Digital Strategy – AddBloom

Are You Ready for Christmas… Digitally?

Move your festivities online and get your audience shopping for the holidays.

Can you hear the bells jingling, the shoppers coming in and Christmas getting near? It’s that time of the year where everything around us sounds, looks and feels cheerful. If your website and social platforms are not reflective of our surroundings, you better get moving!

Website & E-commerce

If you went over our Cyber Monday blog you might recall that all consumer shopping habits have moved online and are now spread out over larger periods of time. Christmas shopping is no exception, as we can expect shopping to have started before Black Friday and to go on until January. Prepare yourself for the massive influx of shoppers by optimizing your online shopping.

Go over the user experience: If visitors cannot navigate through your website smoothly, they are less likely to complete any purchase. Detect and fix the issues that interrupt an efficient shopping experience for optimal outcomes.
Make your website responsive and mobile-friendly: With around 40% of e-commerce revenues coming from mobile devices last year, it is important to have a mobile optimized website with easy navigation. If they can’t see it or buy it on their phones, visitors will forget your website exists.
Examine your inventory: Shortages and supply chain issues are not uncommon, especially after the pandemic. Make sure you check your stock and supply before the holidays to find replacements and substitutes when necessary.
Add some Holiday cheer: Your website should scream Christmas through design, copy and offers all together. Bundles, reduced shipping fees and gift guides are crucial for consumers, and if they can’t find it on your website, they will move their shopping elsewhere.

Social Media

If you’re looking to find Christmas cheer any time of year, this is where you go. If it’s not Christmas countdowns in September, it’s throwbacks in June, there are always social media users spreading the festive spirit in one way or the other.

Set the mood: If you haven’t already, start spreading the joy of the season with a new design theme, a countdown, gift guides and festive content all around. Red, green and white are the colors to embrace throughout the holidays.
Cross-promote whenever possible: Redirect your followers to your website, invite them for in-store activations and share all your events on social media. This is the exposure you need for online and offline goals to be achieved.
Get conversational: Holiday shopping is difficult and your customers need your help to find the perfect gifts. Publishing content regularly is important, but really talking to your audience is the only way to get them hooked.

Allow the cheer to come through on all your platforms and communications before, during and after the holidays for your business to have a jolly season! For extra cheer and an in depth consultancy, drop us a hello here.

December 13, 2021 AddBloom Blog, Digital Content, Digital Strategy, Social Media Comments Off

Cyber Monday 2021: $10.7 Billion in Sales | Here is what you need to know to plan for 2022

How the Monday after Thanksgiving hit $10.7 Billion in sales in 2021

While we seem to believe that Cyber Monday has become the biggest online shopping day of the year because of sales and offers, it isn’t the case. Shopping habits have moved online, and shopping traditions like Black Friday paved the way for more convenient holiday shopping after the long weekend in the United States.

The origins of Cyber Monday

After a recurring peak in online purchases on the Mondays following Black Friday, the National Retail Federation issued a press release in 2005 discussing their findings and started it with the term “Cyber Monday”. The group had believed that the increase in sales was because people decided to skip the mobs shopping during the weekend and wait to purchase online from their office where they had faster internet connections. This provided families with more bonding time as they got their hands on the best deals without spoiling all the surprise gifts.

Cyber Monday today

Throughout the years, the day increased in popularity with designated offers and discounts reaching $2 Billion in sales in 2014. Since that year, Cyber Monday has become the biggest online shopping day of the year in the US with sales growing to hit $10.8 Billion in 2020. That exceeded the $9 Billion digital spend on Black Friday of the pandemic year where more consumers were shopping online. This year sales have dropped by 1.4% resulting in $10.7 Billion in sales on Cyber Monday 2021. This decrease is a result of the change in online shopping habits due to the pandemic. Afraid of facing shortages if they wait for the big sales, consumers have spread out their spending throughout October and November.

Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday have gone beyond the United States even reaching the GCC. In fact, studies have shown that the UAE has the 5th highest average spend per person on Black Friday globally.

Boost your holiday sales with Cyber Monday deals

If you’re wondering whether or not having Cyber Monday deals is still worth it, it really is. Here’s a couple of tips on how you can make the most out of Cyber Monday with online offers.

FLASH SALE! LIMITED TIME! EXCLUSIVE!

Get creative with how you can grab your online customers by the hook. Customers expect to get the best deals for Cyber Monday and Black Friday so make sure all your bundles, discounts and offers are valuable and impressive.

