As Black Friday weekend approaches, offering retailers a great opportunity to kick-start the Christmas buying period, we take a look at how video can boost Black Friday buying even further.

Last year, the British public spent a reported £810m on Black Friday. That's £9,375 every second. This year, with sales expected to surpass £2bn, that figure could rise to a staggering £23,000 every second, and a large percentage of this will be spent online.But how can your brand harness this buying power, and ensure consumers buy from your site and not your competition, when ‘the price is right’ with all brands on this particular day?

Brightcove recently asked 2,000 UK consumers about their online shopping habits and expectations. Highly applicable for Black Friday, these insights can help you to stand out from the crowd and draw more consumers to your website.

Looking good!

When buying online, the survey revealed that the things consumers missed most from the in-store experience were the ability to look at, touch and feel potential purchases. Without these sensory, tangible experiences, online retailers need to offer the next best thing to grab the attention of the consumer.

As agreed by those we surveyed, video content is a great way to bridge this gap. Almost four-fifths (77%) of those surveyed said visual items such as interactive features, video and photography would enhance their shopping experience and influence them to make a purchase.

Device consistency

The research also found that consumers are increasingly moving towards an ‘omni-platform, omni-device’ behaviour in their daily lives and that this cross-device behaviour is consistent when consumers are shopping. Our study shows that nowadays consumers are shopping throughout the day, across a range of devices. In fact, the data predicts that by 2020 nearly half of Brits (45%) expect to do the majority of their shopping via mobile devices (increasing to 90% amongst 16-25 year olds), while one in ten expect to use their TV or even virtual reality for purchases. This means that when rich media such as video is added to a brand’s marketing mix, the high quality viewing experience needs to be replicated across all platforms and devices regardless of Internet connection or speed.

Keeping it snappy

Even if you’re targeting the right device and channel, capturing the consumers’ attention whilst they are multi-tasking isn’t an easy task. Faced with a wealth of competition, retailers must be able to deliver short, snappy and engaging content that will both distract and entertain or inform enough to influence a response.

Our study profiled one particular group of buyers – the ‘Digital-Savvy Purchasers’ – who are looking to shop at speed in between other activities, and will rely on short video content to simplify the purchasing decision. Related to the previous point about visual items, for fashion in particular, the use of short videos to highlight how clothing looks and moves whilst being worn will make a substantial difference to retail sales and reduce the number of items that get returned.

Making money and winning consumer loyalty

As the concept grows in significance, Black Friday will lead many online retailers to make small, incremental changes to the way their brand experience is delivered online as they recognise that adapting their model for this time period can deliver a level of return on investment that is too good to be missed.

Whilst these small changes can make a difference in the short term, brands need to develop a longer term strategy in order to retain consumers during this shopping fiesta and beyond.

Retailers who are focused on rethinking their digital strategies to meet the changing demands of a new generation of consumers are the ones who will lead the market. Greater use of video content, delivered carefully to the right audiences, on the right devices and at the right time will deliver higher engagement and conversion rates, and drive prolonged customer loyalty.

The future of digital is now and Black Friday is the perfect chance to gain new customers.

 

By Sophie Rayers, Director of Marketing for EMEA & LATAM at Brightcove. 

PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.

comments powered by Disqus