Think Taiwan e-commerce businesses is missing out on overseas markets? Online design e-commerce platform Pinkoi now has more than 53% followers from overseas, resulting from a successful Facebook and social media strategy.
“User-Centric” As Key to Driving Overseas Sales
With the popularity of smartphones on the rise, our phones have now become the focal point of our daily lives, becoming the main source of information for most users. This has certainly influenced e-commerce services greatly, with mobile content being the main channel for marketing,and modeling their business on the way mobile users behave.
With more than 2 billion active users on Facebook, online communities and e-commerce have become increasingly inseparable. Facebook xxx , Nicole Chou observes that most online businesses strategize and design their marketing content based on the mobile devices that users use, but in reality the times each user spend on their devices vary, so the emphasis should be put on the “user” themselves, instead of the “device”.
Chou states that, though traditional websites can garner consumer insights through cookie, but that is only through fragments of their online usage. Social media sites such as Facebook have the mechanism to capture a more holistic view of their online users, allowing users to follow fanpages or join groups that are of interest to them, liking specific posts that reveal their preferences and emotions. This makes way for a more precise future prediction and advertisement targeting. An increasing number of e-commerce and advertising businesses are choosing to work with Facebook, utilising their fanpage, groups, and advertising services to reach a wider range of users, and to conceive a closer relationship with users that traditional e-commerce websites are not able to achieve, and make it easier to interact and attract users to buy.
The biggest difference between traditional ecommerce and social media, is that the latter can create a more effective channel of communication with users, based on demographics and interests that users provide on social media. Users are able to keep up to date with the latest brand news, and even receive related information by following celebrities and from friend updates, being greatly beneficial to the current booming cross-border e-commerce.
Internet Marketing to Drive Growth of Cross-Border E-commerce and New Retail
There is no doubt that social media plays an important part in the daily lives of each and every mobile user. According to statistics, there are now 1 billion users on Facebook, and it is only reasonable that they come across foreign companies online. About 64% of users in Taiwan come into contact with companies from Hong Kong, US, Japan and Malaysia, and about 48 million users abroad come across Taiwan companies as well. Facebook has thus rolled out several tools to assist in promoting content globally, and also settings that can target users of a certain geographical location or demographic. This helps businesses advertise more effectively and can also use cross border analytics in devising a more precise marketing strategy.
Taiwan e-commerce company Hawooo.com is a successful example, attracting a huge overseas Malaysia users to their site with a Facebook ad combo (including Pixel, product catalogue, lookalike audiences, conversion tracking), resulting in a fivefold return from their advertising investments. Apart from Hawooo.com, online design e-commerce platform Pinkoi has also utilised Facebook in developing new consumers and growing their Asia-Pacific business. In this past year, their overseas followers has grown to 53% of their overall followers. This shows us that integrating social media into online e-commerce models not only can increase brand exposure and preference among users, but also builds brand loyalty and opportunities for online word-of-mouth.
With extended usage of Facebook, businesses have the opportunity to gather information regarding demographics, location, interests, and relationships, without intruding on the privacy of their users, and in turn create targeted marketing plans, with the aid of emerging new technology such as AI, the “human” element can be emphasised within differing modes of marketing. Whether it is new retail models specifically targeted at the China market or the fast-growing cross-border e-commerce, the focus is promoting to “people”, digital data plays a crucial role in being able to analyze and understand consumer online behavior, and converging the online with offline activities to ensure effective O2O marketing results. Facebook has now developed data analysis tools that can be used in conjunction with CRM systems for brick and mortar retailers, this can be used to better understand consumers and to be able to create higher conversion performances for advertisements.
Maintain a Human Marketing Strategy in the Technology Age
With the Taiwan population becoming more attached to their phones, Nicole’s statistics show us that the average user unlocks their phone more than 80 times a day, and opens Facebook 14 times per day.
According to market research company eMarkteter Worldwide Retail Ecommerce Sales, there will be more than 50% of users shopping online globally in the year 2020. Buying on social media sites, or using social media sites as a way of to guide shoppers will become future heavyweight trends. With online live streaming and 360 images and video content that will increase stickiness of the platform, these also aid in creating engaging content that will genuinely attract the attention of “people”, and result in higher conversion rates in buying.
Nicole emphasizes the fact that building business around human interaction is more crucial than just focusing on device usage, and for e-commerce businesses, how data garnered from social media sites can be used to create targeted marketing strategies will most definitely be the next big thing.
Last but not least, as Head of e-Commerce in Greater China at Facebook, Nicole will share her latest observations and insights on e-commerce, including how to create effective promotions using social media. This highlight of our 2017 DATE Summit is something that you should not miss.
【Speaker Info】
Head of e-Commerce in Greater China at Facebook, Nicole Chou currently leads Facebook’s monetization strategy for the e-commerce vertical in Greater China, and also leads the development and implementation of best practices, as well as winning strategies for delivering value to clients in both B2C and B2B marketing. Prior to Facebook, Nicole was also senior business development manager at Google.With her extensive knowledge and experience in sales, business development and client management, Nicole Chou will bring her firsthand experience and insight on “The Power of Crossing Borders with Online Marketing and Social Media” to Taiwan e-commerce companies, to ensure a pathway to global success.
Ad by BOFT
延伸閱讀
Taiwan’s Cross-Border E-Commerce Lands in Europe! Key to Building European Markets
善用新社群媒體，台灣電商走出國際新契機——專訪 Facebook 大中華區電子商貿行業總經理周雁冰
最新電商轉型標的：社群＋內容，台灣電商開始佈局了嗎？——專訪日本創投 CyberAgent Ventures 投資經理北尾崇