Why APAC marketers need to master three balancing acts | WARC | The Feed

Why APAC marketers need to master three balancing acts

Marketers across the Asia Pacific region need to rebalance their marketing strategies for a complex, post-pandemic retail landscape, according to a new report from WARC and Google. 

Retail’s balancing act: your guide to sustainable performance says that digital is likely to be the foremost playground for consumers to interact with brands, making it important to understand how to navigate this transition.

Why it matters

As businesses respond and rapidly digitise their operations to keep up with new ways of shopping, the shift has created new opportunities for retailers to connect with their customers online and leverage data-driven insights to cater to the omnichannel consumer. 

“But this shift also means balancing an intricate web of factors to respond to the pressures on profitability,” notes Ed Pank, managing director of APAC & VP Advisory, WARC. 

Takeaways 

• Balance investments over the long and short 

Choosing between long and short-term strategies, namely brand and performance marketing, is a ‘false dichotomy’ that does not enable sustainable brand growth and profit. Both tactics are complementary and needed for successful marketing; marketers should find the balance between the two in order to maintain consumer demand.

While brands may be tempted to discount to secure short-term wins, marketers should invest in brand equity to deliver value, build trust, and loyalty to create future demand. 

• Balance the use of brand.com and marketplaces

The proliferation of emerging digital channels and touchpoints, such as brand.com and marketplaces, has provided brands with exciting new creative playgrounds to experiment with, but it also means more channels to trial and evaluate with limited resources. 

In Southeast Asia, marketplaces account for 75% of all post-pandemic online spending and 55% of shoppers utilise brand.com along their path-to-purchase journey.

To ensure ROI, marketers will need to consider budget and find the right balance across platforms to leverage both marketplaces and brand.com. 

• Balance the intricacies of omnichannel

Omnichannel shoppers have proven to be higher value customers, bringing in 1.5 to 2.1x more value than non-omnichannel customers. To achieve omnichannel excellence, brands must break down silos and evolve legacy staffing models, both of which are barriers to getting a holistic view of the customer.

Creating a holistic measurement program is a starting point for marketers to gain insight into the multitude of touchpoints, known as the ‘Messy Middle’, that are most effective in driving consumers into a purchase decision.

One way to achieve holistic measurement is by adopting Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) techniques, which allows marketers to measure the impact of their campaigns and determines how various channels contribute to their goals.

A complimentary copy of the report, which includes expert insights from Castlery, FairPrice, Intel, Merkle, Shopee and The LEGO Group, and case studies from Honda, IKEA, Juzt Jelly, Nestlé, Uber Eats and Unilever, is available to download here.