For years trade marketing has been essential for companies. With a high strategic value, big brands increasingly invest to influence customers at a critical purchase point, when chances of conversion are greater. According to estimates by the Boston Consulting Group, globally speaking, investment in this area is more than US$500 billion.
However, customer behaviour has dramatically changed over the last few years. With the advance of technology and easy access to the internet – in Europe, 73% of the population uses the internet daily – increasingly more people are impacted by stimuli, options, promises, advantages, and novelties that alternate communication between online and offline purchasing environments.
The buyer’s journey is now omnichannel. Providing a positive and consistent experience both in the online and offline worlds has become a requirement for companies to survive.
Consequently, connectivity has completely transformed retail, and e-commerce has gained momentum. In 2018, nearly 268 million European consumers made online purchases worth EUR 198 billion, representing an increase of 9.4% compared to the preceding year. The e-commerce market is expected to show a revenue growth of 10.0% in 2021.
As such, the techniques to win bricks-and-mortar customers also need to be adapted to the digital environment. The digital trade marketing concept is born with virtually the same goal as traditional trade marketing but for online sales channels.
Digital trade marketing enables you to collect, track and analyse relevant data about the buyer’s journey and, based on this data, promote accurate actions to engage users in the consideration and conversion stages, i.e. when the user is in an online store looking for a product and therefore more prone to make a buying decision.