COVID-19 has forever changed marketing. Your customers are taking less risk in going out in public for concern of their health. This directly affects your business. What can your brand achieve in this situation? Let’s look at the fact that people are using more social media. This changes their purchasing behaviour and buying decision, even in customers who have never paid attention to online browsing and shopping before.
The most popular chat application in Thailand is LINE. With 47 million users, this platform has the greatest advantage in connecting with consumers. This is a huge market for brands to engage with both old and new customers. The ongoing physical distancing is no longer a problem when LINE enables businesses the opportunity to grow.
A study by McKinsey & Company has revealed that in the period of physical distancing, there is a huge growth in online shopping.
This growth does not exclusively come from essential goods such as medicines, household goods, and body care products, but also from other non-essential products customers bought to entertain themselves. By having much more time to spend at home, consumers start to look for activities to kill the time including - cooking, taking online classes, exercising, growing plants, or taking up music instruments, as well as other things that improve their quality of life. This new demand leads to new sales opportunities that require new marketing strategies to conquer.
The first strategy that can connect your brand to more customers is to increase the number of your target markets. The more audience you have, the wider people recognize your brand. This can be achieved by frequently exposing your brand in online spaces where your customers spend their time. LINE Display Ads is the perfect tool to increase the effectiveness of your advertising effort. With this tool, your brand will appear to customers in LINE TV, chat list, LINE TODAY, or even on the interface of LINE Wallet. Every advertising space is another opportunity to engage with your customers. If you are not everywhere, you are not anywhere.
Take KFC, for example, connect with their target audience by advertising on Smart Channel (advertising banner on the top of the chat screen). Their strategies were to launch their ads and discount promotions on Fridays at the end of the month - a time slot that is perfect for sales conversion as the ad would engage with customers right before the payday of their salary. This is the right message being communicated at the right time. The customer’s journey is also seamless, as the ads also directly link the customers KFC’s Online food ordering.
Another crucial tool to help your LINE ads achieve their objectives is LINE Ads. This tool helps your brand to connect with a wider range of customers. You can place a call-to-action link that leads the customers to your website, or your LINE Official Account (LINE OA). This process increases the number of your brand’s followers in LINE OA - attracting more customers to register at your website, where you can further engage them with promotions and new products down the line.
Another advantage of LINE Ads is that the system will help you choose the most effective ad placement on LINE, making every investment in advertisement worth your budget. Sizzler, for example, the restaurant chain ran an ad campaign to promote new promotions for their delivery menu items. The amazing result they got was 45,000 user clicks in just 1 month, saving 66% of their Cost Per Click (CPC) in comparison to advertising with other platforms.
When your brand gains an increase in followers, your brand communication should be impressive on both offline and online channels. A good example are businesses that need to daily serve a large number of customers such as hospitals. This is where the synergy between LINE API and LINE Beacon can shorten your sales process.
Adding LINE API in the design of your Rich Menu helps to make your service better. Users can quickly go through your services by themselves, therefore reducing the processes you and your customers have to manually go through to complete a service. With this feature your LINE OA, your users can interact with health inquiries 24 hours a day, set up doctor’s appointments, and pay medical fees via LINE Payment. The LINE Beacon technology, on the other hand, makes the customer's journey convenient since their arrival at the hospital. Starting with a greeting message, LINE Beacon would then proceed to send the user information on where to precisely locate their appointed medical staff.
For LINE Beacon to function, the user must turn on the Bluetooth signal. When the user enters the designated proximity, messages from your brand will be automatically sent to the user’s LINE OA. The message can be about promotions, special services, or activities taking place in the proximity. This would immediately capture the user’s attention to your brand.
LINE API can help brands collect user data to be used in further developing better products or services while bettering user’s experience.
Another feature that connects your brand with consumers in vibrant interactive activities is In-LINE LIVE Viewer. Many brands had successfully utilized this function such as Carabao Dang Energy Drink, with nearly 3 million followers. In a campaign that sees the energy drink collaborates with a popular panel game show, the brand used the LIVE function to live broadcast questions that users can answer to win prizes. The users gave their answers by typing in the comment section and clicking the heart icon. These sessions net Carabao Dang an average audience number of 172,405 viewers per session.
LIVE broadcasting also helps your brand manage relationships with customers, allowing direct interaction when customers have questions. The brand can give the answer to the customers in real time, creating a relationship that builds into brand loyalty that keeps customers coming back for repeated purchase and service. LIVE also eliminates the limitations of location and time. Your brand will no longer be concerned with any pain point previously occurred when customers had to commute to your physical retail store. The only thing your brand has to do is to clearly communicate when the LIVE is going to take place so your customers can prepare to watch the session.
Not only does In-LINE LIVE Viewer increases your brand’s interaction with the customers, it also aids in boosting sales. When your brand has a new product, sales for the product can be reinforced through MyShop. This feature is identical to a personal website where the customer can conveniently browse, shop, and pay for the product in one single app. When a customer is interested in a product, they simply have to enter your brand’s MyShop page, drop the product they are interested in the shopping basket or ask any question from your brand in real time. The customer can then proceed to pay for the product without having to use another app because the payment can be made in-app via Rabbit LINE Pay. My Shop is also the solution to your complex inventory system because the function can issue receipts, manage inventory, and summarize orders.
During physical distancing, many concerns come between you and your customers, but your brand can still take advantage of this distance and prosper by using highly accessible online channels like LINE. With a platform that can satisfy your every need to communicate, sales can be closed in just a few clicks. By selecting the right strategy, your brand can grow into an even stronger future. The quicker you are to start advertising on the platform, the closer you will get to your new target.
LINE for Business is the seamless solution to your business success. The platform is equipped with every tool that will make your leap into social commerce a successful one. Contact us if your brand is ready for more customers.