MAKE YOUR BUZZ

Create your plan ahead of time and start promoting early. Try throwing teasers, hints, and maybe have a countdown to get your customers talking. Collaborate with influencers or loyal customers, giving them exclusive details that they can share with their communities. Word of mouth is crucial to get enough traffic for your limited time offer.

GIVE YOUR WEBSITE A GLOW UP

All your leads will be redirected to your website for their online purchases. Make sure it is functional and optimized, to keep them surfing long enough to get to know you. Add banners with detailed info on deals to grab your customers’ attention as soon as they’re in, and make sure your offers stand out.

Now that you have your guide and more than enough time make sure you plan out your next Cyber monday early on.

December 6, 2021 AddBloom Blog, Cyber Monday, Digital Strategy, Ecommerce Comments Off

AddBloom - Blog - E-Commerce Re-Imagined

Reimagining eCommerce Post Covid-19

Reimagining eCommerce Post Covid-19 | A Middle East Webinar Geared for Growth Strategies

Crises are often a catalyst for innovation, especially for those geared to embrace challenges.

In these times, consumer behavior across the world as well as in the UAE and Saudi Arabia has shifted rapidly to online buying, which gave way for an immediate focus on the digital commerce industry and upheld the importance of implementing technology-driven solutions to ensure sustainability, growth and stability.

Yes, e-commerce is now one of the hottest topics today, one that presents businesses with many questions.

Will the e-commerce boom remain?
How can businesses prepare for the future?
What are the top strategies to ensure growth and provide a relevant and valuable user experience?
What are the effective channels to improve performance?
Is it necessary to restructure existing e-commerce functionalities with new-age solutions for continuous growth and profitability?

To answer these questions and many more, UniCommerce is organizing the Middle East’s largest Webinar on “eCommerce Reimagined: Strategies and Growth Levers Post COVID-19” on Saturday June 27, 2020 starting 11 AM Gulf Standard Time

The webinar is open to all GCC Business and will bring together 10 industry experts from across the MENA region who will be sharing insights and top-level e-commerce strategies to help businesses gear up for conducting businesses amid and post the pandemic

Register here: https://lnkd.in/dy4BdG7

Webinar Agenda

Session 1:

“E-commerce strategies in post Covid-19 era” | 11 AM – 12:15 PM GST

Speakers

Hasan Alhazmi – Co-Founder, Salasa
Raghu Ravinutala – Co-Founder, Yellow Messenger
Anshuk Aggarwal – Co-Founder, Adyogi
Pranshu Kacholia – VP Business, ClickPost
Sean McCarry – Sales Director, Magento Commerce

Session 2:

Driving eCommerce growth | 12:20 PM – 1:30 PM GST

Speakers:

Mohamed Bahaa – Co-Founder, Wimo
Samar Layoun – Co-Founder, AddBloom
Ravi Kant – Head Strategic Partnerships, Noon
Vikas Panchal – Business Head, Tally
Rajiv Ramanan, Director- Startups, Freshworks

Register here: https://lnkd.in/dy4BdG7

June 24, 2020 AddBloom Blog, Digital Strategy, Ecommerce, Webinar Comments Off

Online Learning, Art, Music and Books | Quarantine Time made easier

Quarantine during the pandemic means different things to different people. For some, it is (remote) work as usual, for others, it is remote work + juggling family and e-schooling for children, and for many, it is simply time off, time that could be spent actively learning or exploring.

This is why we put together a series of resources to help you get started. However, no matter what you decide, remember to focus on what makes you feel good.

Universities worldwide like Harvard, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley or Standford University are offering free open courses or specific webinars during certain dates. IE University in Spain has also prepared a series of webinars, in English and others in Spanish, for the upcoming days as well. For a full list of universities providing online courses, click here. Companies like Google, Microsoft or Linux are also offering online courses on digital marketing, business or coding. For the full list of institutions, click here.

Coursera includes courses from those prestigious universities for free as well, some of which are certified upon completion and that you can take at your own pace. Domestika is a similar platform for courses on illustration, digital editing or crafts. Students can find open courses or purchase others for a reduced price. Other platforms that offer open online courses from different universities are edX, Udacity or Alison. For platforms including resources in Arabic, refer to Doroob, Rwaq, Tadarab, Coursaty and Edraak.

For those who wish to financially invest in more online lectures, Udemy has one of the largest selection of courses. Masterclass, is another platform to consider where students can access courses on photography, fashion and even sports, taught by icons such as Anna Wintour, Gordon Ramsay, Serena Williams and others.

