Companies like Zendesk, Box, Dropbox, Atlassian, and Zoom are well-known for successfully building enterprise businesses. Most of them have transitioned from consumer or SMB-focused roots to become serious enterprise players, but each has taken a different path to reaching hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

People sometimes call these transitions “pivots”— but that’s not exactly accurate. Each company’s journey to the enterprise has followed the natural trajectory of its business, and every journey is different. The enterprise shift is often just the next step on a steady march of monetization.

This was true at SurveyMonkey, too. Our own shift came, in part, when we realized that our use cases were rapidly expanding and not all had equal value. A survey asking 1,000 employees “What flavor ice cream do you want for the company picnic?” and one asking hundreds of thousands of customers “What is the right price for our product?” may both be important, but one is much more valuable in terms of driving business strategy.

The best way to monetize a business is to ensure you’re continually driving customer value. For example, a freemium strategy often works well for driving adoption, gaining share, and reducing friction, but it can also lead companies to pursue a strategy that pursues volume over value.

While it’s great to drive volume, there is a risk of giving away too much value – at which point your company cannot sustain itself or reinvest. At the same time, if you don’t give away enough value, you won’t realize the benefits of rapid adoption.

As more software companies look to follow their natural trajectories upmarket, here are three core considerations to keep in mind:

1. Solve for organizational value and not just user value

We all spend many hours a day interacting with high-quality consumer technology, in both work and play. The rapid prevalence and availability of this technology have both increased its adoption and raised our expectations. When companies move beyond the individual consumer to the broader enterprise, their approach to value must understandably shift with it.

Organizational value encompasses many different use cases and needs, whereas individual user value will just be the one case. For most productivity tools, the value increases as people work together, which is why most products now offer “team” plans, with collaboration and workflow features.

Even better, when an entire organization is using a specific software it creates a network effect where the value increases geometrically, beyond a simple linear equation of total users multiplied by the value of a single license.

When moving upmarket, it is important to understand how your product might be valuable beyond specific team applications. Bringing a product to the entire organization may unlock a much wider range of organizational value.

As much as companies pursue organizational value as they race upmarket though, it’s critical to continue delivering individual user value. Providing greater value through advanced organizational features is good, but if leaders lose sight of the user value that brought them upmarket in the first place, then the organizational value won’t matter.

2. Build features for the future, not just for today

If a potential customer is going to take a chance on a challenger brand, they have to believe there are outsized gains that make the risks worthwhile. They’re going to want to see how your long-term vision will yield 10x improvement or 10x effectiveness. To create that kind of value, you’ll have to be building not just what they need today, but what they’ll need tomorrow.

Let’s take Box, for example —a company that was doing great with consumers ( a few million users within months of launching ) as internet access soared and the costs of online storage plummeted in the mid-2000s. But Aaron Levie realized that as the company grew, he would need to turn his attention to the enterprise to achieve the kind of exponential growth he envisioned.

Leading the charge early on for the consumerization of enterprise tech, the cloud storage space was ripe for a simple, easy-to-use product. Box recognized the future needs and desires for more consumer-friendly functionality combined with enterprise-grade security, and the company was able to capitalize on that unique offering to sell into larger and larger organizations.

To move upmarket in a sustainable way, you’ll need to have an informed, forward-thinking point of view on where the market is headed and how your solution fits within it. Levie saw that ease of use had people flocking to Box, but his real genius was in foreseeing the need to marry that simplicity with the rigorous infrastructure required by big companies.

When building new features, it’s also important to create and emphasize stickiness. Connecting your systems to other valuable platforms will enable you to weave your software into the fabric of the enterprise, which can include identity data integration (like single sign-on and permissions software) or integration across collaboration platforms (like Slack or Microsoft Teams).

This has the added value of promoting retention, because more use cases are always better, particularly when they support organizational value.

3. Ensure you have the right business model

If you looked at a company like ours, where half the usage on our platform is free, the logical thing to do is segment the business model to the value that gets delivered. Instead of continuing with a one-size-fits-all approach, we started to identify the true value-drivers for our customers so we could monetize around them.

Of course, finding the right pricing model for a software company involves considering a lot of options: user-based, by seat, subscription billing vs. month-to-month, tiered-model vs. a single-pricing level, etc.

Like many SaaS companies, SurveyMonkey has a good/better/best pricing plan that includes different features in each, along with a limited freemium option. That model provides simple, easy-to-understand options for customers.

