This article is sponsored by Facebook.
Creating a strong customer experience across all of the digital moments that matter is essential to prevent customers from dropping off. Few digital channels play a more pivotal role than Facebook and Instagram in funneling customers through this journey. According to one survey by Ipsos, nearly 75% of monthly Instagram users open the app with intent to shop.
But slow, complicated checkout processes and suboptimal user experiences often don’t meet customers’ rising expectations of speed, convenience and accessibility.
Brands are driving growth by adapting to these evolving customer behaviors and delivering relevant, personalized messaging, simplified purchase processes and accessible support across these channels.
“How will the way a business tells its story continue to evolve – especially as consumer relationships with digital channels are becoming more complex?” said Vatsal Mehta, VP, Solutions Engineering and Partner Solutions at Facebook. “This is the problem Facebook is trying to solve through innovative tools and APIs that allow brands and developers to tell a more comprehensive, connected story across the entire purchase journey.”
Below are three ways brands can capitalize on Facebook’s portfolio of easy-to-use tools to create frictionless customer experiences.
1. Deliver the right creative in the right time and place. It’s no secret that social media users increasingly prefer visual communication tools.
On Facebook, users now share more than 1 billion Stories every day. For innovative brands, the Facebook and Instagram story format provides an opportunity to harness visual content to engage users where they are already spending time.
Supplementing these valuable brand storytelling spaces with tools like Creative Compass can help take the guesswork out of the creative process by predicting ad performance and indicating the likelihood an ad will lead to action.
“These tools pretest creative to help a business get the most out of their ads on Facebook.” Mehta said. “It uses AI to predict the expected performance of an ad along key indicators like noticeability, comprehension and call to action to help create campaigns that are more effective and drive conversions.”
Facebook’s Dynamic Ads help take this approach one step farther, by creating ad experiences that can address digital friction points head on. Dynamic ads help brands maximize ad spend by tailoring images and products to the interests of each Facebook user. Utilized as a retargeting tool, it can help deliver the products and services Facebook users have already shown an interest in – via website visits and online shopping carts – helping consumers reach the bottom of the funnel faster.
2. Simplify path to purchase to eliminate costly pain points. The consumer journey takes place in more places than ever before – online, offline and sometimes in both places at once. Facebook’s solution portfolio helps bridge the resulting measurement gap and offers a more complete picture of return on digital ad-spend.
Facebook Pixel, Offline Conversions and other APIs can work in tandem to connect online and offline transactions to create custom and lookalike audiences that grow your customer base and inform new marketing opportunities.
For example, in coordination with Facebook Marketing Partner StitcherAds, Facebook’s measurement and offline conversion tools helped Middle Eastern retailer Lifestyle leverage Facebook ads to drive a measurable increase in store visits. Each ad included relevant products, in-store discount offers, store location maps and targeted a custom audience that was likely to make in-store purchases. As a result, the campaign delivered a 32x return on ad-spend based on in-store sales.
For online shoppers, Instagram has become a key source for discovering new products or services (83% of users) and making purchasing decisions (80%). Checkout on Instagram acknowledges these evolving preferences – delivering customers fast access to pricing and simplifying clickthrough to the brand website for purchase.
3. Foster positive, personalized brand interactions. Messaging is already the preferred method of communication for many. Texts are simpler than phone calls, and they offer superior responsiveness to email.
According to a survey by Greenberg, 64% of people would choose to message a business before calling or emailing. In our instant gratification digital environment, when brands can’t quickly remedy customer concerns, customers drop off and the conversion is lost.
As a result, Facebook Messenger offers a powerful business opportunity for brands to foster positive 1-on-1 interactions with consumers – answering questions quickly so they can continue the purchase process with confidence.
“Our research shows that there were all lot of quick conversations customers were having prior to following through with online transactions,” Mehta said. “Messaging features can offer quick solutions for those customers, helping them come away with fast, positive experiences that fit their preferred communication habits.”
Even after purchase, Messenger shipment notifications can continue to build brand loyalty by bringing a superior customer interaction full circle – exceeding expectations for seamless shopping experiences from start to finish.
