Creating shoppable moments everywhere

The second day of the ad:tech New Delhi saw a mix of marketers and creators delve deeper into the nitty gritty of influencer marketing, shoppable moments and its essence in the modern digital world. 

Kickstarting the session, Rubeena Singh, Country Manager- India and MENA, Anymind, stated that the days where marketers would linchpin their campaigns on 30-seconds are over because today’s younger people in the times to come will get more sceptical about brands self-proclaiming and saying all the good things about themselves. 

Singh also went on to add that in the current times, influencer marketing has moved down from creating brand awareness or top funnel values to now generating sales and other lower funnel values for consumers at large. 

Upon being questioned as to how consumer journeys have been changing in the past few years and what is Vega doing to get discovered as a brand, Eiti Singhal, Chief Marketing Officer, Vega, replied that the way India is today moving ahead with social influencers, entertainment is literally becoming about performance.

She further emphasised that albeit Bollywood, cricket, sports, etc., everything is today moving down to the bottom funnel KPIs and the idea is how can one make everything performance oriented- whether it is a set KPI for the brand like awareness to the last mile conversion of the consumer.

“The way each marketer operates today is not like a brand manager or a performance guy as they are required to wear both hats and that’s something that I have seen through and through that with the evolution of brands, the brand team is no more just the brand team but a fusion or a hybrid model that exists within,” Singhal said.

Furthermore, she also went on to point out that since 2019, if one resorts to dividing the digital landscape and the mediums within it, Social has gone to become almost the same because there are multiple platforms that are there in the current times like Snapchat, apart from the big ones like the ones that belong to Meta. 

“Online video which as a matter of fact was the biggest entertainment earlier is now becoming a far bigger influencing point from search to consideration to purchase and YouTube is becoming the biggest influencing platform or a medium for someone who requires post-purchase considerations. Therefore, performance is not what it used to be earlier or just a transaction but much more beyond that,” she said.

Moving on, Vega’s Singhal also highlighted that today it is not inverted or non-linear but haphazard which is why a lot of marketers are at a fix that what is it that we’re not doing great and then put the business mind into it along with the brand.

“Where we’re heading towards is a lot of opportunities and scope for a lot of fragmentation and direct targeting and be increasingly niche about who we want to go after and then really measure their journey till the end or post-purchase,” she stated.

As per Leema Mahajan, Nutrition Coach, Weight Loss Specialist, and Nutrition and Health Educator, influencer marketing has really helped brands to reach out to their target audience depending on the creator’s content types and that influencer ads are the bridge between the brand and the consumer, because creators are the ones who understand their target audience very well and promote things to the consumers in a way which is easier for them to understand rather than a direct sale on their face.

“I think that’s where the influencers are helping by reaching and penetrating more deeper into the consumers' mind space. In fact, there is always a thread that’s going on in the comment section of influencer-brand posts wherein brands not just interact with the consumers but also get an understanding of what are their pain points and where the product is reaching the consumer amongst others,” she added.

Furthermore, Anymind’s Singh also shared the opinion that influencers really share a rapport with their followers and that is precisely why influencer marketing builds trust and helps brands to give their messages to the influencer’s followers.

As per Akshay Mathur, Chief Revenue Officer, Tyroo, there are two shoppable moments - planned moments and impulse buying. “Depending on which strategy we want to go with, we can plan moments, shoppable moments, etc., it becomes really important for brands to have the right target audience, contextual engaging in contextual advertising, ability to engage, etc,” he said.

Elaborating on how brands like Vega look at creating shoppable moments which are impulse-based rather than planning them, Singhal emphasised that since everything today is highly searched, the creation of shoppable moments depends on the category of the brand. 

“I think marketers will have to be a little planned when it comes to creating a shoppable journey for the consumer or else it’ll become too haywire. Having said that, moment marketing does become important when one wants to continuously be relevant to consumers and engage with them and create that mind recall, but for serious long-term business impact, it has to be a little planned in terms of how one needs to go about creating that shoppable journey for the consumer,” she added.

Elaborating as to how she as a creator creates shoppable moments for her followers, Mahajan shared the belief that brands need to trust the influencers when they want an innovative turf or an innovative reel or an innovative product to be coming out because the influencer has already grown his/her audience organically and therefore understands their nerve.

“We as influencers are not just creating content but are also engaging with our audience day in and day out because we also need to know more about our audience in terms of their nerves, their pain points and probably collaborate with brands that would help them get the right solution which is why we do Instagram live, Q&A, polls, etc.” she added.