How can phygital revolutionise your marketing strategy?

What is phygital and how can it revolutionise your marketing strategy ?

Phygital: what is it?

Phygital is a combination of physical and digital marketing, creating a new way for companies to engage with customers. With advances in technology, more and more companies are going online, however, customers are phygital...online and offline and therefore brands need to ensure they supply and satisfy both platforms. Customers like to see products before buying them, yet also like to shop around and find deals online. Integrating digital and physical marketing will ensure companies can reach the customer before, during and after they visit the store.

According to the IAB Spain 2018 e-commerce study, approximately seven out of every ten internet users buy online, however, 22% prefer the benefits of physical interaction within a store and will therefore choose to browse online before completing their purchase within the physical shop. Using Near Field Communication (NFC) can bring together the digital and physical marketing locations creating a more seamless and integrated experience for the customer. The retailer can understand the customer's buying behaviour in and out of the store and therefore direct their efforts towards creating marketing strategies that satisfy these needs on and offline.

A lasting shopping experience

Interpersonal interactions that occur within a store, such as help from store assistants when locating items, continue to remain highly-valued for customer in their shopping experience. This encourages retailers to keep the physical stores as well as expanding to an online platform and therefore transforming the marketing strategy to integrate both physical and digital components is critical.

NFC technology is a simple way of introducing digital marketing into a store. Adding NFC tags to product packaging and labels provides the customer with the opportunity to engage with the brand. As a result of scanning the tags with their phones, they can be sent to a competition entry page, an additional product information section or be given product recommendations. They can also be invited to VIP events, receive coupons digitally or be asked to fill in a quick survey. NFC tags allow customers to interact with the products at the shop and after the purchase.

Example of a successful phygital campaign: Malibu's NFC enabled bottles

Malibu was one of the first brands to trial a marketing campaign using NFC technology. After an initial trial in the UK in 2016, the brand made 300,000 smart bottles available in the UK and Germany as part of their summer campaign in 2018. These bottles contained NFC tags that allowed the customer to engage with the brand and access exclusive information such as competitions and recipes. This campaign allowed the brand to monitor customer appetite in relation to how the product was purchased and used, but also helped Malibu discover whether the effort to interact with the bottle outweighed the benefits the product provided to the customer. The campaign was so successful that Malibu launched it in the US in 2019.

Malibu is not the only brand to have used NFC technology. Read more about amazing examples of NFC based campaigns.

Benefits of using NFC to achieve a phygital marketing strategy:

the retailer gains visibility of customer interactions and which products they engage with more
items can be tracked in the store which ensures they are easier to find
items that are scanned in store by the customer can bring about product recommendations online
scanned NFC tags can lead to competition entry pages which encourage engagement and customer details to be entered and stored
the retailer can see if customers buy the products they interact with