Big or small, new or old, businesses across the world wrestle with the same questions every day. How do you grow customers in existing markets? How do you acquire them in new ones? These questions are especially significant in APAC where there is potential to reach 1.5 billion digital shoppers.
To grow a brand’s customer base in APAC, marketers need to think differently and daringly about how they engage with people. The journey starts with understanding consumers in this region.
It is estimated that 50% of all people in APAC will be Millennials or Zoomers by 2025.1 These young and technologically savvy consumers wield significant influence over how older and younger generations interact with technology, so decoding their consumer behaviours and decision-making process is critical to growing your customer base.
Two key consumer behaviour insights can help you engage with these groups of people.
First, video is the medium of choice for content, and people — not networks — are deciding how content is discovered, consumed, and watched. Second, APAC is shopping online — across multiple media, screens, touchpoints, and even using digital touchpoints to make offline purchases.
Riding APAC’s online video wave can help grow your customer base
People in APAC are watching more online video than ever and this means two things for brands. One, that TV campaigns don’t reach people like they used to in APAC. Two, that viewers, rather than networks, choose what appears on their screens. So online video is essential for building brand awareness among consumers, and adding YouTube to your media mix can provide between 30% and 50% incremental reach to TV-only campaigns.2
There’s also a seismic shift in where people watch video. In APAC, people are consuming video content on every screen, including Shorts on mobile, entertainment videos on laptops, and live streams on connected TV (CTV) screens. Even broadcast channels are increasingly streaming content on-demand on phones and tablets. Using multiple devices is the new norm for consumers in APAC and CTV is our fastest growing screen.3
Tapping into the power of online video and the rise of CTV enables your business to grow its customer base.
Brands that are growing their customer base by expanding their presence on CTV can further measure, plan, and optimise their campaigns with YouTube’s new co-viewing planning and measurement solution. It provides advertisers an accurate assessment of the number of people tuning in to a CTV screen and a like-for-like comparison between YouTube and linear TV buy.
One example is Nestlé Milo Vietnam’s YouTube CTV campaign to promote their switch to paper straws for sustainability. It delivered incremental reach and exposure, with 2.6X expanded CTV campaign reach through co-viewing, 6% increased reach on top of cross-device campaigns, and 24% new audiences previously unreached by cross-device campaigns.
Tapping into APAC’s e-commerce boom will help grow your customer base
The region’s young, fast-growing population is authoring the explosion of digital commerce in even its remotest corners. From buying groceries to medicine, or getting spa treatments at home, APAC is transacting online more than ever before via websites and apps. In fact, 72% of APAC’s app users prefer to engage with retailers through apps as compared with other channels, including physical stores, websites, and emails.4
Growing customers online is therefore more than just a business opportunity for brands in APAC; it’s fundamental to business success. This is where marketing automation can be a game changer. Powered by machine learning, it enables brands to move at speed and scale, reaching new and existing customers wherever they are in their multi-channel consumer journey with relevant and useful content.
The new customer acquisition goal in Performance Max enables brands to optimise for new customers and maximise sales.
One such solution is Performance Max. It helps brands reach high-value customers online and offline in a single automated campaign that runs across Google's full suite of ad channels, including YouTube, Search, Gmail, and Maps. The new customer acquisition goal in Performance Max further enables brands to optimise for new customers, maximising sales.
The possibility of reaching 1.5 billion, and growing, digital shoppers in APAC is immense and exciting. New generations are redefining what people watch and how they shop, and tapping into the power of online video and marketing automation can enable your business to grow at a speed and scale that matches your ambition.
Watch the Google Marketing Live keynote to learn why WPP believes CTV is opening a world of new possibilities for business across the globe, and how automation makes it easier to grow your customer base online and offline, and to do so efficiently and at scale.