Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex #9
Inspiration from across the world
🇮🇩 Selamat siang Indonesia! You get integrated e-commerce back
Congratulations to Indonesia, social e-commerce has returned.
Indonesia banned a short while ago, e-commerce at social media platforms. Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook have become important channels for small businesses to reach customers and sell their products. The ban has forced many of these businesses to close or scale back their operations. Also, TikTok was hit by this. Now TikTok announced it invested 1.5 billion dollars in Tokopedia and by this workaround it’s possible again for them to sell via their platform.
The ban allows social media to promote sales and advertise products, but it requires operators to provide a separate service for purchasing and selling products.
Tokopedia and TikTok Shop, TikTok's Indonesian business, will be combined under the existing Tokopedia brand, according to a joint statement released by GoTo and TikTok.
The shopping features within the TikTok app in Indonesia will be operated and maintained by the enlarged entity. Under the deal, TikTok will own 75.01% of the combined businesses. The rest will be held by GoTo and the entity will remain part of the GoTo Group.
"The structure of this deal is, surprisingly, good for both TikTok and GoTo," he said, since it bypasses many technical challenges, such as allowing operational control of Tokopedia by TikTok, which not only has unlimited customer traffic but also knows how to monetize it well through e-commerce.
🇰🇷 Kakaotalk: the way to reach 93% of the South Korean population
I traveled to South Korea once and even went to the border with the North, actually I was at the border twice, one time at the Chinese side and one time at the South Korean side. Korea is special, and highly innovative, with lots of retail and huge corporations that make everything.
Webcertain, a company that makes very good content on international marketing, recently had a webinar on Kakaotalk, the Korean messaging app. As I like almost all aspects of international e-commerce and marketing, and I used Kakaotalk in the past, I watched the webinar to see if there are unique features on Kakaotalk.
It’s worth watching, I just wrote a few bullets here below of things explained in the webinar.
Kakaotalk reaches about 93% of the population of South Korea.
Kakaotalk can be used as a campaign /CRM tool. Ideal for starting businesses or beachhead marketing
There are three types of contacts businesses can use
Alim Talk: informational messages, such as orders and payment confirmations.
Friend Talk: Used to send information or advertisements. This can only be done when friended on the app.
Sangdam Talk: A contact center, a way to consult/ contact businesses.
These are the ad types used:
Kakao Bizzboard: ads in chat messages
Display Ads
Video Ads
Keyword Ads
Some ads are also displayed in the desktop versions or widgets.
Just like many of their Asian counterparts and in the opposite of the West, live shopping is very accessible and used. Users who participate in live shopping can get vouchers.
Watch the complete webinar here:
https://www.linkedin.com/events/yourintroductiontokakaotalkmark7135974399953784832/theater/
🧈Adaptive error messages in the checkout
In e-commerce optimization, it is often beneficial to start at the end of the funnel, where customers finalize their purchases, and work backward to improve the preceding stages. This approach, known as "funnel optimization from the back end, has many advantages, but the most important one in my opinion is, that by improving the checkout conversion rate, you capture a larger portion of potential customers, resulting in increased revenue. This improvement can have a cascading effect throughout the funnel, leading to higher overall sales. Next to that, it adds trust and only trust sells.
The people at Baymard regularly post great content on webshop optimization and compare lots of online stores. Read this blog on adaptive error messages, that might be a good place to start for everyone.
https://baymard.com/blog/adaptive-validation-error-messages
🇹🇭 Comparative advertising sells
I once ate in this restaurant in Thailand, and I thought a great way to advertise this product in a menu. “Mc Donalds comparable". It sure worked as I bought the fries😆
🧐Amazon: disagree and commit
Recently I read a book on Amazon and this item popped up. Now I found a video about the topic as well. I think a way of work, improving fun in work and to work less hierarchical. The bottom line is, that you disagree, but you also commit and actively make sure it works, even if your idea is not used. But as Bezos says, often he was the one to do the commit.
I guess this can work internationally very well, as it kind of helps solve the “saving face” problem.
“You have two executives who disagree and they just have a war of attrition. And whichever one gets exhausted first, capitulates to the other one. Again you haven’t arrived at truth and it’s very demoralizing.”
Companies tend to organize hierarchically in which the more senior person ultimately makes the decision. But as Jeff explains in the clip below, that wasn’t always the case—he would often be the one to disagree and commit.
🛠️ Tooltip: Mr Beasts viewstats is out in Beta
Mr Beast maybe the most famous Youtuber of all time, has released a beta of his analytics platform and Chrome extension called viewstats. I think this can work out to be a very useful tool. Keep an eye on it, its already possible to try.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/14/mrbeasts-analytics-platform-viewstats-is-out-in-beta
Thanks for reading!
Alex