Even so, it can be tricky for our customers to take into account all of the different kinds of surveys they might conduct, as illustrated by the ice cream flavor to strategic pricing decision spectrum. We made this tradeoff because the data pointed us in this direction.

The choice of a pricing model might be the most important decision a company makes as it is shifting to greater monetization and a move upmarket. The right model will appeal to customers and the wrong model is very painful to change. Make sure you have a mountain of evidence to validate your pricing hypothesis, whatever it may be.

Using NPS scores and CX surveys will help companies gauge the impact of their shift upmarket on customer loyalty and satisfaction. Likewise, active listening to gather customer feedback will ensure that you continue to meet the needs of each customer segment. That data can help you balance strategic goals and gauge the effectiveness and pacing of your transition while staying close to your customers.

Overall, the road to selling upmarket doesn’t have to be a bumpy one. With a laser focus on establishing organizational value, providing future-proof features with the right business model, and utilizing CX tools, a much smoother journey is possible.

Digital trends 2021: Every single stat marketers need to know

If you’re looking for the latest digital insights and social media stats, you’ll find them all in our new Digital 2021 reports series.

Published in partnership between We Are Social and Hootsuite , this year’s reports reveal that connected tech became an even more essential part of people’s lives over the past year, with social media, ecommerce, streaming content, and video games all seeing significant growth in the past 12 months.

Some of the key themes to look for in this year’s reports include:

Changes in how people search for information and brands

The evolving demographics of online audiences

The rapidly growing importance of ecommerce

Why mobile is essential, but not the only answer

And why it’s time to change the metrics that guide marketing’s social media ‘mix’

Just before we get stuck into the numbers, I’d like to thank all of the data partners and providers who’ve made this year’s reports possible, especially:

GWI

Statista

App Annie

The ITU

GSMA Intelligence

Semrush

SimilarWeb

Locowise

Kenshoo

I’d also like to draw your attention to the important notes on changes to our methodology, which you’ll find on page 6 of the report.

The Digital 2021 Global Overview Report

You’ll find our complete Digital 2021 Global Overview Report in the SlideShare embed below ( click here if that’s not working for you), but read on below for my analysis of this year’s top stories.

Essential headlines

Here are the headline stats and trends for the global ‘State of Digital’ in January 2021:

Population: the world’s population stood at 7.83 billion at the start of 2021. The United Nations reports that this figure is currently growing by 1% per year, which means that the global total has increased by more than 80 million people since the start of 2020.

Mobile: 5.22 billion people use a mobile phone today, equating to 66.6 % of the world’s total population. Unique mobile users have grown by 1.8% ( 93 million ) since January 2020, while the total number of mobile connections has increased by 72 million ( 0.9 % ) to reach a total of 8.02 billion at the start of 2021.

Internet: 4.66 billion people around the world use the internet in January 2021, up by 316 million ( 7.3% ) since this time last year. Global internet penetration now stands at 59.5% . However, COVID-19 has significantly impacted the reporting of internet user numbers, so actual figures may be higher.

Social media: there are now 4.20 billion social media users around the world. This figure has grown by 490 million over the past 12 months, delivering year-on-year growth of more than 13 % . The number of social media users is now equivalent to more than 53 % of the world’s total population.

But beyond tasty trivia, what does all of this data tell us about what people are actually doing online?

You’ll find my handy summary of all this year’s top trends below, but if you’d like to dig into any of these stories in more detail – together with some other stories that aren’t included here – head over to DataReportalom , where you’ll find our complete collection of Digital 2021 reports and analysis.

1. Social media adoption surges

Social media user numbers jumped by more than 13% over the past year, with nearly half a billion new users taking the global total to almost 4.2 billion by the start of 2021.

On average, more than 1.3 million new users joined social media every day during 2020, equating to roughly 15½ new users every single second .

The typical social media user now spends 2 hours and 25 minutes on social media each day, equating to roughly one waking day of their life every week.

Added together, the world’s social media users will spend a total of 3.7 trillion hours on social media in 2021 – equivalent to more than 420 million years of combined human existence.

As we’ve seen in previous years though, there are significant differences between countries.

GWI reports that Filipinos are still the world’s biggest consumers of social media, spending an average of 4 hours and 15 minutes per day using social platforms – a full half an hour more than second-placed Colombians.

At the other end of the scale, users in Japan say they spend less than an hour a day on social media, but this year’s figure of 51 minutes is still 13% higher than the figure we reported for Japanese users this time last year.

