experiences That Stand on Their Own

A lot has been said about how to gear up for Black Friday—and with good reason. Its massiveness has turned the event into an advertising frenzy that spans a myriad of categories, products and services, which make it increasingly hard for a brand to stand out. As a response, sales are now popping up weeks before the event—to the point where some argue that Black Friday has long moved beyond its original meaning. 

But if anything, these changing dynamics stress the importance of enhancing the customer experience and establishing a relationship that will last far longer than the event itself. “You’re not only competing with other brands; you’re also competing against ad fatigue,” explains Platforms Lead Brook Downton.

A good example of this is what Tmall did for Singles’ Day. In the lead-up to the event, the Chinese website for online retail launched an immersive art exhibition where they showcased eight limited-edition collections from leading brands in the form of NFTs. In putting these experiences together, it’s not imperative to keep Black Friday at the center of it all. The ultimate goal is to provide an added value for consumers, so approach it with a customer-first mindset and let the event be merely the amplifier of an experience that stands on its own. 

Getting to Know Your Consumers

By the start of the Black Friday season, you should have a clear idea of who your consumers are, their behavior and nuances. But if your marketing efforts go according to plan, you can expect a significant influx of new data during these days—both from new and existing consumers. Knowing how to leverage the new data can help you carry this momentum forward, and provide tools you’ll fall back on in the quieter months of the year.

“At this stage, good data management is the equivalent of remembering our conversations with people,” says Gastón Fossati, VP of Data Growth, LATAM at Media.Monks. Having control over this data will bring your consumers’ needs into sharper focus. And when it comes to new shoppers, don’t look at Black Friday as the end of something; rather, as the start of an ongoing strategy. “In this scenario, the conversion already happened, it’s the opposite of what we’re used to,” says Downton. “Have a follow-up moment, acknowledge that new engagement and start building from there.”

That first touchpoint after Black Friday can take many forms, but Downton recommends giving consumers the opportunity to reconfirm their desire to connect with your brand and exchange information. In doing so, it’s important to demonstrate the value exchange that you offer—that is, the more personalized suite of services and benefits that having accurate data can lead to. 

Paving the Way for an Ongoing Relationship

Once the consumer has shown true enthusiasm about engaging with your brand, you can move forward with other marketing efforts, such as a cross-selling strategy. “Considering the products that your consumer already bought to recommend others is a great way to better serve your audience with a more personalized experience,” says Fossati. “It can also be helpful to have a model in place to predict their lifetime value, which will help you focus on the consumers with more potential.”

This point illustrates that the difference between a brand that waits for Black Friday to see their sales ramp up and one that builds on this date to maintain a consistent cycle lies in data management. In order to continue to reap the benefits of Black Friday weeks after the event, it’s important to nurture your relationship with consumers—something you can’t do unless you show up for them and provide real value.

Traditional data practices are en route to disappearing—and while working on a first-party strategy may feel daunting, that shouldn’t be the case. For most brands, the only thing preventing them from truly regaining control over their data is a matter of priorities. Knowing that Google will block third-party cookies in 2023, there’s still a misconception that developing a first-party data strategy is not urgent, when in fact, it’s never been more relevant. 

Now is the time to invest in modern solutions that provide valuable insights. While planting the seeds of anticipation with marketing campaigns and exclusive sales is essential, there’s as much to be done—if not more—after Black Friday. This year, aim at making data-driven decisions that incentivize consumers to keep coming back for more, and you’ll have the key to a consistent sales cycle.

There’s been much ink spilled about emerging consumer behaviors of the new digital era, and of the spending mindset brought about by the proliferation of ecommerce. From the fear of missing out on in-demand products as they run out of stock to the popularity of retail therapy, consumers are changing why, how and when they buy—and online shopping has become an essential part of the equation. This shift spans a plethora of categories, from luxury items to grocery delivery, and will continue to expand as ecommerce expands to more industries.

These changes were accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic—which, for instance, came with a steep increase in mobile online shopping. Although the possibility to shop from anywhere is not necessarily new, the comfort level reached during lockdown surely is—and it has caused old habits to go the way of the horse and carriage for most consumers. With Cinderella Shopping growing strong and steady in Asia and beyond, it’s time to reassess our strategies and consider the new opportunities that are opening up.

The Rise of a New Trend 

Before Shopee’s Midnight Mega Sale, the brand had already noticed a not-so-subtle tendency toward late-night shopping. It was their curiosity about this pattern that prompted them to do a midnight sale in the first place—a bid to target those audiences with flash deals that were available only during the first two hours of the day. Surprisingly, the sale recorded six times more purchases than on any average occasion, which incentivized the ecommerce platform to keep on rewarding these late-night shoppers with more benefits. 

