Capturing the European Market: Why Trust and Creativity are the Key Levers for Branding Success Consider these tips to help ensure that your branding is sending the right signals to the right people.

While digital marketing has proved to be a golden opportunity for brands in recent years, helping to connect with new audiences, recent research suggests the tide may be turning, at least in the region. According to Forrester, European retail sales are expected to reach €2.7 trillion by 2028.

A whopping 90% of UK shoppers reported seeing too many ads online, while a third of consumers have no interest in engaging with brands on social media.

This ad fatigue has meant that consumers are more critical of brand content they come across online. According to Sprout Social's Q2 2024 UK Pulse Survey, this could have serious consequences for EU digital campaigns. For example, 44% of survey respondents shared that repetitive or unoriginal content makes them hit unfollow.

Meanwhile, according to Capterra's 2024 Elusive Online Customer survey, more than a third (37%) of consumers have blocked specific advertising, and 35% have unfollowed a particular brand over the past 12 months.

At the same time, while branding campaigns that don't hit the mark may have a negative impact, digital channels are still a highly effective way to reach consumers.

The 2024 European Consumer Trends Index noted that 65% of Europeans crave reliable brands they can place their trust in, and respond well to personalized offers that align with their interests. These statistics show that brands aiming to attract a European audience can strengthen their efforts by increasing production value, getting experimental with creative content, and blending entertainment with education to keep audiences hooked and happy.

When it comes to delivering a strong brand, tech tools and artificial intelligence (AI) are making it easier and more cost-effective to make adjustments to content assets and materials, which means that any campaign can be rapidly tailored to align with individual segments of this diverse audience.

Here's how you can ensure that your branding in Europe is sending the right signals to the right people.

Start with market research prior to branding campaigns

Every marketer knows that regional preferences have a great influence on social media preferences, and Europe is no different. For example, while Facebook holds less than half the market share in the U.S., the platform is significantly more popular in Europe, holding a 79.41% share.

This is likely due to the more diverse social media preferences found with U.S. consumers, with platforms like Pinterest holding a much more significant share of the U.S. market. Although Pinterest has a presence in Europe, it holds less than a 4% share on the continent.

Examples like this underscore the importance of running European campaigns in a strategic and targeted manner. In addition to variations in the popularity of social media platforms, it's also important to look out for variations by country and demographic.

Although most of us agree that social media can be addictive, overall usage rates aren't the highest across Europe as a whole, with only 59% of EU individuals having a presence on social networks in 2023. Yet if we take a closer look there are significant variations by country. Denmark had the highest percentage of people using social networks at 91%, followed by Cyprus (83%) and Hungary (81%) with France (44%), Germany (49%) and Italy (53%) representing the lowest percentages.

This suggests that social media campaigns have the potential to reach a higher audience in some countries, while others would benefit from omnichannel campaigns that incorporate other mediums besides social media to get the most reach.

Use AI to complement and supercharge the creative elements

While the way that big tech firms access user data is being closely watched by the DMA, European consumers in general are receptive to brands leveraging technology in other ways to improve their experiences.

Customer support is a clear winner here, with a Pulse survey suggesting that consumers are becoming more receptive to AI, in particular for customer care purposes. Close to three-quarters (73.3%) of respondents said they would be comfortable with brands using AI to deliver faster customer services on social media.

Given that 65% of Europeans will pay more to shop with brands they're loyal to, using AI to elevate digital customer services stands to have a big impact on sales over time.

Building community is another excellent way to drive loyalty, with brands being able to use AI to help build these out on channels like Instagram, promote events and or offer online activities.

Meanwhile, a third of UK consumers say they couldn't distinguish between virtual influencers (like Spain's Aitana) and human ones, suggesting that brands can achieve new reach in a creative way when using AI.

Yet marketers don't need to go so far as creating full-on virtual influencers to unlock the benefits of this technology. AI can help to speed up content creation in a huge number of ways, from writing scripts and copy to producing quality graphics.

As noted previously, the vast majority (89%) of European customers believe that it's important for brands to produce high quality content.

By leveraging sophisticated AI tools, marketers can focus on big creative ideas and fun new ways to promote products and services online. As AI vastly speeds up the production process, brands can use this to test out new ideas quickly, running micro-campaigns that are highly specific to niche audiences and respond to viral trends in rapid time before they become stale.

What does this mean for marketers? With customer expectations at an all-time high, more brands are embracing AI to respond to and personalize messages at scale.

Privacy and trust are key to the success of campaigns in Europe

Finally, brands need to play close attention to the regulatory policies in Europe, which are much stricter than other regions.

The EU's Digital Services Act aims to safeguard users' rights and place more regulatory pressure on social media platforms. The law includes special protections for children and young people online that mean minors shouldn't be served with ads. It also aims to limit targeted ads based on profiling data like race, ethnicity and political views.

The Digital Marketing Act is another important piece of legislation that any European marketing campaign needs to take into account. Established in 2022, the DMA is an EU regulation that intends to promote fairness and competition among digital products and services. For example, the European Commission recently ruled that Meta's 'pay or consent' advertising model, in which users who subscribe to Instagram or Facebook can opt-out of targeted ads, is in violation of the DMA.

As many marketers use Meta's family of social platforms to reach consumers, this could have wider implications, and it's important for brands to get ahead of this by tailoring their strategy to safeguard it with a variety of channels.

We also know that European consumers dislike so-called "creepy" marketing tactics; for example, when third-party cookies are used to get user information to then serve relevant ads.

Although this tactic achieves the goal of reaching target customers, it also risks undermining trust, which is critical to closing the buyer pipeline.

Here, marketing campaigns will need to play the long game. While it may take longer to achieve results, taking the time to reach potential buyers in an authentic way with creative content will be the one that delivers consistent growth results. Marketers should use an array of strategies, including building up organic lists through traditional marketing tactics like newsletters, to stay on the right track of regulations and future proof strategies as the impact of regulations play out in real time.

Nuanced campaigns for European growth

Brands have huge growth opportunities in Europe, however specific regulations, a consumer base that's more wary of profiles advertising, and a desire for creative content means that close attention to detail needs to be paid here.

By keeping within the guardrails of legislation, paying attention to marketing data, and using tech tools like AI to give creativity a boost, branding campaigns can find fresh, authentic ways to reach target audiences to build trust and loyalty.