Smartly’s Retail Ads Deliver Flexible Shopping Options

Consumer shopping trends continue to spark an evolution in the retail industry. For advertisers, it’s crucial to understand how consumer needs are changing.

In the era of COVID-19, consumers are looking for flexibility in shopping options. For instance, some customer cohorts have shifted to an online or delivery-only purchase preference while others prefer collecting online orders in store or via curbside pickup.

With the rise in hybrid shopping options and abundance of media channels, retailers should empower consumers to shop how they want. The goal is no longer driving shoppers into one channel through one ad campaign. Instead, retailers must pivot their strategies and messaging to reach shoppers with relevance and personalization.

Purchase Intent on Social

Smartly.io conducted a consumer survey to understand the attitudes, behaviors, and preferences toward social ads showcasing different shopping options. Here’s what we found:

• 70% of respondents said they would be more inclined to make a holiday gift purchase via a social media ad if it showcased products that were in stock at their local stores
• More than half of consumers said they would be inclined to make a purchase from a social ad when offered Buy Online Pickup In Store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup options (52% and 51%, respectively)
• 47% of consumers said they would be more likely to make a purchase if they were offered Buy Now, Pay Later options in their social media ads

Many marketing touchpoints happen on social platforms. We at Smartly.io wanted to build a solution that helps retail advertisers address their full funnel of consumer messaging—from exploration to discovery and purchase.

Retail Ads, powered by Smartly.io

Retail Ads are creative templates for image and video made for social ad campaigns. They’ve been created specifically for retailers and provide flexibility for diverse shopping-behavior based campaigns. Retail Ads allow businesses to easily test and identify which creatives and messages are making the biggest impact.

Available in the Smartly.io platform for out-of-the-box or customizable use, Retail Ads have three distinct use cases:

• Local Inventory and Availability
• Buy Online Pickup In Store (BOPIS) and Curbside Pickup
• Buy Now, Pay Later

By using Smartly.io’s Creative Editor, retail advertisers can toggle between these fully flexible and customizable creative presets. They can customize templates with logos, colors, brand guidelines, and products—then easily plug them into campaigns on social.

The Key Benefits of Retail Ads

Retail Ads empower retailers to:

1. Save time while bypassing the outdated and laborious process of manually creating ad versions for each type of consumer shopping behavior
2. Provide flexibility to consumers in how they shop, allowing retailers to focus on business strategies that matter most
3. Improve results by driving mass reach at the store level, in-store sales through hyperlocal messaging, and/or online conversions and ROAS

Retail Ads in Action

With our Local Inventory and Availability Retail Ads, businesses can generate ads for in-stock products available locally. Additional options can be applied to showcase discounts, best sellers, and top-rated items. When consumers know that products are sold nearby, they feel confident in their purchase decision.

Leveraging our BOPIS & Curbside Pickup Retail Ads, advertisers can display order fulfillment options at the product level with applicable callouts such as badges, banners, borders, and text. While this strategy can be executed at the product level, it can also be effective in adding relevance to upper-funnel brand creative assets. By enhancing creative with these badges and icons, consumers know their orders can be fulfilled at a physical storefront.

Our co-marketing Retail Ads are built around Buy Now, Pay Later. Advertisers can apply rules and logic to accurately calculate payment installments for companies such as Afterpay, Klarna, and Affirm. These templates provide a streamlined process of combining multiple logos into a singular creative concept—all with the benefit of beautifying product imagery.

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