Today’s digital commerce landscape is challenging and complex, yet it has much to offer – and the decisions businesses make today can drive future digital growth exponentially.
In the post-pandemic era, digital commerce businesses are confronting questions of how to continue their growth and offerings amidst the return of physical commerce as pandemic restrictions ease. At the same time, macroeconomic challenges such as rising inflation and ongoing supply chain disruptions are leading many businesses to evaluate the role that digital commerce plays as a sales channel and its part in the path to purchase.
As a result, they are discovering tech-enabled solutions that can help them get through this challenging period.
To help guide businesses through shifting consumer behaviours, Meta and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) set about examining the digital commerce landscape and have developed a framework to help businesses better understand the challenges specific to their business archetype and build a roadmap for success.
Monica Wegner, from Boston Consulting Group, and Harry Lowes, from Meta, speak with Mumbrella about the whitepaper that followed this research, where they present a series of recommendations designed to position brands like yours for future digital success.
You work with a wide range of clients on their digital commerce needs. What are some of the priorities and growth challenges that are top of mind for them right now?
Wegner: The global pandemic impacted the digital space to a great extent, as it accelerated and cemented digital commerce, bringing a shift in consumers’ needs and expectations. It’s important for businesses to respond to this shift in expectations as it continues to evolve, as more first-time digital buyers join the segment, and a large portion of existing customers are buying more products across expanded categories online. At the same time, 75% of customers expect retailers to understand their individual needs. As such, mass-market advertising is driving lower engagement, while personalised content marketing at scale can more efficiently communicate specific value propositions, targeted at those individual needs.
Lowes: Businesses are shifting from building digital transformation fundamentals, to delivering ‘what’s next’ in terms of customer experience. They are looking to understand and connect the data they have to understand their performance drivers. To deliver this, they need to ensure their digital ecosystem is connected to partners who can provide data across the customer lifecycle, to allow them to make investment decisions that drive business growth. It’s critical that businesses increase their focus on technology infrastructure, and think about who they can partner with in different sectors to understand and measure performance effectively.
What do you think organisations should prioritise as they look to navigate and adapt to the changing digital commerce landscape?
Wegner: Prioritise a refreshed, customer-led offer. This means focusing on the right core offer with an omni-channel proposition by transforming online and offline journeys to provide a frictionless and seamless user experience.
They should also prioritise developing a resilient operation mode. For instance, building supply chain resilience through proactive supplier and risk management, expanded contingency inventory, and digital supply chains supported by control towers can provide visibility and help companies understand their risks and exposure levels.
All of these efforts contribute to becoming a truly customer-centric organisation, leveraging the power of deep customer insight and advanced analytics.
Lowes: Depending on industry and life-stage, organisations will approach this differently, but the core challenge remains to understand the key drivers of performance for their specific business archetype. At Meta, we’re focused on supporting client growth, and this whitepaper is a great example of that as it not only allows clients to identify their key focus areas based on their business archetype, but also helps them to chart a unique pathway to growth.
Meta’s Harry Lowes, Director ANZ
Can you elaborate by sharing an example on what this would look like for businesses across different stages of growth?
Lowes: Businesses need to understand the nuances of their customer acquisition strategies. Company priorities at each stage of growth differs, with early stage companies focusing on customer acquisitions, whilst more mature companies can look to increasing the lifetime value of customers.
Wegner: Most digital commerce businesses face the same overarching challenges in growth. Based on our findings, we’ve identified three key stages of growth across the areas of customer engagement, expansion, and tech capabilities. How businesses solve for these challenges differs based on their archetype and life stage, and the whitepaper is a useful blueprint to use as a starting point when thinking through these challenges.
Boston Consulting Group’s Monica Wegner, Managing Director and Partner
How do you think businesses can cut through the digital clutter to stay engaged with their customers?
Wegner: It’s critical to demonstrate that you know your customer well, and engage them through unique marketing formats. Be strategic and purposeful with your digital communication, create content unique to your brand, don’t put out content for content’s sake. For example, instead of simply using product photos to market your business, incorporate other types of visuals such as consumer-generated media, interactive content, engaging videos and virtual reality. Personalise that content to your audiences, so it has the most relevance.
Lowes: Ultimately, it comes down to the ways you engage with your audience. Be targeted and clear on what is the value proposition your brand offers customers. At Meta, we encourage our clients to think holistically about consumer engagement. For example, if consumers are looking for customer service, is messaging an option to serve them? If they’re looking for product information, do you provide reviews on the site?
How can business leaders have confidence that the choices they make today can drive future growth?
Lowes: Businesses need to have a long-term vision for growth in addition to their short-term targets, and have high quality data to support decision making. If you understand what your business’s growth drivers are, then the investment strategies you make today should enable future growth.
Wegner: Proven drivers fall into four categories: brand direction, consumer discovery, digital commerce and seamless fulfilment. The whitepaper is a really useful resource to explore these areas, as it condenses insights from best-in-class players across each archetype and can help other businesses understand those drivers of growth. There is an opportunity to learn from winners who have out-performed in this space, from the strategic choices they made.
META OFFERS THE BLUEPRINT FOR DIGITAL COMMERCE SUCCESS
Read the new whitepaper from Meta and BCG, ‘Digital Commerce: The Roadmap to Growth in a Post-Pandemic Era’.
Based on insights from digital commerce business leaders, Boston Consulting Group has identified 4 business archetypes along with a unique growth roadmap with suggestions of where to focus to scale sustainably.
The four archetypes include: Rising D2C Heroes, Thriving Marketplace Operators, Omnipresent Trailblazers, and Digitizing Powerhouses.
Which one are you? Click here to learn more.