Consumer buying habits have significantly shifted to digital over recent months. Ecommerce giant Amazon, achieved record growth in Q1 2020, seeing its largest increase ever in revenue for its online stores, with 24.3% growth in online store revenue alone. Now is the time for brands to change their consumer approach by building digital marketplace strategies that recognize and meet consumer needs across the entire customer decision journey, not just when they visit a marketplace to make a purchase.

One need only look at the rise in online grocery shopping to understand the increasing importance of ecommerce today: online grocery penetration is expected to meet (or exceed) 10% in the US, beating previous industry forecasts. While buying a mattress online may have felt strange and novel five years ago, today’s consumers don’t bat an eye by turning to digital marketplaces to discover, research and ultimately purchase products of all types.

Digital Marketplaces Double as Important Media Channels

This shift in user behavior has elevated the role online marketplaces as media channels that are important to telling the brand story to shoppers. “By serving ads to their customers at relevant moments, digital business professionals and commerce companies deliver a superior customer experience while also cultivating a rapidly growing new revenue stream with healthy margins,” writes Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali in the Forrester report, “Retailers: You’re The Next Media Moguls.”

One reason why advertising is so effective on these channels is because consumers are already in the shopping mindset when visiting a digital marketplace. “Mercado Libre has millions of users and visits each day, among different advertising formats,” says Pablo Tajer, Creative Director at MediaMonks Buenos Aires, discussing the most popular ecommerce giants in LatAm. “People that see these ads are already in shopping mode, which makes it much more powerful than seeing it on another channel where you’re not thinking about buying anything.” By connecting technology and creative, brands can lend greater value to an audience that is more receptive to learning about products and their features.

Identify Brand Opportunities Across the Full Digital Retail Ecosystem

Tajer leads our newly announced BrandLab partnership with Mercado Libre Publicidad. BrandLab serves as a team that highlights advertising opportunities for the biggest brands on the platform. Previously, Tajer fulfilled a similar role within Facebook’s Creative Shop. After receiving a brief from a brand, the BrandLab team helps build bespoke creative ideas that fit Mercado Libre’s formats and ecosystem, fulfilling a real need for brands that strive to differentiate and stand out in the user experience.

“The cool part is that we have an opportunity to create an idea that goes throughout the whole customer journey across Mercado Libre’s ecosystem,” says Tajer. “It can start with the branding on a product description page, then move to the payment step with the platform’s digital wallet (MercadoPago), and finally when you get the product itself through Mercado Libre’s shipping service.”

In this respect, to succeed in digital marketplaces brands must look beyond simply converting at a point of sale. Global ecommerce giants like Amazon in the US, Mercado Libre in LatAm or Alibaba in China are more than just marketplaces; they provide total ecosystems that include digital payment systems and delivery logistics networks. By managing each step of the customer journey—from awareness to purchase or even receiving the package itself—these ecommerce platforms offer several opportunities for brands to engage with their customers.

Inject the Brand Story into Your Ecommerce Efforts

The opportunity to embrace the total brand experience on ecommerce highlights a common misstep for brands selling and advertising on online marketplaces: the brand story is often missing from the equation. “It’s a platform that people view as purely performance based,” says Tajer. “It’s not just about performance, but also branding. Between searching for products and comparing which is better than another, there’s a lot more happening on an ecommerce platform than just clicking ‘buy.’”

For many consumers, a digital marketplaces is often the first place they visit for product searches. As important spaces for product discovery, it’s important that marketers don’t assume consumers are visiting with a specific product already in mid—or are even aware of the brand before seeing its product listed. This highlights a need for brands to view ecommerce as an important space to build brand love and awareness through impactful creative storytelling. “We want to be a lighthouse that shows brands and their partners the way.” says Tajer, “Together, we can grow stronger, platform-specific campaigns that drive consumer value.”

Support your audiences across the creative experience journey.

Sectors of the retail industry have been hit especially hard with many businesses unable to open their physical doors. These brands are left to rely on big name retailers or pivot their approach to increase reach visibility to convert consumers digitally. To do so, many are seeking inspiration from the direct to consumer model to engage directly with their audiences and make their products more widely available. While retailers and brands have both incrementally invested in digital platforms more and more, year after year, these challenges show how the need to digitally transform has accelerated to keep up with shifting user behaviors.