This trend is not limited to any region or industry. As Global Head of Innovation & Social, I’ve witnessed the phenomenon first hand with one of the world’s largest producers of electronics. Not long ago, we supported a live event in Italy to promote the brand’s new product offerings, and saw the highest conversion rates between 10 and 11 PM, seven hours after the livestream had ended. At first, I was surprised by the stats, but with consumers being able to access on-demand content anytime and anywhere, it’s only natural that they will do so when they see fit. Moreover, it’s fair to assume that consumers may want to take their time to research the product before buying.

This isn’t to say that your efforts should exclusively focus on the wee hours of the night. Peak timings in general stand between 8 and 9 PM, but if consumers are skewing towards new routines, looking into—and rewarding—these late-night shoppers can be worth it. After all, all uncharted territory is a good opportunity to stand out among your competitors.

You Can’t Put the Same Shoe on Every Foot

When we think about the reasons that may have led to this sudden rise in late-night shopping, many different factors come to mind. One thing, though, is key: where it would normally be impossible to go to a store after a certain hour, the proliferation of online shopping made it feasible for consumers to purchase at any time.

Although late-night shopping can be commonly associated with impulsive purchases that are cancelled the morning after, this is not always the case. For some, the frenzy of the work day prevents them from finding the time to sit down and fill the shopping cart, or research the products they’re interested in buying. At midnight, though, when the household is asleep and the phone has stopped ringing, it’s easier to focus. At the same time, checking something off the to-do list helps people sleep more soundly, which explains why some may feel the urge to click the ‘order’ button before hitting the sack. 

You can’t put the same shoe on every foot, but you can try and see where the footprints lead to. That is, take the time to get to know your audience. By following their patterns, you’ll be able to provide a customer experience that adapts and responds to their habits—whether with online shopping, virtual events or any kind of content.

How to Be the Belle of the Ball

Once you’ve gotten familiar with your consumers, their behaviors and nuances, it’s important to deliver experiences that will reward and incentivize them. One way to do this is by offering special flash deals for night owls—but you can move further up in the funnel, too. After witnessing how our livestream views scaled later in the day, my team and I decided to complement future day-time streams with additional content for our audiences to enjoy later if they had missed the action live. 

Seeking new partnerships can also expand your reach. This includes marketplaces that can add visibility and sales, but also celebrities and content creators that will allow you to tap into their fanbase. It’s not merely about capitalizing on their followers; with creators that consumers already love, you can make shopping a more innovative and social experience that connects the dots across the entire customer journey. For their Mega Midnight Sale, Shopee offered users a unique experience with K-pop girl group Mamamoo, who performed through Shopee Live. 

This serves as a great example of how you can draw new audiences into your existing deals and benefits. Even when consumers are not necessarily in shopping mode, the right content and the right time can set the mood. Think about it: if audiences are leveraging the last couple of hours before going to sleep to make purchases, they must be using the time to watch other types of content, too. We know revenge bedtime procrastination is real, so take the opportunity to interact with your consumers when it works for them. That is, when they actually have the time to engage.  

Cinderella Shopping is still an emerging trend, but just like with any new audience, it’s never too soon to build a relationship. To do so, start by making sure you’re familiar with your consumers’ behavior, and give yourself the opportunity to experiment with new ways to target, incentivize and reward those with new habits. You can’t just wave the magic wand to engage with late-night shoppers, but the more equipped you are, the higher the chances of delivering a successful strategy that supports emerging behaviors while rewarding your most loyal customers.

The way people gather and connect has undoubtedly changed. So, through our BrandLab partnership with Mercado Libre—Latin America's dominant ecommerce platform—we helped beverage brand Diageo and cookware brand Jade Cook find meaningful ways to connect with consumers. The recipe for success? A digital destination that provides brand-new experiences for shoppers.

Spark Curiosity Through Exclusivity

To improve the user experience within Mercado Libre and motivate consumers to learn more about Diageo—one of the world’s largest producers of spirits and beers—we developed Speakeasy Market, a digital destination like no other. “Just like 100 years ago, restrictions are preventing us from enjoying bars, so millions of Mexicans are now purchasing spirits in Mercado Libre,” says Creative Director Pablo Tajer. “We know this trend is here to stay, and it inspired us to replicate the speakeasy concept online.” Hidden within the platform, shoppers can only access the brand’s landing page with a secret code. Once inside, they get exclusive benefits like free shipping and recipes to prepare cocktails at home.