For the avid readers, The Library of Alexandria, the oldest in history, offers all its acquisitions for free. It contains, among others, a large collection of Arabic digital books and photo albums. However, if you prefer to read about different themes, Bookbon is offering free access to thousands of e-books. For those Harry Potter fans, J.K.Rowling has improved the platform Wizarding World by adding Harry Potter at home, where different videos, puzzles and quizzes will be added to make our time at home better.

For the art aficionados, the MoMa, Musée d’Orsay and other 12 museums can now be visited virtually for free. To access the full list, click here. As in the case of these museums, NASA has also opened its entire library for you to explore for free as well and added a series of resources for kids, adults on topics as wide as History, Technology or Earth Science.

Signing off for now, we hope you enjoy our listing.

April 9, 2020 AddBloom Blog, Digital Content, Social Media Comments Off

Coronavirus X Social Media | Steps to combat the “infodemic”

Coronavirus (Covid-19) is taking the world by storm. Entire Countries are on Lockdown, others on the way and prospects of a global economic meltdown are looming. Amidst this social media played a major role. On the one hand, promoting awareness, prevention and social distancing, on the other, fostering fear, panic, bogus remedies, conspiracy theories

For the World Health Organization, the key to battle this virus starts with battling misinformation, or “infodemic”, coming from everyone’s smartphone.

This blog sheds light on measures taken by social media platforms to help set the record straight and try to minimize the impact of fake news and hoaxes trying to profit.

Facebook decided to implement a ban on ads for all companies trying to make a commercial gain out of the virus, whether related to cures or prevention products that are not linked to scientific facts. By implementing this new policy, Facebook is trying to restrain those ads that create a sense of urgency while working on removing content with false claims or conspiracy theories that might harm people who believe them.

The Deputy Executive Director for Partnerships of UNICEF, Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, stated that misinformation during times of a health crisis can spread paranoia, fear and stigmatization. On top of that, it can result in people being left unprotected or more vulnerable to the virus as well. UNICEF, as well as Facebook, is actively taking steps to inform the public when inaccurate information, involving WHO or other government authorities, is published on social media platforms.

TikTok recently partnered with the WHO in an effort to spread veritable information, together with the best public health practices.

Respectively, Twitter also partnered with WHO and published a plan to protect the public from hoaxes on the platform as well. Their goal is to publish credible, authoritative content.

This “infodemic”, or over-abundance of information, makes it harder for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when needed. There are simple steps users can take themselves to combat mis- and disinformation. Consider the following questions before sharing dubious content:

Is this the original account, article or piece of content?
Who shared this or created it?
When was this created?
What account is sharing this? When was the account created? Do they share things from all over the world at all times during the day and night? Could this be a bot?
Why was this shared?

For reliable information always fact check with:

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019

https://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/covid-19

March 17, 2020 AddBloom Blog, Digital Content, Fact Check, Fake News, Social Media Comments Off

6 Ways to Enhance Your Organic Performance

In our day and time, paid social and digital media marketing are a big part of any digital marketing strategy. The brands we work with have experienced the value of investing in their social media presence to build sustainable communities online and achieve business objectives.

Yet, in a time where paid advertising is almost everything, we still believe in leveraging the forte of organic performance. Here are six tips prepared for you at the AddBloom Kitchen 🙂

1- Optimize your social and digital profiles
There are different points one can take advantage of to optimize their brands’ social profiles and make them easily discoverable by fans and followers.

Know which social and digital media platforms your business should be on and build them to global best practice.
Choose an optimized easy to write username.
Choose a recognizable display and cover photo.
Leverage your bio to be rich in keywords.
Add your store’s location wherever possible.
Make your website and other Call to Action buttons easily accessible.
Study and stay up to date with the latest about the social media platforms you are using to leverage the features they offer as per best practice

2- Diversify your content
While one of the main objectives of numerous businesses is to sell, we advise you against doing just that on social media, Instead, balance your communication to include a fair mix of selling, informative and user generated content that keeps the audience engaged and interested in the brand.

3- Follow a posting schedule
As the saying goes, consistency is key. While it might be impressive to post 10 times in a day, brands should be able to keep up with the set frequency. This might be challenging as posting multiple times a day requires a lot of effort and resources and brands have to ensure that their content reaches the right audience.

4- Engage with your community
One of the easiest ways for people to remember your brand is if it engages with them. So, make it a habit to engage with your community by liking, commenting, and reposting other people’s content. This will help people to humanize the brand and give it a feel that might not have been present before. Most importantly, try as much as possible to personalize your brand’s messages so each person touched by your comments and interaction feel special and valued.

5- Leverage insights
As we have mentioned earlier, brands should follow a posting schedule and frequency. In order to know how many times to post and what to post, brands should leverage the insights available through the different platforms used. Knowing when your audience is online, on what day and at what time, will allow you to enhance your organic reach. Not only that, but studying the results achieved by different posts, will allow you to better know which content your audience is more attracted to.