At a time when consumers are craving entertainment and connection while at home, livestream commerce—evoking the idea of home shopping TV programs, but made more interactive—is an intriguing solution for brands to directly and authentically engage with audiences. As a response to increased video viewership of at-home audiences, the strategy builds on recent trends in shoppable social content and the rise of influencer partnerships.

China is No Stranger to Livestream Commerce

While it may be having a moment right now, livestream commerce isn’t new; Taobao Live, the largest ecommerce streaming platform in China and owned by Alibaba, made $2.85 billion in sales on Singles Day (the country’s biggest shopping event) last year. The COVID-19-induced lockdown in China has increased the popularity of the platform even further; in February, merchants on the platform raised by 719%, according to Glossy.

Much of the appeal of livestreaming commerce is its ability to mix engaging, interactive content with brand stories. JD.com, another ecommerce platform in China, hosted online “e-clubbing” events featuring musical performances and DJ sets—and the ability to buy liquor in a few taps, replicating the social experience of being at an actual club.

How Western Brands Are Experimenting with Shoppable Content

In the west, Amazon has similarly mixed commerce and content with its “Twitch Sells Out” event for Prime Day, enlisting influencers and content creators in the gaming space to showcase items on sale that are relevant to the content they typically put out—for example, listing their streaming setup, gaming equipment or merchandise for a favorite game franchise. More than just a one-off event, Amazon employees livestream commerce on its Amazon Live platform, where brands and influencers broadcast content with shoppable listings underneath.

Elsewhere, other platforms have begun experimenting with shoppable advertisements. Instagram Checkout, lets users discover and purchase products right within the feed, and Levi’s has had success with a similar feature on TikTok. In the linear TV space, NBCUniversal has introduced NBCUniversal Checkout, making content across the brand shoppable. Emarketer’s Q1 2020 Digital Video Trends report notes that NBC’s Peacock streaming service will include shoppable content among the ads that it serves.

While these examples aren’t live, their development suggests there is a general growing demand for content that converts. MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar notes that for many brands, conversion-based content remains top of mind as they consider ways to pivot existing strategies or continue to engage with audiences digitally.

“Brands are asking themselves if they need to keep the ‘content machine’ running,” he says. “If ecommerce and conversion-based content is an essential bucket, we can help fill it faster and more effectively by shifting from traditional production to tapping into influencers and livestreaming.”

While Social Distancing, Video is King

Over the course of the pandemic, at-home users have flocked to video content. According to data from WARC, 38% of consumers are watching more online video content now than they had before the pandemic. Out of that group, 73% say they expect to maintain that higher amount of viewing time. Among the most popular video content that people want to watch are how-to and tutorial videos, according to data from Hootsuite, a category that lends itself well to influencer content and B2B stories.

In fact, influencers are ideally situated to engage with new and existing customers with creative and livestreamed content. They are adept at using their voice and authority to recommend products to audiences and have built loyal followings through tutorial content—for example, the lucrative beauty space on YouTube that has catapulted popular vloggers into full-fledged business owners.

In response to the challenges that brands and retailers have felt due to the ongoing pandemic, our influencer activation team IMA recently offered a few solutions, including multichannel influencer campaigns that amplify voice and awareness across communities, as well as partnering with existing product advocates to carry business momentum on social media. Such strategies enable brands to reach consumers authentically, backed by a consolidated effort to ensure working teams can easily continue production safely at home and produce the stream remotely.

Build Value Through Assistive Content

While brands and retailers are focused on solving the “now,” they must also look ahead into how they will serve consumers throughout what may be a difficult year ahead. As consumers seek out content and connection that helps them understand and make the most of a new normal—whether that means staying sane while social distancing or stretching the value of a dollar—livestream commerce offers a great opportunity to build a brand relationship.

Despite being a vehicle for commerce, it doesn’t have to be too salesy—think about a retailer offering a live cooking show focused on recipes using ingredients that are already in the pantry, for example, or a makeup artist giving tutorials featuring “dupes,” or greater-value versions of popular cosmetics.

“This is the new family dinner, this is how we watch movies together,” says ter Haar on the innovative ways that people are connecting. “We’re building traditions now that we don’t yet know are traditions. User behavior is being built that will change how we use these tools and how we create and connect together.”

