Key Takeaways from the eCommerce Expo 2024: AI, Social Media Strategies, and Data-Driven Success
Our eCommerce team travelled down to London to attend the eCommerce Expo 2024 held at the ExCel. This event aims to connect market leaders and brands across all industries like retail, food & beverage, fashion etc to share their journeys, struggles, and latest technologies that help drive growth in their businesses. We heard from business owners, CEO’s, and the social media manager at Duolingo.
Couldn’t attend? Don’t worry about it, our team went to various talks across the 2 days and have shared what their highlights and key takeaways are so you can get in on the action.
Kasey Healy, Paid Social Manager, Space & Time
Driving value and efficiency with AI-powered social media and content creation
There is increasing pressure for businesses to identify how they can leverage AI to help them achieve their next stage of growth. Even individual marketing channels like PPC and Paid Social have seen more exposure on how they can use AI to support their daily activities. At Space & Time, we believe that AI should be used to enhance your work and should not be relied on.
It was interesting to hear from Archana Dhankar, Senior Director of Global Demand Generation at Sutherland, on how she utilises AI in her content creation and personal life. One of the key points that was highlighted through the talk was that you need to place an emphasis on training the AI, the more context you can provide in your prompts and feedback after the answer will help it understand how it needs to work for you to produce your desired results.
Instagram Vs TikTok: Nailing your strategy for each
Everyone wants to have their viral moment on TikTok or to build up a massive cult following on Instagram but reaching that point is not easy. We heard from Ramona Gohil, the Founder of Rani & Co, and how she tailors her strategy to each platform to drive success. For the first 3 years Rani’s popularity was built from organic activity and surprisingly they only started using paid channels to help them reach the next stage in their 4th year. For people who think their social media posts do not have a significant impact on revenue, I would advise you to think again.
She then emphasised the importance of identifying your content pillars. This is the foundation of any social media strategy and can help you create content even when you are lacking creativity.
Content Pillars
So, we’ve said content pillars are important to a TikTok and Instagram strategy, but we haven’t shared what this looks like. Well, Ramona kindly revealed her 5 content pillars she uses for her jewellery business, which are:
- Promote
- Educate
- Engage
- Inspire
- Entertain
The idea is that you have 1 video a week that falls into one of those categories, that’s not to say you can only focus on one pillar per video or post, but they can cross-over. For example, you might make an Instagram real that’s really engaging but also educates your community about something within your niche.
Celebrity Vs Influencer: The two different ball games
Influencers have earned their place as a key channel in your marketing strategy. Brands that were born during covid-19 who leveraged smaller creators on TikTok to push their product saw unbelievable growth, just look at Made By Mitchell and Refy. They are huge brands in the beauty industry; however they are only around 4 years old.
We heard from Avneet Kalsi, Brand Manager at Ellers Farm Distillery, on the difference between celebrity vs influencer endorsed promotions and how you need to consider the channels you harness.
For example, if you’re using a particular celebrity in your campaign that would only be seen on TV and you choose to run your posts on TikTok, their audience would likely not engage as they find it unnatural. Essentially, if you’re planning a TV ad then celebrities are a great option as their audience find them native on TV, but if you’re looking to push a social media campaign then find creators native to individual platforms to ensure you get the best results.
She then made an important point that backing your brand behind a celebrity may seem like a good idea but it can have its downfalls, such as if they find themselves in hot water due to certain situations, customers who have a strong opinion on the matter may purposely choose not to buy from your brand because they are associated with it.
Jason Cotterill, eCommerce Lead, Space & Time
Understanding the “why?” in Data
A frequent discussion point across the expo was attribution and performance, which is a massive talking point across the board for us as marketers with the consistent expectation to do more with less. However, an interesting take I heard was around focusing more on the “why”, rather than the “what”.
It sounds simple and obvious, but it’s easy for us to fall into the trap of focusing only on what is performing well and pushing budget into these areas. However, if we take a step back and understand why certain ads/campaigns/platforms are performing well – we can find trends and insight to help improve other areas of advertising or communication.
We will definitely be looking to invest in platforms to help us identify the “why” in our campaigns moving forward to help generate as much value for our clients as possible.
Give Context and purpose to empower teams
A common theme throughout the talks at the Expo was empowering teams to be the best they can be. In an industry such as eCommerce where results are everything and there’s lots of moving parts, it’s important to have agile teams that are adaptable.
How can we get the best out of our teams? By giving context and purpose. It’s important to communicate with our teams that they are not just a cog in a wheel – there is a vision in which they are playing a key part in achieving it. Set a 2–3-year vision of where you see your business/brand being, and supplement it with a 6-month actionable roadmap on how you’re going to incrementally achieve that vision. Then, highlight where your team members fit into this.
Setting primary, secondary and nice to have goals sets clear expectations and aligns all teams on what we’re all collectively working towards.
Clearly Identifying what good looks like and setting benchmarks
Testing has been a recurring theme for us at Space & Time, and it was the exact same at the eCommerce Expo. A lot of talks encouraging testing, failing and learning to fuel growth.
The best piece of advice I heard, that may seem obvious but it’s easy to forget, is to set clear benchmarks and identify what exactly good looks like. I’m sure we can all be guilty of running a test but not clearly setting the rules that qualifies whether it was a success or not.
Likewise, to set what good looks like, we need to understand our benchmarks. What are your average metrics at each stage of the funnel, by campaign type and by platform? Can you easily identify when a campaign or ad is overperforming? This is a vital thing to understand when testing so we can understand what good looks like to aim towards it.