6- Give it time
The most important thing to do is be patient and give your posts time to reach their peak performance organically. The latter takes anywhere between 3 to 24 hours. You should hence decide on the type and boosting budget based on the results achieved.

May 20, 2019 AddBloom Blog Comments Off

How to use Facebook Messenger in your digital strategy

For a few years now, social media has been an essential part of brands’ marketing mix. With over 3 hours of social media consumption per day, people are becoming more reliant on the internet and apps in their everyday lives.

Many of the brands rely heavily on Facebook and Instagram to expand their reach and grow their community and convert customers. Today, AddBloom is working with a number of our partners to include Facebook Messenger to the online marketing mix.

Here’s why

Facebook Messenger is the second most used messenger platform on the internet
Monthly
- Over 1.3 billion people use the application
- 10 billion messages are exchanges between people and businesses

AddBloom’s role is to help you leverage Facebook Messenger to:

Develop the strategy and deploy the Ad Content that would help reach your audience
Start conversations with click-to-message ads, opening the route to direct customer connection and in some cases, the automation of the process.
Retarget your customers with sponsored messages, which allows you to optimize the campaign and spark a conversation with a person who has already interacted with you via messenger.

Facebook has recently announced that it intends to merge Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp in order to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks. This could possibly mean an expansion on its ad network and opening up new ways for brands to reach their audience on a more personal level.

Until then, do you want to know how Facebook Messenger can fit into your Digital Marketing strategy? Contact us now.

Source:

Advertising on Facebook Messenger – Expand Your Reach and Find more Customers

April 25, 2019 AddBloom Blog Comments Off

How to Develop a Thriving E-Commerce Business

Since its debut in 1991, the e-commerce industry has been on the rise, and has been booming in recent years. Many factors are affecting people’s inclination towards this phenomenon; social media, smartphones, and convenience being on the top of this list. However, not all e-commerce businesses thrive. Here are the top tips to keep in mind when launching or re-launching your ecommerce business:

1- STRATEGY BEYOND CONSTRUCTION

A clear strategy that details your goals and how you plan on achieving them is crucial for the success of your business. Keep in mind that your business mix, specifically your online business mix, does not solely consist of your e-commerce platform. It includes your online presence, your user targeting strategy, your distribution process, and your unique selling proposition. What do you have that others don’t? These and other factors play a big role in setting the ground for your online business development.

2- PUT IN THE RIGHT CAPITAL

Setting up an online store can be done by anyone starting at few thousand dollars (even less) but it takes more than that to bring a business to life. Like all newly opened businesses and ventures, starting an online shop requires more than just setting your site live and sitting back. For instance, many traditional businesses have held back from investing on their online stores but are ready to put in tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars into decorations for a new physical store.

Build it and they will come is a dream and investment into building your ecommerce presence should go beyond just the platform and into many departments including logistics and marketing. Part of your marketing budget must look at the possible trackable loss of first-time buyer transactions. Understanding the TLV (Total Lifetime Value) of your customer is one of the critical assumptions and KPIs your organization must track. Is losing $10 per first-time transaction good for business? It actually might be, and that depends on your TLV.

Having enough capital to build your store, your brand and drive sales to prove your business model is fundamental to proving and then growing your success.

3- DESIGN AN EXCEPTIONAL EXPERIENCE

Designing and developing a great website is definitely one of these factors, and no, we are not just talking about the look and feel of it but about the whole customer experience. While it may be relatively easy to design a visually appealing site it takes much more research and work to develop a platform that works with the latest features and functionality.

An exceptional user journey has a lot to do with the clarity of the content you have on your website, having an easy and clear checkout process as well as the way you are showcasing your products.

Responsive websites are also essential as they allow the customer to have the same experience across desktop, mobile and tablets. Although the visitor to sale conversion rate is lower for mobile phones than other devices, 2.03% for mobile compared with 4.68% for desktop (smartinsights), designing for the mobile phone is more critical in 2019 than ever. Not having your site built for mobile will penalize in Google’s search algorithm, hurt your SEO and lower your conversion rate making it more expensive to acquire a customer.

4- PARTNER UP WITH PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT

One of the main pillars behind the success of your e-commerce is knowing how to drive quality traffic that converts. The funnel below showcases the conversion rate at the different stages of the user journey.

Source: Smartinsights.com

Following points to consider:

Marketing automation is a must when it comes to higher conversion rates and increased customer TLV. In each stage of the funnel, customers can be retargeted through specific ads that drive them back to your website and email reminders can be sent out.