2. Mobiles have become our ‘first’ screen

Data from App Annie shows that Android users around the world now spend more than 4 hours each day using their phones.

In total, that means Android users spent more than 3.5 trillion cumulative hours using their phones over the past 12 months.

App Annie’s State of Mobile 2021 report also reveals that mobiles now account for a greater amount of people’s time than live TV.

GWI ’s data tells a similar story. The company’s latest research finds that the typical global internet user now spends 3 hours and 39 minutes each day using the internet on their mobile phone, compared to a total of 3 hours and 24 minutes per day watching television.

For context, that means the average internet user now spends roughly 7% longer using connected services on their phone than they do watching TV.

However, as we’ll see below, mobile devices still only account for about half of our daily internet time.

3. Online time jumps

In total, the average internet user now spends almost 7 hours per day using the internet across all devices, equating to more than 48 hours per week online – that’s 2 full days out of every 7.

Assuming that the average person sleeps for between 7 and 8 hours per day, this means that we now spend roughly 42 % of our waking lives online, and that we spend almost as much time using the internet as we do sleeping.

The figures also show that people are spending more time online each day than they did in previous years.

The latest findings from GWI show that the typical internet user spent 16 minutes longer online each day in Q3 2020 than they did in Q3 2019, representing a year-on-year increase of 4 % .

If internet use remains at these levels throughout 2021, the world’s internet users will spend almost 12 trillion hours online this year, which translates to more than 1.3 billion years of combined human time.

However, as we saw in last year’s report , there’s a significant variation in the amount of time that people in different countries spend online.

Filipinos report spending the greatest amount of time online, at an average of almost 11 hours per day.

Brazilians, Colombians, and South Africans also say they spend an average of more than 10 hours per day online.

At the other end of the scale, the Japanese report spending the least amount of time online, at less than 4½ hours per day.

Interestingly, the figure for China also falls at the lower end of the spectrum, at just 5 hours and 22 minutes per day – 1½ hours less than the global average of 6 hours and 54 minutes.

4. Online search behaviors are changing

Finding information is the main reason why people go online, with almost two-thirds of the world’s internet users saying this is one of their top motivations.

However, the latest research from GWI shows that the world’s search behaviors are evolving, and this changing behavior has important consequences for anyone hoping to engage a digital audience.

Conventional search engines are still an essential part of the mix, with a massive 98 % of respondents saying that they use a search engine every month.

However, more than 7 in 10 respondents also say that they now use at least one tool other than text-based search engines to find information online each month.

Voice interfaces are the most popular alternative, with 45 % of global internet users saying that they used voice search or voice commands in the past 30 days.

Meanwhile, almost a third of the world’s internet users also use image recognition tools on their mobiles each month, with tools like Pinterest Lens and Google Lens seeing particularly strong adoption across Latin America and Southeast Asia.

But perhaps the most interesting trend in evolving search behaviors is the rise of social search.

Roughly 45 % of global internet users now say that they turn to social networks when looking for information about products or services that they’re thinking of buying.

However, this figure is even higher amongst younger users, with Gen Z users saying that they’re more likely to search for brands on social media than they are to look for them on search engines.

5. A multi-device strategy is still essential

Mobile phones now account for 53 % of the time that the world spends online, but the data clearly shows that other devices still play important roles in our connected lives.

GWI data shows that 9 in 10 internet users go online via their smartphones, but two-thirds also say that they use a laptop or desktop computer to access the internet.

It’s worth highlighting that mobile phones are now the most widely used internet device in all countries, but the gap between mobiles and computers is often quite small, especially in Western Europe.

Meanwhile, the latest data from StatCounter shows that computers still account for a meaningful share of the world’s web activity.

More than 40 % of web pages served in December 2020 were requested by web browsers running on laptop and desktop devices, although the overall share of these devices is down slightly compared to December 2019.

6. A more strategic approach to social media marketing

Kepios analysis of data collected by GWI shows that at least 98% of the users of any given social media platform also use at least one other social platform.

Individual social platforms are also subject to significant audience overlaps, with 85 % of TikTok users aged 16 to 64 saying they use Facebook, and almost 95 % of Instagram users in the same age group saying they also use YouTube.

While the general concept of audience overlap may not come as a surprise, the extent of these overlaps has particular relevance to marketers.

The key takeaway is that brands do not need to be active on every single platform, and in fact, the data show that a presence on just one or two of the larger platforms offers the potential to reach almost all of the world’s social media users.

