In these challenging times when some businesses are filing for bankruptcy, some social media trends and technology are actually helping others to stay afloat by helping them build better customer experiences.
As I came across this interesting read on how a few businesses found a creative way of doing business on Facebook during these unprecedented times, I did my online research to understand how these new technologies and social media trends were put to use by various industries to thrive during these tough times.
Let’s talk about the list of new tech trends that have been used or are being used by businesses from different industries-
- Chatbots
- AR/VR
- Seamless shopping through platforms
- Voice Search
- Micro Influencers
Chatbots
Chatbots were easily adopted by a few businesses even before the covid times. Whether it is a delivery from your favorite pizza place or booking appointments for a routine checkup, chabots have been extremely useful in supporting basic admin functionalities that could be performed without any need for human intervention during or out of normal business working hours.
During the pandemic, healthcare organizations weren’t the only ones to use chabots. There are several others such as banks, insurance, hotels, retailers and wellness where these helpful automated bots proved to build a communication channel between the business and the customer. Chatbots when adopted have helped businesses and organizations to reduce wait times and increase user engagement.
Adoptions of AR/VR
Adopting technology such as AR/VR has rather become a necessity for industries such as real estate, retail, tradeshows and events to keep building their customer experiences and sales.
In 2017, Amazon adopted the AR component to its app, called the AR view to let customers place various items in their house virtually before buying them. Through this, customers could select items like home decor, electronics, home office products, toys, and games etc, and place them in their home. Using the tool, customers can overlay, move, and rotate the item in a live camera view mode to see how the item will fit and look in real time.
And since then we have seen a lot many other online stores and retailers adopting this technology more frequently. Recently Ikea launched an AR app called IKEA Place that lets consumers use their smartphone to see what a piece of furniture will look like in any room of their home. The app even includes a “visual search” capability that lets a user simply point his phone’s camera at any piece of non-IKEA furniture, and viola -the app searches its database to show the user examples of IKEA furniture that look similar.
Seamless online shopping experience on social media platforms
In 2019 Instagram rolled out its Shop and Checkout feature that helped a lot of e-commerce and small businesses to sell their products directly through the platform. This feature not only made shopping seamless for the buyers but also convenient for the brands to showcase their products without the need for customers to leave the platform.
Facebook last month just launched the Facebook Shop feature to help buyers find sellers and have a convenient and seamless online shopping experience.
We know that Facebook’s Marketplace is already centered around selling personal items (very similar to craiglist and ebay). The difference between the Facebook Shop and Facebook Marketplace is that the former is aimed at businesses – helping them create a digital store experience where buyers can buy items from facebook or a retailer’s website ( similar to Amazon or Etsy).
Pinterest also showed its support for small businesses in the US by identifying and adding local brands to the Pinterest Shop that resonate with the searches “eco friendly living” and “zero waste products”. The idea was to help small and medium sized businesses to get increased visibility and exposure.
Voice Search
Voice search is another virtual necessity for many brands given the Covid 19 situation that we all are living with. And hands down, Google, Apple and Amazon have nailed it when it comes to capitalizing on the opportunities that voice searches offer. With more and more people spending their time online indoors, on desktops, phones and on digital assistants it is only imperative that if your brand is found on assistants such as Google Home or Alexa, your brand is more likely to gain attention from the user. Microsoft’s 2019 Voice report found that the process of researching products and services and purchasing them were among the ten most common uses for digital assistants. Other uses that made their list were searching for a quick fact (68 percent), asking for directions (65 percent), searching for a business (47 percent), making a shopping list (39 percent), and comparing products or services (31 percent).
So have you thought about your Voice search strategy yet? Remember planning a voice search strategy is different from crafting a marketing strategy.
Micro-Influencers
Big or medium businesses were always reaching out to the mega-influencers such as celebrities with more than a million followers or macro-influencers (1,00,000 to 10,00,000 followers approx) to promote brand awareness.
While these influencers are necessary for your branding needs, according to the marketing experts, more brands this year before the Covid times were regardless increasing budgets for bringing micro-influencers ( 1000-1,00,000 followers) on board as a part of their marketing strategy.
Why?
Because micro-influencers belong to a specific niche, a niche has a smaller audience, and this small audience has a strong bond with their micro-influencer in terms of their interests, values or beliefs.
So the good news is that the role of the influencers have actually grown more during the Covid times. More and more front line workers such as doctors, nurses, grocery store owners, chefs etc have engaged with their audience on DIY content and on staying mentally fit during these stressful times. Other influencers such as celebrities have been successful in entertaining and educating their fans and followers through social media platforms.
Can businesses still use micro influencers? The answer is yes but it depends on what interests or beliefs that the business is trying to connect with the influencer and its audience.
Conclusion
If you come to think of it, most social media platforms over the decade have emerged from being just an informal corner to a competent space where businesses interact with their potential customers to understand their buying journeys and resolve their issues.
As each year goes by, the social media platforms as we know today grow more complex and their advancements in technology and features help brands or businesses to enrich their customers’ buying experiences. The bottom line in unprecedented times such as this is that businesses are no longer just service providers or product innovators. They have an existential obligation to build relationships with their audience and by using current social media trends and advancement in these platform’s technologies, they can positively bring about change in their customer’s buying journey resulting in building a good share of market goodwill.
What other trends have you noticed helped small or medium businesses thrive in these unprecedented times?
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