Adweek Webinar Updates

The Adweek Webinar featuring guest speakers Toto Haba and Benjamin Duvall took place in June, and just in case you weren’t able to make it, Team Bespoke has all of the key takeaways for you.

As you know, the pandemic altered how consumers are behaving drastically - especially in the e-commerce market. Linkfluence’s team of social researchers developed a study to analyze just what is driving our consumers as well as what it is going to require for us to maintain those customers post-pandemic.

So, let’s jump right in – what should marketers know about the new consumer journey?

Most Important Post Pandemic Ecommerce Trends

Consumer behavior in 2021 is normalizing economically. This means the average consumer is going back to work, socializing, shopping in person, etc. A key thing to note, however, is that functional purchases have now become emotional. Consumers have changed the way they use products and the way they shop. What has changed for good?

In a word, the e-commerce market as a whole. Brick and mortar companies had to adapt to this new delivery-focused world overnight.

Another key change is the voice of the consumer. There was a drastic increase in the volume of mentions focused on online shopping.

The bar reflects absolute volume, whereas the line represents percentage change.

With this uptick, there was a major shift in channels used. Smartphone shopping has increased 125% with the groups of users expanding to various generations. An example of this being that consumers relied on online shopping for groceries and even adapted learning how to purchase cars online – a previously high-touch industry.

All of that aside, the three key trends where a major shift occurred consist of DIY/UGC Boom, Wellness, and Indulgence.

DIY/UGC

A huge benefit of the pandemic is how much smarter consumers have become researching products online. 2020, people were stuck at home. Resulting in new habits being formed for finding product information. This has caused consumers to lean towards the influencer space. With this being the case, there were mass amounts of discovery happening on emerging platforms such as Tik Tok. This desire to learn is across the board too, not just beauty-focused.

Wellness

The wellness market has been growing for a number of years, being driven by a younger audience. This knowledge adds to the “wow factor” that this market still saw a 150% increase in conversations about wellness when focusing on e-commerce.

Similarly, clean beauty and ethical packaging trends have been prominent in beauty for a while. This trend will continue to grow. The flipside of this is the interaction of wellness and makeup. Makeup is now being treated as a form of self-care - the individuality of the way you express yourself to your world.

Indulgence

For this trend shift, we saw an increase of over 125% last year. The two main markets this was reflected in consist of food and beverage, but also seeing this uptick in beauty. With a heavy focus on mental health the past few years, spoiling yourself every now and again has been considered an ‘indulgence’. This requires a brand to think about how they position themselves. Referring back to how smart consumers have gotten: the more information for them, the better! Gone are the days of the quick, scrappy copy.

What Else Should I Know?

The final key takeaways from Adweek’s Webinar are this: customers want an experience while shopping online. That means they value personalization, readily available consumer product knowledge, and even a virtual try-on experience.

While we may not know if this trend will stick, one way to be sure you are marketing to your target audience is by continuing to communicate well with consumers and influencers. Use the information you have access to in order to gear your tools towards your audience, evaluate common trigger points, and then reduce the barrier by working with retailers to retarget in any means necessary.

If you are still #TeamBeCurious and want to stay in the loop with e-commerce trends, subscribe to our newsletter here.