Why hyper-relevance is the aim of the game

hyper-relevance
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There’s no denying that in the always-on era, marketers are facing fierce competition to attract attention and get their content in front of the right consumers’ eyeballs. Coupled with apathy towards intrusive digital advertising, with pop-up blockers ever more prevalent, SMEs are particularly facing increasingly challenging conditions with increased pressure to prove their value.

For instance, Criteo’s recent Why We Buy Survey reinforced that pricing is the main factor determining whether a customer will stay loyal to a brand in Australia, with 57 per cent of Australians purchasing a new brand if they’re offered a discount. The study found that if retailers don’t offer a cheaper price than competitors, consumers will swap allegiances, with 54 per cent of Aussies returning to a brand if they offer the lowest price.

Discounts have traditionally enticed new customers to make impulse buys, often with brands that they may not have considered buying before. However, in today’s retail landscape, the number of sales available has completely diluted the market, challenging retailers to stay even more competitive.

Whilst ever-changing consumer attitudes and expectations towards brands can be challenging, they also present new opportunities. The diversification of channels provides more occasions to engage new audiences, sell more products and keep loyal customers informed. The proliferation of data now readily available to brands also make for more actionable and targeted insights, with new tools and capabilities providing scalability for marketing initiatives.

What’s clear is that consumers expect more from the brands they interact with, and as such, gone are the days of traditional marketing segmentation strategies. Customers are seeking a genuine value-add from the content they consciously choose to engage with – they expect these interactions to become part of their everyday life in a more meaningful way. For businesses, this means understanding their motivations, preferences and unique behaviours in real time.

With 55 per cent of Australians turning off when they see ads of products they’re not interested in, SMEs must change their attitudes towards advertising from a hinderance to the customer experience, to that of a close partnership.

Interestingly, 48 per cent of Australians said that online ads help them discover new products, so this shows us the importance of applying the unprecedented power of today’s explosion of digital technologies and the use of data, no matter how big or small. It’s not enough to simply offer the right product at the lowest price. Marketers must develop hyper-relevant, tailored experiences at the moments that matter most to consumers, and on their conditions.

While many SMEs recognise the value of data in creating hyper-relevant experiences for the 21st-century consumer, many still struggle to marry the technology with their mission.

Fortunately, the necessary tools to enact the scale needed for this type of change is readily available. Advertising platforms, such as Criteo, are helping small businesses create hyper-personalised and hyper-integrated forms of delivering campaigns and will fast become a must-have for all marketing strategies to drive customer loyalty, hence revenue and business growth.

Colin Barnard, Commercial Director – ANZ, Criteo