Facebook-BCG report puts forward these measures for businesses to unlock the new path to purchase & tide over COVID-19 crisis

Facebook India in association with Boston Consulting Group in a report on Wednesday shared actionable guidance for brands to build new consumer journeys in times of COVID-19 and beyond.

The report titled ‘Turn the Tide’ showed how COVID-19 has dramatically changed consumer behavior and altered the path-to-purchase.

It highlights the behaviour shifts and outlined the opportunity for businesses around the altered path-to-purchase.

Sandeep Bhushan, director and head, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook India, said, “The ‘Turn the Tide’ report outlines the opportunities that businesses need to embrace in the context of new consumer journeys and category needs.”

“We are experiencing unprecedented shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviors - 80%+ consumers will continue to practice social distancing and are bringing the outside inside, over 40% of consumers are dialing up on health and wellness spends, e-commerce adoption has already advanced by 2-3 years - to name a few,” said Nimisha Jain, managing director and partner, Boston Consulting Group.

The report recommends these measures to turn the COVID-19 crisis into opportunity:

1. Build Social connect in Social distancing: Engage with consumers in their context

People, creators, and celebrities are on social media platforms in an unprecedented way, and brands have an opportunity to leverage this massive engagement to build stronger dialogues and deeper connect with users, it said.

2. Focus on Hyper-Localisation: Connect with consumers where they are

Micro-targeting can help brands get the first-mover advantage with the country being divided into different zones with distinct restrictions.

3. Bring alive experiences with digital access: Virtual launches and product demos

As people turn to virtual experiences for every facet of their life, it becomes important for brands to build for this new customer journey. “We are already seeing more brands explore Facebook and Instagram ‘Live’ to connect with their followers and customers. Now brands are thinking about using social media platforms for new product launches too.”

4. Optimise Portfolio for Value creation: Segmenting consumers to drive differential value

With the consumer becoming more value-conscious, it becomes important for brands to segment in order to optimize and offer what is relevant for the segment.

5. Relook at media mix models to drive growth: Align to new media landscape

As brands, especially those with traditional product categories, start spending more online, they would feel the urgent need to understand truly incremental outcomes by platform as well as cross-platform efficiency. This would increase the need for industry-leading digital measurement standards such as custom mix modelling (CMM) by Nielsen that Facebook had piloted last year.

6. Build your online presence: Own platforms and influencing marketplaces

The study revealed that Indian consumers may spend higher on e-commerce, even for traditionally offline categories. Surge in preference for online channel is sharper in India than in China, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines. This is the right time to build your online presence.

7. Strengthen CRM solutions: Messaging for post sales communication and other digital CRM tools

It’s essential to seamlessly solve for customer needs to eliminate friction in the path-to-purchase. Conversational digital solutions such as messenger/chat bots and other digital CRM tools can prove to be beneficial right now.

(Click here for the full report)

This is a partnered post.

Disclaimer: The views, suggestions and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Forbes India journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.