The landscape of retail shopping is changing fast, with a large share of consumers choosing to shop online via their devices, and increasingly more using their smartphones.
Even big retail events such as Black Friday have become dominated by large online ‘players’ such as Amazon in recent years, whilst ‘brick and mortar’ stores seem to see a decline in footfall.
So, if you’re planning on growing your business offline, as well as online, it’s time to consider an omnichannel strategy, as well as a more innovative approach to the shopping experience you provide in store. According to this article by the Entrepreneur, being able to provide a consistent approach and shopping experience in-store, as well as via your ecommerce website is one of the ways in which you can get shoppers to visit your stores.
Another popular trend which has emerged in recent years in online shopping, which has started being applied to offline as well, is represented by personalised shopping. For example, if your customers browse specific products on your website, if you do Paid Search such as AdWords or social advertising (Facebook, in particular) you can serve these customers with tailored ads that feature exactly the products they browsed, which often leads to considerably higher conversion rates compared to other types of online advertising.
So, why not apply the same successful approach to physical shops? Whilst it might seem like a challenge gathering all the data needed for this from your customers, new technologies are emerging and soon they’ll be able to offer retailers everything they need to create a more tailored shopping experience for their customers.
Meanwhile, don’t forget that you can also use your ecommerce store or website, as well as other digital marketing channels to raise brand awareness and drive people to visit your store. To find out more about the best digital marketing mix to grow your business, contact our consultants today.
