At first glance, phygital marketing may appear to be a typo. But in reality, it may just be the future of marketing campaigns for both brands and retailers. Phygital Marketing is exactly what it sounds like- a combination of physical and digital marketing. It is a relatively new way of engaging with customers (both in-store and online simultaneously) with many potential brand engagement and business growth applications. A good phygital campaign can vastly outperform a campaign that is either solely physical or solely digital, as it allows marketers to combine 3 influential trends in consumer shopping:
1) Customers like to see and test products in-store before buying
2) Customers want to research products online and look for the best deals
3) Customers love a digital experience that enriches the physical experience
Here's an analogy to help illustrate what phygital marketing is:
Let's say that you want to go to a restaurant downtown tonight, but you're not sure which restaurant. You decide to perform research before deciding where to eat. Your examination can be physical, digital, or phygital.
Physical:
1) Drive downtown, park, and walk around within a few blocks of your car.
2) Please take note of which restaurants you like the look of and how busy they are.
3) After walking around, pick the restaurant that looked the best to you but didn't have a long wait for a table.
4) Wait until your meal arrives to find out if the food is any good.
Digital:
1) Check online for reviews of restaurants
2) Drive downtown and go directly to the restaurant.
Phygital:
1) Drive downtown
2) Park
3) Then use Google Maps to find the restaurant that the closest restaurant to you with good reviews
4) If the restaurant looks too busy when you get to it, use Google Maps to find the next nearest place with good reviews
How can phygital marketing help your business?
As I hope the previous analogy shows, phygital campaigns can be powerful and effective, combining the strengths of the digital and physical worlds. When it comes to your marketing efforts, you can use phygital campaigns to digitally engage your customers while in your store, either before or after making a purchase. This could be digitally sending coupons to customers when they walk into your store, giving customers QR codes to scan to get discounts, having interactive display screens throughout the store that recommend products. In short, you can direct your customer's physical experience in-store using digital methods.
A real-world example of a phygital campaign:
This example comes from a case study of a marketing campaign done by Coca Cola Belgium.
The physical component: The campaign ran at participating restaurants in Belgium. Customers were given printed QR codes.
The digital component: Customers had the chance to win free Coca-Cola products by scanning QR codes on their phones and playing a digital Scratch&Win game.
How it worked: When customers bought a Coca-Cola product, they were given a unique QR code (physically printed on a piece of paper). Customers could then scan the code on their phones and play a Scratch&Win game. If they won the game, they could redeem their coupon for a free product immediately in the store or save the coupon for later using Facebook, email, or a mobile wallet.
As you see, phygital marketing is a powerful strategy that may be the wave of the future for retail and brand campaigns. If you are looking for a software platform that allows you to create phygital campaigns to engage with customers, start your free trial account now!
Questions?