For context, at least 6 platforms now have more than 1 billion monthly active users, while at least 17 have more than 300 million.

However, this doesn’t mean that marketers should focus solely on these larger platforms.

Indeed, the data support the argument for a more strategic, portfolio-based approach to social media.

Rather than focusing all of their attention on reach, it’s time for marketers to explore other factors, such as the specific creative opportunities offered by each platform’s content formats, or the different engagement opportunities available on more ‘niche’ platforms.

So, rather than getting distracted by platform user numbers, try asking yourself:

Who do I want to engage?

Why might they be using social media?

Which platform(s) will be most relevant to their motivations?

How can I use these channels to achieve my desired outcomes?

7. Digging deeper into online audience demographics

We’ve included a wealth of new charts in this year’s reports that offer insights into connected activities by age and gender.

One of the most revealing of these charts shows how the adoption of ecommerce varies by demographic.

And the clear takeaway from this GWI data is that internet users in the Baby Boomer generation are only marginally less likely to use ecommerce than Gen Z and Millennial internet users.

Moreover, female internet users aged 55 to 64 are actually more likely to shop online than male internet users aged 16 to 24.

It’s also interesting to note that a significant share of older internet users play video games.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, gaming adoption rates amongst older generations aren’t as high as they are for Gen Z, where more than 90 % of internet users say they play games.

However, GWI’s data still shows that more than two-thirds of internet users aged 55 to 64 around the world play video games.

Another age-related trend is evident in the latest social media data, which shows that older age groups are the fastest-growing segments amongst some of the top platforms’ audiences.

For example, Facebook saw users over the age of 65 increase by roughly 25 % over the past year – that’s almost double the overall average of 13 % .

Perhaps surprisingly, users over the age of 50 also represent Snapchat’s fastest-growing demographic.

The number of users aged 50 and above that advertisers can reach on Snapchat has grown by roughly 25 % in the past 3 months, with male users in this age group increasing by a third.

Note that these Snapchat figures represent quarterly growth, while the Facebook figures above showcase annual growth.

It’s also worth noting that these figures represent relative growth, not a share of the absolute increase in user numbers.

For context, users aged 25 to 34 still accounted for the greatest number of new Facebook users over the past year, despite already being the platform’s largest demographic segment.

However, the relative growth figures still demonstrate that a greater number of older users are joining social platforms.

These evolving demographics may bring new opportunities for marketers, together with new revenue streams for platforms and publishers.

8. Online grocery and the rise of ecommerce

One of the standout digital stories in 2020 was the rise of ecommerce, with the COVID-19 pandemic driving consumers all over the world to embrace online shopping.

At a global level, nearly 77 % of internet users aged 16 to 64 now say that they buy something online each month.

Internet users in Indonesia are the most likely to make ecommerce purchases, with more than 87 % of the country’s respondents to GWI ’s survey saying that they bought something online in the past month.

At the other end of the spectrum, just 57 % of internet users in Egypt say that they made an online purchase in the past 30 days.

Meanwhile, what people have been buying over recent months also makes for interesting reading.

Statista reports that the Fashion & Beauty category accounted for the largest share of global B2C ecommerce revenues in 2020, at more than $665 billion USD.

This is the first time in our ongoing series of Global Digital Reports that the Travel category hasn’t claimed the largest share of revenue, highlighting just how difficult recent months have been for travel and tourism brands.

Indeed, Statista reports that online revenues in the Travel, Mobility & Accommodation category were down by more than 50 % year-on-year, resulting in a drop of well over half a trillion US dollars in annual consumer spending.

On the other hand, many other categories saw strong growth in ecommerce revenues in 2020.

Food & Personal Care was the fastest growing consumer ecommerce category in 2020, with COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures acting as a catalyst for significant increases in online grocery shopping.

Worldwide, the category saw annual revenues exceed $400 billion USD in 2020, up by more than 40 % compared to the previous year.

These numbers support findings that we shared in our Digital 2020 July Global Statshot Report, when many internet users said that they expected to continue with new online shopping behaviors that they’d adopted during COVID-19 lockdowns.

However, the impact of this trend should extend well beyond the Food & Personal Care category.

Grocery shopping tends to be a high-frequency activity, which means that people have had the chance to develop and embed new online shopping habits over recent months.

As most marketers know, it can be very difficult to inspire this kind of behavior change – especially in high-frequency activities – so these new habits represent an unparalleled opportunity for brands and retailers to redefine the status quo.