E-mail campaigns are the essence of retargeting campaigns. As the chart below shows you, conversion rate is highest for e-mail campaigns, as the receiver, a customer or a prospect, is already familiar with your brand and what if offers.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to lower your e-commerce’s overall acquisition cost. Hey, who doesn’t want free traffic? Appearing in strategic and prominent places on Google or other search engines can be a game changer when users are performing local searches.

Another way to increase your average checkout value and overall sales is to implement strategic upselling functionalities by showcasing featured product that are complementary or similar to what the customer is looking at. Or, by adding value incentives through bundles or strategic discounts: buy two get one free, free shipping on orders above a certain mark, etc.

Site performance and speed affect the conversion rate on your website. An appealing and responsive website is ought to deliver a higher conversion rate. Every second faster your website loads, conversion rates increases and hence so do your sales. Selecting the right hosting company, ecommerce software/platform and caching system is critical.

Are you ready to take your brand’s digital presence a step further? Contact us now.

Source:

E-commerce conversion rates – how do yours compare?

February 19, 2019 AddBloom Blog Comments Off

2019 Social Media Trends

The ever-changing Social Media landscape makes it quite difficult to predict what will happen in the next few months, yet year, to come. The regular apps’ feature and algorithm updates witnessed, as well as the changes in consumption preferences, dictate brands to develop flexible social media and digital strategies. These occurrences challenge marketers to reinvent themselves, cut through the clutter and engage with their brand’s audience in new ways. Here is a brief overview on what marketers should be looking at in 2019.

Video Content

Video content will continue to boom in 2019. While images speak a thousand words, videos transmit an experience. Live coverages, IGTV, stories, detailing how-to’s and tutorials elevate the customer experience and allows brands to engage with their audience on a deeper level.

This is also true for the Live Feature where instant feedback and interaction is possible. According to this Infographic published by Facebook on the 2-year-anniversary of their Live Feature, “the average daily Live Facebook Broadcast has doubled year-over-year since 2016.” We expect the numbers to grow even more in the coming years especially after Facebook’s announcement about testing live video shopping.

User Journey Personalization

The way people interact with brands, social apps and the internet in general says a lot on the person behind the screen. The vast amount of data being uploaded by individuals and collected by brands, allows marketers to gain insights on a person’s behavior which in turn unlocks user-journey personalization opportunities. Positive and personalized experiences nurture a person’s loyalty to a brand. While Netflix suggests content based on your taste, Amazon and HiCart show you products you might be interested in based on past behavior, unlocking unique customer-brand engagement patterns.

Timing

Timing has and always will play a big role in the future of marketing. While it is very important to plan in advance, brands have to be aware of the events surrounding them and be responsive to them. This however has been everly present, and was reinforced by the widely acclaimed “You can Still Dunk in the Dark” Tweet by Oreo during the power outage at the 2013 Super Bowl.

Timing also translates into brand’s responsiveness to its community. The internet is alive 24/7, 365 days a year, good, bad or query, people expect an immediate answers. If a customer likes your brand, say thank you; visited your shop, invite them to visit another time. Meaningful and strategic interactions with your community should be at the heart of your communication strategy in 2019.

User-Generated Content

Some of you might agree that there is no better marketing than the one you don’t pay for. Word of mouth, translated in the digital world by customer’s post, stories or mentions is very important. Showcasing your brand from the customer’s point of view makes all the difference. The customer is not a customer anymore but part of the community that grows the brand, reflect its identity and allow people to identify with it.

Women taking pictures of their ice cream cones. *Emma McIntyre/Getty*

Mobile vs Desktop

It is no surprise that people are spending more and more time on their smart phones on average consuming over 3 hours of digital media via mobile per day. This trend is not new, however it is has grown exponentially over the years. In 2019, we expect to see more brands moving towards a mobile-first strategy, developing their content and their experience to be responsive to every platform.

Young people on their phones and tablets.

Influencer Marketing

2018 saw the rise of influencer marketing. It is expected that this form of marketing will be a $2.38 billion market by 2019. The growing industry is attractive to many, hence brands will have to do their due deligence in order to differentiate between real and impostors by studying the engagement and overall online presence of people they plan on working with. Influencer marketing doesn’t necessarily mean working with big names in the market, some brands might prefer working with micro-influencers who have a dedicated following and are more accessible.

December 12, 2018 AddBloom Blog Comments Off

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Cyber Monday 2021: $10.7 Billion in Sales | Here is what you need to know to plan for 2022

How to Develop a Thriving E-Commerce Business

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