Now more than ever, brands and retailers must be there for their audiences. Through livestream commerce, brands can accommodate new user behaviors that have emerged and engage in authentic, informative ways with video content. Accommodating a need for connection and entertainment, the format is well tailored to building strategic relationships into the year ahead.

Physical activations are great for impressing an in-person audience, but they can pull double duty by engaging with audiences far away as well. In fact, they should.

The online buzz, PR and social media engagement produced by an impressive physical experience can be well worth the cost when done right. The secret to a good experience? It’s one that “compresses time and space,” says MediaMonks Director of US Production and Partnerships Chris Byrne. What might sound like witchcraft (or a scary sci-fi plot) is actually a simple strategy for producing experiences that engage far and wide—here’s how to achieve it.

Treat physical and digital experience as equals.

It might be tempting to privilege physical experience over digital, but an experience that truly engages with a distant audience must not treat digital as an afterthought. When planning out your experience, try considering first and foremost how to create an exciting experience for digital audiences, then look for answers on how physical elements can make it even cooler. The key is to provide your audience with the ability to make significant impacts on the experience no matter where they are in the world—not treat them as a passive viewership who’s watching everyone else have fun.

In addition to the typical geek-themed influencers you’d expect at Comic-Con, the Jack Ryan Experience also invited pro athletes like Ronda Rousey and Richard Sherman to take part. Their presence helped to stretch the experience’s appeal beyond just geek culture while maintaining relevance to the experience’s physically demanding challenges.

Physical and digital experiences go really well together—a bit more like peanut butter and jelly than oil and vinegar. Your approach to extending the reach of any physical experience, then, involves carefully considering how one audience’s actions support (or challenge) the other’s. By striking this balance, you should have little trouble extending your experience’s digital reach.

Curious what the Jack Ryan Experience was really like?

Early in its planning stages, the Jack Ryan Experience was conceived as a game of laser tag in which IRL participants were pitted against the internet. It eventually ballooned into a 60,000 square-foot hyperreal obstacle course that took the form of a Middle East black site, though one quality remained from the beginning: both digital and IRL participants were supported in equal measure. In the project’s final iteration, the competitive aspect between those participating physically vs. online were retained by allowing Twitch viewers to launch attacks at participants while they watched live.

If flashy explosions rendered in VR seem outside the realm of your budget, don’t despair. “It’s not about the size of the interaction, but how you do it,” says Byrne. What really makes the digital interaction click for Twitch viewers of the Jack Ryan Experience is that they get instant visual feedback and can see how their presence makes a mark on the environment by hindering the progress of those attending in-person.

Ask participants to share the fun.

Experiences that are given a life online aren’t bounded by physical constraints, nor should they be bounded by time. Even if your experience or activation takes place during an event, a smart multichannel strategy should allow it to extend beyond the confines of its event or hosting stage. From microsites that promote the experience before and after to highlighting key user-generated content (UGC) collected over its course, plan for ways to attract audiences no matter where—or when—they browse.

UGC played a key role in the Jack Ryan experience’s success. At the experience’s bazaar segment, for example, participants were tasked to fulfill small missions that involved puzzle-solving, engaging with actors and taking photos. These small challenges helped participants insert themselves into the world of an IP, then share that experience with their friends. Automatic video capture also provided participants with a custom video of their visit that they could also share to social media.

Some participants even walked away with some swag, which also provided them with something to share and brag about online. And that’s an important note to remember: UGC also has the potential to ignite a sense of fear of missing out (FOMO) in digital audiences, prompting them to sniff out more information or to follow along with the event from afar. In fact, encouraging FOMO was among the top goals for the Jack Ryan experience to build buzz: “The throughput wasn’t the intent,” Eric Shamlin told the audience at the DigitalLA summit. “FOMO and social conversation were the intent, along with PR response.” Consumers want to strike a human connection through digital media, and sharing their good experiences—wish you were here!—is a key way to do it.

Broaden the audience with influencers.

One key way to share the fun is to invite influencers to participate in your experience, then broadcast their impressions to their online audience. While partnering with influencers aligned with your niche is a great idea, you might also consider working with someone who can extend beyond the first demographics that come to mind.