9. What to look out for in 2021

Hopefully, that’s given you a solid understanding of the ‘state of digital’ today.

But what does the future hold?

Based on my analysis of the data in our ongoing series of Global Digital Reports, here are some of the things that I’ll be monitoring closely over the coming months.

The demise of third-party cookies: Google’s Chrome browsers will end support for third-party cookies at the end of 2021, so we can expect significant changes in ad tech this year, especially as programmatic platforms reinvent themselves.

Flexible working: ‘working from home’ looks like it will remain an enforced part of many people’s working lives for the foreseeable future, so we should see further innovation in products and services designed to help with remote working over the coming months, especially in the areas of communication and ‘team cohesion’.

Digital disruption: connected products and services will continue to shake up existing categories and create new ones, but I’ll be watching three industries with a particular interest in 2021:

Healthcare , especially telemedicine and connected services that help with mental wellbeing

Finance, with insurance and cross-border payments both strong contenders for innovation

Education , with governments and philanthropists coming together to create more effective solutions for connected schooling, while corporates focus their attention on the burgeoning opportunities of online ‘upskilling’

The big tech breakup: this has been a long time coming, but lawmakers around the world are signaling that 2021 may be the year of the big showdown. However, the big question is whether Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba will beat them to it, spinning off component parts on their own terms before governments force them to do so.

Portable digital identities: with privacy once again in the spotlight following the recent updates to WhatsApp’s terms and conditions, a ‘decentralized’ approach to digital sign-on may come to the fore. Inrupt is definitely one to watch, but it’s certainly not the only contender.

Are there any other trends that you’ll be watching in 2021? Send me your tips on Twitter .

10. And finally…

We couldn’t finish this year’s analysis without an update to our Pulitzer -worthy coverage of one of the internet’s most hotly contested battles.

Despite raising the alarm this time last year , it appears that many people still haven’t received the memo about the internet being invented for sharing pictures of kittens .

#TeamDog managed to publish an additional 44 million #dog posts to Instagram in the past 12 months, while #TeamCat only managed 33 million new #cat posts.

It’s a similar story over on Twitter, where the platform’s advertising tools reveal that 307 million users are ‘interested’ in dogs today, compared to just 23 million who are ‘interested’ in cats.

That’s a marked improvement on last year’s thousand-to-one ratio (250 million vs. 250 thousand), but dog lovers still outnumber cat lovers on Twitter by a factor of 13 to 1.

We’ll be keeping tabs tabbies on this story again this year, so look out for future pup dates.

All of this pun-ditry’s probably taken up enough of your 6 hours and 54 minutes for today though, so I’ll paws this year’s analysis there.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with the first of our Digital 2021 local country reports.

Until then, if you need any more stats, check out our complete (free!) library of Global Digital Reports .

Did you know TNW is organizing Boost , an online event for Digital Marketing, in April? Partner with TNW to engage decision-makers, build brand awareness, and generate leads that have budget.

3 new technologies ecommerce brands can use to connect better with customers

Ecommerce was already a fast-growing industry at the beginning of 2020. Now it’s experiencing an unprecedented boom as billions of shoppers seek to replace their physical shopping carts with virtual ones.

What’s more, customer loyalty has been uprooted and is now up for grabs. A study by McKinsey & Company found that consumer behaviors have changed drastically across the globe with extremely high numbers of consumers having tried new shopping behaviors, including purchasing products from new brands, in the past few months.

These changes are creating new opportunities but also increased competition.

As a result, companies have been investing in new tech, from AR-generated apps being used to allow customers to ‘try on’ make-up and clothes virtually to gamified shopping promotions.

But, in the rush to adopt the latest trends and attract new customers, many companies are feeling more out of touch with their audience than ever.

We spoke with three ecommerce experts to find out what companies are getting wrong and how they can better connect with their audiences using technology. As part of Techleal’s most recent batch of Rise Programme participants, these fast-growing scaleups represent the best of the best in Dutch innovation. Here’s what they had to say:

Go where your customers are

When choosing a spot for a brick-and-mortar store, everyone knows the most important consideration is location, location, location. You want to set up your store where your customers like to hang out and shop regularly. According to Jorrit Steinz, CEO of ChannelEngine , your ecommerce strategy should be no different.

And just where is your audience shopping online? According to a study by Digital Commerce 360, sales on marketplace sites accounted for 62% of global web sales in 2020 , with the top online marketplaces in the world selling $2.67 trillion in products.

