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Creative Works Live Shopping Phygital

How phygital experiences can capture audiences in an era of content fatigue

By Leanne Fitz, Digital producer

FREIM Studio

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The Drum Network article

This content is produced by The Drum Network, a paid-for membership club for CEOs and their agencies who want to share their expertise and grow their business.

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April 20, 2023 | 7 min read

Leanne Fitz and Carmen Muley of Freim Studio enlighten e-commerce brands as to how merging physical and digital can create an enhanced and immersive customer experience.

Man walking past lit-up shop window at night

E-commerce brands must exist online and offline in to survive in web3 and beyond / Marc Kleen

Year in and year out, we see all types of companies working hard to get their target audiences’ attention. This has become increasingly hard as new technologies, new social media platforms and new ways of advertising have been proliferating.

We have reached a point in which brands must be online in order to survive and even more important than having an online presence, is the ability to stand out among competitors.

The implementation of live shopping is one way in which companies can do this.

Creating a phygital experience

We’ve all heard about creating phygital experiences; the blending of online and offline worlds to create new, enhanced consumer experiences.

With live shopping, brands can recreate the in-store experience many consumers crave, but in a digital space. This can result in improved online customer engagement and make the online experience more like an actual store through human interaction online.

The goal is not to take away the traditional in-store experience, but to make online shopping more convenient and to create a combination of positive online and offline experiences that improve the overall customer experience.

Consumers are drawn to live shopping because of its novel format that allows them to quickly learn about a plethora of products and services they may not have been aware of prior. Consumers are able to ask questions to the live show presenter and create a sense of connection with the brand.

Instead of just ‘liking’ the company's social media posts, consumers can get instant and direct answers to their questions, by talking with them directly during the live event. This is great for community building and enhanced brand loyalty.

Given the interactive nature of live shopping, viewers feel like they are part of something bigger and like they belong to a community where they also have a say. Plus, when you are able to engage with your audience in such a direct way, the average watch time will be much longer than the average time any consumer would spend inspecting an e-commerce store or just doom-scrolling.

To make it even better and easier to capture viewers’ attention, they will also be able to communicate with you via chat messages, polls and quizzes, giving you access to extremely valuable information in real-time.

But what do we have to do to get there and captivate our audience? Well, it all starts with going live.

Think of providing consumers with a different experience or just simply something that’s exciting, fun or limited that creates the so-called Fomo. Or, educate them on a topic that is important to them.

By taking these actions, we will immediately be capturing our consumers’ attention for a longer period of time even in a world in which there’s so much content available online that it is very easy for our audiences to get distracted.

Hosting a live event via your online store

Hosting an event on a company's own e-commerce store is a great way to drive traffic to a company website and encourage audiences to regularly check in on new upcoming events.

This can be done via live shopping software, which may also provide you with new tools for enhancing engagement and keeping your audience interested. To amplify viewership, many of these software also allow you to simultaneously cast the live event to social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Many companies opt to have an influencer as their live shopping host to attract specific audiences. However, research shows that those who are closely linked to a brand tend to be the best sales presenters because they are more likely to be invested in the products, and have the knowledge required and the overall passion needed to be an effective host.

Putting together a live shopping event that merges both, the value someone from the company can provide and the trust that consumers place in an influencer will help keep the audience interested in the live event.

Let’s not forget though those online audiences tend to run away very fast from anything that looks 'sales-y', so if you want them to pay attention to what you are doing, make it personal and make it count.

Creative Works Live Shopping Phygital

Content by The Drum Network member:

FREIM Studio

A digital studio specialized in video and live shopping content that aims to join brands and creators to craft amazing campaigns. We are FIRST Live Shopping niche...

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