“With Speakeasy Market, shoppers can enjoy special discounts and unique recipes through video tutorials,” adds Digital Producer Matías Villagra Herrera. “The catalog and cocktails are constantly renewed, so there’s always something new to find.” But just like any speakeasy, this one has its rules. To keep the site secret, consumers were asked to be discreet and share the link only with people they trust—guaranteeing the exclusivity of the first virtual liquor store on the ecommerce platform. “By limiting access in the first stage, we created more buzz, engagement and media coverage,” explains Tajer. 

Speakeasy Market helped improve the brand’s position on the platform, but to make it work, influencers were key in finding consumers where they are. During the first week of the campaign, they were the only ones who knew how to access the site—and through their Instagram accounts, they gave their audiences subtle clues to figure out the secret codes, which had to be typed into Mercado Libre’s search box. This is a great example of how new rituals and habits open the door to innovation. In doing so, customer-obsessed organizations always have an easier time finding their consumers and figuring out how to engage them. 

Motivating Consumers With Real Interaction

Think about your favorite recipe. Maybe it’s your father’s risotto, or your grandma’s chicken pie. Perhaps it’s one you came up with yourself. Either way, there’s nothing quite as emotionally powerful as one’s favorite foods and the memories that come with them. For food brands, finding ways to evoke those feelings and truly connect with people are key parts of their job—and it can’t be done through TV ads alone.

From mobile ads to creative content, BrandLab facilitated Jade Cook’s virtualization, putting Mercado Libre at the center of the experience. The core element of this transformation is a hub within the platform, where shoppers can find all the information they need about the products they’re interested in, with each purchase just one click away. More importantly, the landing page features video content on the brand’s top offers. One of them is the “Cook With Taste” campaign: if customers share a recipe alongside a photo of a completed dish made using Jade Cook cookware, they receive a rebate of 15% of the cost of the cookware used.

“At a time in which we’re talking about cryptocurrencies, online payments and ewallets, we found an opportunity to connect with consumers through something that had never been monetized before: their recipes,” says Tajer. In addition to getting a discount—and as the main ingredient on a broader user-centric strategy—shoppers will become part of the brand’s first user-made cookbook. “Recipes have always been valuable, but more so now than ever.” 

Available in both print and digital, the cookbook represents a unique way in which brands can interact with their customers and build loyalty. To power its journey toward virtualization, Jade Cook focused on the most valuable aspect of its products: the food people make with them. As a brand with almost no previous online presence, having this clear North Star helped guide their efforts through an equally demanding and necessary process. 

About the benefits of Jade Cook’s hub within Mercado Libre, Tajer explains, “New and existing shoppers can explore all the possibilities that the brand has to offer, which ultimately is BrandLab’s goal.” Jade Cook’s and Diageo’s landing pages are not the first ones to go live. Not long ago, the team released the L’Oréal Paris “Beauty Click” site, a digital destination for beauty product enthusiasts that balances commerce with content, such as makeup tutorials. Although each hub is designed according to the client’s needs, they all answer to a very clear, pressing urgency to facilitate the space for people to interact with the brand—and with each other. Once that space is provided, the customer experience is determined by the brand’s ability to evoke the right emotions and create something as engaging as food itself.

A Consumer Centric Experience Brings People Together

The customer experience is continually evolving—which means your strategies to reach consumers should, too. As long as your brand efforts are rooted in delivering high-quality, exciting experiences to consumers, you’ll be on the right track. For both Diageo and Jade Cook, the approach is ideally suited to helping the user make a more informed purchase decision—all through a disruptive strategy that attracts new consumers.

“Jade Cook’s main channel used to be TV commercials,” explains Digital Producer Matías Herrera. “But with TV, the consumer is limited to being a spectator, so we wanted to give them a chance to become the protagonist and truly interact with the brand in a way they weren’t able to before.” That’s the spirit of a consumer centric approach, and of BrandLab as a whole: to meet people’s changing needs, differentiate the brand and drive loyalty.

Particularly with a millennial audience, the desire to discover new things can be one of the most important emotional impulses driving their decision making. From rewarding the culinary creativity of consumers to creating an exciting, exclusive space within a popular platform—and everything in between—brands can engage their customers and evoke feelings of closeness that will build a stronger connection with them. Throughout this process, one thing is contingent to success: opening up the space for interaction.