‘Innovation’ has become a buzzword in the world of business over the last decade. The Australian government awards grants for marketing innovation; Apple has a team of 150 innovators; and Optus sends teams to Silicon Valley every year to learn about innovative trends and tactics.
Innovation involves changing or tweaking processes to better align a product or service with what the market needs.
The rewards of innovation cannot be understated.
By continually aligning your company to the market, you can always stay abreast of trends and topics.
Continuously adapting to the market helps to stay fresh, centred, and top-of-mind.
Below are five examples of successful marketing innovation strategies that have occurred over the last few years.
Emerging tech company embraces Chatbots
This emerging technology company began as a start-up in Australia, offering childcare services to parent.s
The young company partnered with Arrow as their digital marketing agency, and developed a target buyer persona. Arrow developed strategies to appeal to the persona, and cater to their needs and whims.
Later, the organisation decided to embrace AI early by developing a Chat-bot. The chat-bot crawls through a user’s data to determine their demographic and buyer persona, based on Arrow’s research. It then sends tailored, personalised and helpful messages to the user.
Parents were shown different parts of the website compared to baby-sitters, while first-time users were given a welcome message.
This not only directed users to the parts of the website most relevant to them, but also increased engagement through clicks, as well as decreased the bounce rate.
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Personalisation has many positive effects, as does automation.
Personalised content not only helps users feel empowered, appreciated, and understood, but it also produces tangible results. A report by Hubspot found companies who implement automated approaches for fuelling personalised experiences successfully generate 50 per cent more leads, at a 33 per cent lower cost on average.
Similarly, Adobe finds nine in 10 consumers say personalisation has some impact on their purchasing decisions, while one-third of customers want greater personalization in their e-commerce experiences.
As a result, the company’s conversion rates shot up by 10 per cent for registrations soon after implementing the friendly Chat-bot. They also saw a 220% increase in total website sessions.
L’Oreal dives into Innovative AR
Cosmetics giant L’Oreal was one of the first retail companies to embrace AR in their marketing campaign. In 2014, they became the first big beauty player to name a chief digital officer, who kicked off L’Oreal’s innovative tactics.
In the same year, they launched their L’Oreal Paris’ Makeup Genius app, an AR service which allows individuals to try on makeup virtually.
The app now has 20 million downloads, and L’Oreal is striving to become a 100% digital brand.
Amazon innovated with Social Media Influencers
Amazon recently announced its Influencer Program, a platform which allows social media stars to capitalise on products they promote on their videos.
They can do so through a customised Amazon storefront. Fans can shop the star’s product recommendations, without the influencer having to work directly with the brand.
Amazon understands that social media drives sales, and the program includes Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube influencers.
YouTube Creator and influencer Dan Markham has hailed the effects of the program. Promoting Fidget Cube in his video led to 668,777 Amazon Affiliate clicks, 16,369 orders, and $160,755.98 worth of product sold.
Barbadillo uses Innovation & IoT to engage customers & preserve authenticity
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent trend which retailers have begun to adopt, especially in the alcohol industry.
Barbadillo, a Spanish wine making company, developed in July this year smart bottles for its Castillo de San Diego Wine.
This campaign is claimed to be the largest global deployment of NFC (Near-field communication) technology to date in the wine and spirits industry.
The Mediterranean company partnered with NFC specialist Thinfilm to develop SpeedTap tags. These tags integrate with a product’s packaging, and can be scanned with the tap of a smartphone.
Tapping the bottle provides information about the wine and allows consumers to check the authenticity of the alcohol. This not only limits the production of counter-felt bottles of their ultra-premium product, but also increases engagement with the brand.
Kidspot creates social community
Kidspot is an Australian organisation which provides advice, inspiration, and guidance for parents covering a variety of topics on children and lifestyle.
Developed by entrepreneur Katie May, the company understood the importance of mapping the user journey after partnering with Arrow as their digital marketing agency.
Analysing upstream and downstream data, the company found a common trend among their users. Most parents and babysitters went to Facebook immediately after visiting Kidspot’s site.
Through customer surveys, they found users appreciated the community fostered on the site. Users has a need for a private, moderated forum to share their stories, problems, and joys of child rearing.
The company then developed a Facebook-inspired social page on the site where parents could experience a similar social media platform internally.
Kidspot increased their number of visits by 2 million in just two years. In 2011, they were sold to Fairfax for a whopping $45 million.
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