“While consumers were first searching on a search engine, now they’re searching on marketplaces. Even if they’re searching on Google, they will still find marketplaces so it’s essential for brands to be where consumers are searching,” Steinz said.

Even if consumers do start with a Google search, individual retailers still have to compete with marketplaces for top spots in search results.

ChannelEngine is a software as a service platform that connects brands, retailers, and wholesalers to online marketplaces. Instead of having to manage an Amazon account, eBay listings, and a Zalando portal, companies can manage multiple marketplaces across the globe from this one platform. This means stock levels and orders can be synchronized, product updates can be made automatically, and price levels can be controlled in one place.

For brands looking to break into new markets, rather than spending time on translating websites, researching keywords, and creating specialized campaigns, the transition can be as simple as selecting the marketplace with the best reach in that country.

As Steinz pointed out, it’s not just about traditional marketplaces. Social media channels are also now transitioning towards becoming virtual shopping malls.

Instead of navigating to an online shop, consumers will now have their credit cards linked to their Instagram accounts, allowing them to simply click on an ad and buy directly in the app.

“That’s going to be a massive shift for any ecommerce retailer and, if they’re not prepared, it’s going to cost them some potential revenue,” Steinz predicted.

You get the best customer insights by simply listening

“We’re always talking about digital data sources now online. The tendency is to think that ecommerce is something and then traditional retail is something else. This is absolutely not true,” said Riccardo Osti, CEO of Wonderflow.

BazaarVoice found that 56% of online shoppers and 45% of brick and mortar buyers read reviews online before purchasing a product. This has created a multiplier effect for some product categories, meaning that each dollar a company makes online is equal to between four and six dollars they make offline.

“Whatever happens online has an impact on the real world. When I buy something offline, I first read reviews online. Then I go to the shop already knowing which products I want to see and buy,” Osti said.

The more companies realize this and begin to combine online and offline data to inform their strategy as a whole, the better.

Customers are more than willing to share their opinion and connect with brands in the form of online reviews, NPS scores, and customer center feedback. This means there’s already a plethora of customer data at companies’ fingertips. The problem is, many simply don’t know how to translate this data into usable information.

Wonderflow is a Voice of the Customer (VoC) analytics solution that allows companies to glean insights from different customer feedback sources. Their platform leverages natural language processing to aggregate and analyze all of this feedback (both public and private) in one place.

The next, and more difficult step, is to translate this information into actionable advice and that’s where Wonderflow’s strength lies. Their predictive technology is able to take current consumer insights, and use them to create actionable predictions for the future. Osti explained:

Perhaps one of the most exciting things about this new technology is that, by providing narrative text-based prescriptions, absolutely anybody in your company will be able to glean insights from them, not just data analysts.

“This is the big change that we will see in the industry for the next few years, moving from the old fashioned, unreadable business intelligence platforms that we’ve seen for decades, to intuitive charts and narratives,” Osti told TNW.

Embrace niche audiences

Thomas Slabbers, CEO of SocialDatabase , believes that the biggest mistake companies make when it comes to connecting with their audiences is not spending enough time defining who those audiences are.

SocialDatabase created a unique solution for this.

But do we really want to narrow our audience? Isn’t casting a wider net better?

“First of all, the majority of social media users feel the communication coming from brands is irrelevant or unimportant to them. A more narrow audience would make ads more interesting and relevant. Secondly, reducing the waste in a target audience simply saves a lot of budget that would have been spent on the wrong audience. Finally, a more focused audience enables brands to make more impact in a shorter amount of time,” Slabbers explained.

SUPERAUDIENCES are particularly relevant for use cases where quality is more important than scale, whether you’re looking for a niche, B2B, or relevant consumer audience.

As a Formula 1 partner, Heineken used SUPERAUDIENCES to distinguish hardcore F1 fans from casual fans during the Grand Prix of Australia, China, and Spain. Meanwhile, Nutricia, a company that specializes in therapeutic food and clinical nutrition, is using SUPERAUDIENCES to specifically reach healthcare professionals.

There you have it, location, listening, and spending more time in defining your audience will help you build a stronger connection with them. Although brick and mortar stores are starting to open up again in some countries, the continued rise and preference for ecommerce is not something that’s going away. But, as Osti explained, combining your retail and ecommerce strategies is the best way to get ahead of the game.

This article is brought to you by Techleal