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This post originally appeared in Contact Magazine May-June 2015
Internet usage and technology advances mean that consumers are savvier than ever before. They know what they want, what they want to pay for it and they want it to be accessible from any device, at any time. Their use of peer generated reviews on products is often the tipping point between browsing and purchasing. They place their trust in the words of other online shoppers, rather than the brand itself.
As a result, the Guernsey High Street has inevitably suffered, but this change has in fact been an evolution and it has been obvious for at least five years that this shift was here to stay, and will in fact continue to lead when it comes to consumer buying habits. The customer is indeed, king.
So if you are a physical retail outlet, how do you cope with the obvious threats the internet brings, and turn them into potential opportunities?
Click & Collect
Click & Collect as a concept has been around for a while. In 2011, supermarket chain Tesco, reported that over a third of their sales were purchased online, then collected in store, giving the customer the freedom to shop when it suited them, from the comfort of home, but know they could collect at a time convenient to them with no queue to consider.
Multi-channel marketing, or the combination of “clicks and bricks” continues to drive increased revenue for the larger chains, including John Lewis, who for the first time reported that their seasonal Christmas sales in December 2014 were dominated by the click & collect model, beating their traditional delivery services.
It’s clear there are opportunities in Guernsey to replicate this model. If anything, this works to our advantage, as we are a small community, with nowhere being very far to reach for any kind of collection. We can then plan these collections around our working and social lives to suit us. This means the sales are still made locally, but still drives footfall into our stores, also giving retailers the opportunity to reward the customer for their loyalty.
Customer Loyalty
Talking of loyalty, many retailers are reporting less uptake on the use of traditional loyalty cards. Again, the consumer dictates, and they want rewards that are personalised and tailored to them. They want to be noticed and they want to engage with you in a much richer format.
This isn’t to say that all loyalty cards are dead and all Guernsey retailers need to create a groundbreaking mobile app… but they do need to understand the new ways customers are interacting with their brand. Are retailers using this incredibly valuable customer data to find out what their audiences are looking for? Are they using these programs to engage customers once they’ve stepped out of the store?
Digital has the opportunity to revive loyalty programs and excite customers with deals that are more personalised, more engaging and easier to manage. If your business has a Facebook page, you already have opportunities to build a dynamic and targeted loyalty program.
Facebook ‘Offers’ are free to put together, can be built with expiration dates and claim limits, and work in exactly the same fashion as vouchers. Users who click the ‘Get Offer’ button get emailed a receipt and can show it in store to claim discounts, sample products, or any other form of offer. Better yet, businesses can pay to advertise these on Facebook and target large groups of new shoppers with just small budgets.
You can couple this social media approach with targeted email marketing, segmenting your customer lists and analysing the data now available to you as a business. Which emails led to click throughs to the website? Which led to online purchase or a click & collect transaction? And how and where are your customers finding your products? This helps inform your marketing strategy, allowing you to create bespoke and tailored offers to your subscribers.
Data aggregation continues to play a major part in retail marketing and will be the key to delivering tailored and specific products to your informed customers. They will expect no less, and in order to keep them coming, we need to address the issue of the internet and how it can play a successful part in building the bridge between the old world of sales and the new.
With a strategic approach, you can easily harness this potential and start to see digital as an opportunity to help you reconnect with your customer base.