Monday, August 28, 2023

How brands are evolving to engage with anyone, anywhere


According to research by Upland BlueVenn, today’s consumer on average interacts with brands across 20 different online and offline channels, ranging from in-store and mobile browsers to social media, radio and television. 

These recent changes in industry and consumer mindsets have necessitated a broader ranging yet more customer-centric approach to advertising. Upland BlueVenn’s study shows that in the U.S., when shopping for clothing, homeware or exercise equipment, there’s just a 14-percentage-point difference between the top 10 channels, with the leading five including in store/in branch (35%), mobile web browser (31%), laptop/desktop web browser (30%), Facebook (28%) and Instagram (26%).

In the modern diversified marketplace, it’s all about finding—and meeting—customers anywhere and everywhere. Peloton wholeheartedly embraced this idea when it announced the start of its next chapter, which aims to shift its reputation away from an in-home bike company and focus on showcasing its impactful and entertaining workout experiences available to everyone, at any level, wherever they are.

The ever-evolving consumer revolution

In the past few years, Peloton has undergone seismic shifts along with the entire fitness industry. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many consumers shifted to at-home workouts, but according to a March 2022 study, these consumers were ready to leave their homes. Nearly a third of regular exercisers surveyed said they like the community aspect of being a member at a gym or a fitness facility.

Peloton remained ahead of the curve. In August 2021, they anticipated the latest pivot in their industry, and collaborated with Amazon Ads to better understand fitness consumers. Using insight-driven audience strategies, which provide billons of proprietary audience signals garnered from Amazon’s online and offline touchpoints, Peloton was able to successfully build a more holistic picture of its community and strategize more effectively. 

With the objective of helping consumers move from consideration to conversion, Peloton took advantage of multiple ad formats and channels to reach Amazon audiences right where they are in their fitness journeys. What’s more, the highly curated lifestyle audiences—such as the Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods and Twitch fitness segments—provided reach the brand wasn’t able to find using other media channels.

To gain even more insight into its audience’s path to purchase in October 2022, Peloton leveraged Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) and discovered that consumers are more likely to convert when exposed to at least three ad types.

“Our goal was to prove the incremental value Amazon Ads brings to the Peloton business,” said Maggie Siegler, group director of retail media at Dentsu U.S. and iProspect, the digital media agency for Peloton. “With our strategic audience setup in Amazon DSP and enhanced signals through the AMC clean room, we’ve been able to validate and optimize for purchase activity on both Amazon and direct-to-consumer.”

Meeting customers where they are

It was essential that Peloton develop a holistic marketing strategy that could meet consumers wherever they are. The May 2023 relaunch was all about broadening access to its expert instructors and diverse fitness content. Peloton’s “Anyone, Anywhere” campaign reintroduced the brand with a free access app that offered the most extensive collection of free classes.

 

By opening up to a wider audience, Peloton helped change the perception of the company as solely a direct-to-consumer model. Their offerings now include a workout app, Peloton Bike rentals and Peloton-Certified Refurbished Bikes, in addition to home trials and financing programs to give flexibility for those looking to join Peloton. “In the early days of Peloton, we were just a bike company,” says Evy Kho, manager of subscription analytics at Peloton, “and now we’re so much more than that.”

In the face of this variability and evolution, Peloton has continued to embrace customer complexity to inform business decision-makers. This has included embracing a wide range of products across Amazon and Amazon Web Services, including Amazon Redshift Serverless. As an early adopter of Amazon technologies, Peloton has been able to quickly run and scale their analytics capacity without database managers and data engineers needing to manage data warehouse infrastructure.

Everyone wants their complexity to be embraced

Inevitably, consumer engagement with fitness will continue to shift, requiring that any brands that want to thrive in the industry remain agile and flexible to reflect this evolution.

With this in mind, this past June, Peloton launched a streaming TV (STV) campaign with Amazon Ads as part of an effort to reach their customers where they spend their time. With an expansive streaming video footprint of ad-supported entertainment solutions, including Freevee, live sports on Prime Video, Amazon Publisher Direct, Fire TV channels, and Twitch, Amazon has an average monthly reach of more than 155 million viewers in the U.S.

When Peloton originally collaborated with Amazon Ads in 2022, its top converting audience was from the high-spenders segment. Now, thanks to this STV campaign that allowed the brand to reach a broader audience, initial results show that top segments converting to the Peloton website include millennial gaming enthusiasts, as well as video/entertainment and fashion enthusiasts. By focusing on meeting Peloton’s audience where they are, the collaboration was able to deliver a truly customer-centric experience and demonstrate how with a full-funnel media mix, brands can create more relevant connections.

“As we have reintroduced ourselves as a fitness brand for ‘anyone, anytime,’ our marketing strategy had to evolve to meet current and potential Peloton members where they are,” said Jennifer Director, VP of growth marketing at Peloton. “Amazon Ads has an ad stack that provides us with unique signals, reach and measurement that deliver actionable insights for acquisition marketing programs.”

Peloton instructors are known for inspiring audiences to become the best version of themselves. And with its customer-centric marketing, Peloton was able to push the brand to new reaches in the ever-evolving fitness marketplace. All it takes is a smart strategy, motivation and the right workout partner.
 



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