Asian eCommerce is booming. A case for marketing automation?
Asian eCommerce is growing fast, and it’s not just about big companies like AliExpress. In fact, these are small and medium-sized enterprises that have the highest digital potential. Even though they are currently falling behind but it seems to be somewhat temporary. Why? Because of how fast Asian SMEs grow.
In SMEs in Asia Pacific: The Market for Cloud Computing 2015, Asia Cloud Computing Association noted that SMEs represent over 90% of all businesses across 14 countries in Asia. They employ approximately 1.02 billion people and contribute more than $10.9 trillion directly into the economies. SMEs revenues create 49.1% of total GDP for the region.
Did we already mention that the market is huge?
Talking about digitizing, we usually turn our heads to the West, looking at the UK and US. Statistics suggest, we start turning heads and pointing fingers in the opposite direction.
There are currently 993 million people shopping online in Asia, with 454 million new users expected to shop online by 2021. There will be a total of 1.4 billion eCommerce users by 2021, and this will represent 53% of the total population.
According to Statista, the overall revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2018–2022) of 11.3% resulting in a market volume of US$1,208,101m in 2022. User penetration is at 31.9% in 2018 and is expected to hit 44.2% in 2022. The average revenue per user (ARPU) currently amounts to US$704.44.
Information Economy Report 2017 says that Asia is a leader by number of Internet users
Who’s got the highest market growth?
China and India. The average annual penetration growth rates show that Asia is currently an eCommerce leader.
China’s annual growth rates of eCommerce market size
So, Asia has a great potential
As statistics prove, the pace of Asian digital market development is extraordinary. The number of Internet users grows every day forcing more businesses to migrate online and pursue their goals digitally.
Asian eCommerce booms — but not without challenges
Especially when it comes to SMBs. Asian entrepreneurs have nailed digitalization of big enterprises, but when it comes to smaller retail companies, there are yet more questions than answers.
Asian eCommerce is growing but not to its full potential
International research puts only a few Asian countries as successful in eCommerce trade.
According to Information Economy Report 2017, we have Singapore, South Korea, and Indonesia — what’s up with all the others?
How is that the region with such a development potential shows such low results when it comes to eCommerce? Something is wrong.
What are the challenges for Asian eCommerce?
Users don’t trust the Internet as much yet
Buying online is responsible — as everything that comes to spending money. It’s natural that those users who only started using the Internet, are not confident doing online shopping.
According to Information Economy Report 2017, nearly 90 percent of the 750 million people that went online for the first time between 2012 and 2015 were from developing economies, with the largest numbers from India (178 million) and China (122 million).
On top of that, Asian eCommerce SMBs lack transparency and reputation.
What could be the solution here? Asian businesspeople will look up to the Western experience of building a trustworthy digital commercial partnership between a seller and a buyer to gain the trust of new Internet users. Also, with time, online shopping will become less of a risk, more of a regular practice.
SMBs are falling behind
When you think about Asian shopping, you think about big corporations like AliExpress. But the truth is, these are not only retail giants that shape Asian eCommerce market. Those are SMEs that create personalized communication between a seller and a buyer, and they play a big part in building a digital economy.
As statistics show, small companies don’t receive as many orders online as big companies.
There are few reasons why this happens:
- SMEs are often represented by local companies which are oriented for a specific narrow niche in a certain region. Even if they have an online store, its promotion is not enough to make a website profitable.
- SMEs owners lack skills and knowledge in digital marketing. In order for eCommerce to actually bring money, businesspeople need to invest, not only resources but also time and efforts — to build a strategy, to plan and monitor campaigns, test the efficiency of digital channels. All of this requires either specific knowledge of digital marketing or a team that will take care of the process.
- Digital marketing requires resources. Again, it all starts with investing either money or time while guarantees really nothing. Stakes are high, profits are not tangible.
Digital SMEs still have a long way to go
Online shopping is yet a new trend in Asia. Therefore, businesses don’t have established practices when it comes to analyzing user behavior, doing A/B testing, designing an intuitive interface. All these issues result in poorly developed online stores that don’t attract customers.
The owners of SMEs have nothing to be blamed for. Not only they don’t have yet the experience of doing business online but also most of Western best practices simply won’t work. Let’s not forget that there are cultural differences, and what appeals to an American buyer, won’t work for Chinese users. Asian owners are forced to learn from their own mistakes, learn own lessons and collect completely unique insights.
