Market

Target market

Our primary target market is medium-to-large UK-based eCommerce retailers, specifically those seeking to monetise the opportunities from social marketing efforts.

In November 2013, the UK eCommerce industry was made up of 200,000+ retailers. Within this expansive and large market, an Internet Advertising Bureau report declared that, collectively, these retailers spend more than £900 million per annum on their social media efforts. But often majority of this expense goes towards hiring agencies to create social marketing campaigns.

Although many brands have become alert to the usefulness of social media in building on existing revenue, it appears to us that most do not have the capacity (either the technology or time) to successfully utilise this burgeoning channel or the expertise to consistently convert these social media leads into buyers.

These problems are universal and this is clear in the scope of our existing client database, which encompasses those who are part of the consumer electronics, gifts, gadget, toy, accessories and fashion sectors- many of whom are based in non-UK geographical locations.

Characteristics of target market

In the eCommerce market, a greater importance is being placed on ‘what’s being said’ on social media. People express their opinions by commenting on, ‘liking’ or sharing an idea or product. 74% of consumers rely on social networks to make purchase decisions and 40% of people purchase an item after ‘favouriting’ it. However, statistically, only 37% of marketers are satisfied with their social marketing efforts.

Retailers spent 80% of their marketing budgets on traditional avenues such as content marketing, SEO and PPC. These standard marketing avenues and traditional social media is saturating fast, the next wave of innovation for marketers is in the field of automated social marketing.

The European market lacks tools that can automate social marketing for online retailers of all sizes. Last year, according to a white paper distributed by IMRG, there was an increase of 18% in sales, worth approximately £8 billion that was attributed entirely to social marketing. Further, the report mentioned that retailers who did not switch to social marketing saw a relative dramatic decrease in sales of around 20%. IDC predicts that the total global market for automating marketing including social automation will grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $4.8 billion in 2015.

Marketing strategy

As our target markets can be divided into three unique sections, our marketing strategies vary depending on the size of the brand we are looking to attract: Tier 1 customers (those with up to 50,000 transactions a month) Tier 2 customers (those with more than 50,000 transactions a month) Tier 3 customers (large retailer brands with multiple stores).

When communicating with Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers, we tend to conduct business with either their in-house marketing teams or external agencies. We also indulge in content marketing (blogging) and social media to voice our opinion on the industry's latest trends and engage in a healthy two-way dialogue with fans and followers from these two tiers.

We communicate with Tier 3 customers by direct marketing, attending trade shows to promote our brand in person, offering potential clients the chance to connect with us on a more personal level. We often engage in offline marketing approaches, such as meeting clients at industry speaker events or attracting them through direct B2B sales. Additionally, we have also used eCommerce publications and the national press to draw attention to the Owned it brand.

Our white papers have won acclaim and we have delivered keynote speeches at several conferences. As thought leaders, we seek to actively contribute to the development of our market and clients’ understanding of it. We see ourselves as educators as well as entrepreneurs.

Competition strategy

Businesses have approached the area of social commerce from different angles, in an attempt to capitalise on the customer insights and increased exposure that the solutions can bring.

Many of these solutions are focused on a single aspect of social campaigns such as products sharing, social referrals etc. Some of the generic solutions available to shop owners, are based upon the Facebook “Like” or “Share” system and the Twitter “Tweet”. These are aggregated offerings and only capture a very basic picture of visitor behaviour. Furthermore, the return on investment of these traditional social media techniques is difficult to assess with accuracy.

A few companies have attempted to capitalise on the opportunities that exist in the social marketing automation market.

Two companies, both based in the US, have attempted to tackle this problem. Launched in 2010, Shopsocially is a social platform that allows retailers to run social marketing campaigns. Shopsocially works with a number of the popular US retailers. Later, in the same year a company called Curebit, introduced a system that simplifies the creation of cashback offers through social referrals. Shop owners that subscribe to the system are able to give split referrals, which are offers redeemed by the sharer and their friends.