Case in point: It’s no secret that in the United States and Europe, shopping in social media is at its peak. This, however, is not the case when it comes to Asia.
Even tech — savvy China and Japan don’t purchase as much on social media
What does it mean?
The Asian market is growing at a rapid pace while yet facing problems with adopting new marketing methods. To survive the competition and gain buyer’s trust, SMEs should optimize the customer experience, set comprehensive analytics, research target audience, and overall, make shopping online smooth and easy.
There really are lots of questions — which could be answered with automation
Really, think about it. Automated solutions don’t require as much of attention and efforts, so the digital store can be managed even without marketing expertise. They are not limited to a particular region or country.
And there are other benefits of automation
Optimized workflow
When a business is not dependent on staff, it is easier to monitor and control. Automated procedures are detailly documented and evaluated with specifically designed metrics which makes it much easier to count KPIs and assess productivity.
No need to hire more people
Automation software can perform the functions of 5–10 people. What’s even better, automated platforms are way easier to control and manage. You clearly see the stats that show what was done, and what yet needs more attention.
A great source of knowledge
In Asia, digital stores started to boom not so long ago. That’s why business owners sometimes lack necessary expertise in solving urgent problems or optimizing the customer experience. Services for market automation guide through every procedure, providing exclusive insights based on collected data about customer preferences and on-site behavior.
Relationship marketing
The lack of trust of Asian buyers is really an issue. To work with concerns and doubts, companies should focus on building relations with clients, creating trust and brand awareness. That means sending retentions or emails with incentives, producing special offers, personalizing them for every user. Not manually. The automation system takes care of it — business owners just oversee the process.
More revenue
That’s the ultimate goal, right? Also, that’s exactly what automation provides. With less time spent on second — priority tasks, business owners can focus on growing their business — while automation system will take care of building clients relation and setting a comprehensive marketing strategy. Gartner says, by 2020, 85% of customer relationships with businesses will be managed without human interaction.
How does it all work out for Asian eCommerce?
Because of Asian eCommerce boom, it’s obvious that automation is not only a strong marketing optimization instrument but also a a substantial competitive advantage. That’s why Asian companies turn to platforms like HubSpot or Marketo.
To find out that it might be a bummer
Price is an issue
For one thing, American and European platforms are often too expensive for Asian SMEs owners. Also, as we already said, not everything that works for US companies is just as useful for Asian business.
Functionality
Even if SMEs owners decided to pay for one of existing platforms, it turns out to be ineffective. Why? Because in US marketing, business owners have worked digitally for decades now, and in Asia, online shopping is still a relatively new practice, especially when it comes to small and medium companies. So, existing solutions yet require deep marketing expertise: to set a campaign or start a metric, a user has to know the methods and instruments like a back of his hand.
So, these platforms are, on the one hand, pretty complicated, on the other — doesn’t fulfill even half of the business needs. When you need to build a digital marketing strategy from scratch, you need a service that knows how to do it. Existing platforms know how to perform an action but they are weak when it comes to setting goals and planning campaigns.
No real control
Existing platforms are built as centralized systems which means, business owners don’t know why the algorithms offer this particular tool to solve the problem. You trust the platform to basically run your digital business without knowing how it works.
Not only that, but you also depend on the platform. What if you get banned for some reason? What if someone accesses your data? Centralized systems give you no real control over your business. You are chained to the platform.
Is there a way out?
Yes. There already exist blockchain platforms, powered by Artificial Intelligence. They are built as decentralized systems (that’s what blockchain is) which means the platform creators have no control over business data, access or metrics. No Big Brother is watching over your business.
Artificial Intelligence, on the other hand, makes marketing optimization truly smart. The advanced Machine Learning algorithms allow platforms to learn rare customer insights, trigger responses from on-site behavior, build lasting client relationships and personalize communication.
Triggmine, as a decentralized platform for marketing automation, precisely responds to challenges of marketing automation for Asian eCommerce market (especially for SMB). It’s about smart, transparent marketing optimization where the business owners get an optimal stack of marketing services chosen by a smart assistant.
Due to machine learning and AI technology, the platform can actually work with no human interaction — including building a strategy and starting a promotional campaign. The platform is aimed at democratizing the market, which is one of the biggest concern for all not-TaoBaos in Asia.
