The change witnessed by Retail in the customer experience is rapid in 2016. The modernization and advancement in 2015 took everyone by surprise changing the entire process of buying. This trend is expected to further improve the consumerization, as social media channels. It gets smarter at providing real-time location-based offers.
Digitization has brought in “Tech Revolution” has not only impacted the tech sector but has touched each and every sector of services and products, improving and simplifying the processes. E-commerce has completely changed the entire landscape of Retail. Though there used to be controversies and controversies about the pros and cons of e-commerce until late 2014. In today’s date, it has proven to not be the disrupter like many thought it would be.
Small & Medium Retails can do a lot with software as a service (SaaS) like ERP, CRM & point of sales systems in place. Well unlike the time when having a retail business meant a nice huge store with the best quality products and services was all that was needed to make your business big. A well-sorted location to attract a crowd and some well-thought marketing campaigns consisting of sales, and heavy discount season sale would be enough to up your business. It did use to take a lot of thinking and work to get all these things done.
However, today the entire scenario has changed, marketing is no more just making customers know about your marketing. Marketing has evolved to become something that is known as omnichannel marketing. Now, you would ask, What is omnichannel marketing? To answer the question, it is an ever-expanding spectrum. Earlier word-of-mouth was the only way to reach potential customers. Nevertheless, it still is a major source, there are a million other sources as well.
Email and Social Media Platforms has made it easy for you to find and reach customers. It has also simultaneously increased the competition for you. You are sure that you entertain every customer that comes to your shop, be in an online store or a brick and mortar store, but can you have a positive answer for the question “Do you entertain every potential customer?” If your answer is yes, I would like you to think again, take some time and answer it.
Are you sure you are not missing on potential customers that you could have acquired through emails or through some social media platform? Technology is evolving fast. Bricks and mortar trend shifted to online portals and website shopping in no time. And you had to struggle a bit to make your business adapt to this. Now with the trend and culture, it is not very difficult to guess that the next change it going to be social.
Ask yourself the question: Do my customers want to be reached via Email or SMS/text? With the rise of visual marketing, can I reach them with User-Generated Campaigns on Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest?
Competition has increased. Businesses need to optimizing new mobile engagement from brand advocates and have analytics that shows your ROI at every step.
Since a long time, Everybody has been saying that social is going to be the new “ECommerce”, but it seems like 2016 is going to the year when these words are going to come clean. Social already plays a major role having a part to play at every phase of the buying cycle taking place on the social platforms. With the following technological advancements already a part of a present, it would be no longer that process of buying as a whole would be completed on social media platforms itself.
- Smarter and better gamification layers in loyalty programs
- Real-time engagement with device recognition and opt-in customer recognition in-store.
- Mobile first approach, with pervasive video content that’s segmented by demographics of audience.
- Smarter analytics, Business Intelligence, SaaS empowered Big Data that leads in the direction of predictive analytics offers.
- Better Email Marketing and opt-in SMS marketing that’s customized to the buyer.
Though online shopping is on a height today, brick and mortar have not disappeared. As Brick and mortar still exists, it stands a chance to get back in the game. doesn’t it? it might have been pushed down by online and e-commerce experience, yet closing down the passing stores, accepting defeat is not an option for any business.
So the question that holds significant importance is How could brick and mortar retail build a seductive customer experience that will make their customers prefer in-store visits over online shopping? Well the answer is not very simple but it does make a point.
Instead of investing all the energy and time over the online shopping portal, why not develop the relationship with clients, leveraging the power of social. Technologies that strengthens your relationship with your customer is key, since, for SMB brick and mortar Retail, the direct relationship with your top buyers is crucial.
Distribute was on-moment that it said:
Bridging the gap between offline and digital channels will be key.
To make an awesome affair expected by millennials, it is not just imperative that we have a portable agreeable site additionally ensure that the points of arrival are easy to use with extraordinary data. Organizations, for the most part, utilize video on the presentation pages to enhance the client encounter and draw in their clients.
The utilization of online networking channels with internet business inserted, named “social trade” creates and nurture the trust in clients. Select in gadget acknowledgment and client acknowledgment in-store will give that level of personalisation. We’ve been stating Retail needs and clients expect, for quite a long time. This infers Big Data and Internet of Things, will really be of incredible significance in 2016. Those Retails that are early adopters will offer their clients a more unavoidable ordeal.
Spaces are getting to be distinctly more astute. Block and cement will cross over any barrier amongst on the web. Gaining the client steadfastness and enhancing client experience, will mean significantly more in 2016. the same is apparent with advancements like the expansion of apparatuses in twitter that will have Geo-area focusing on capacity progressively. With social business, better video, more inescapable narrating through visual channels, gadget acknowledgment in-store involvement, I trust 2016 will be a vital year for Retail.
Notwithstanding for small biz Retail, that Mom and Pops family claimed store or little chain of stores, the opposition in SaaS, will bring down costs and make these instruments reasonable. Not simply something important retail chains, web-based business and multi-national organizations will utilize. This to me is extremely energizing. Let’s be honest, the in-store shopping knowledge is still charming.
I’ll visit my most loved brand stores for the general population there, for the feel and for the human contact. This implies physical Retail isn’t going anyplace. As Thanks Giving and Xmas is drawing nearer, it strucked me. We spend such an extensive amount of our lives online at work, would we additionally like to shop on the web? Not really. Shopping is a social and family encounter.
In 2016, we will likewise be reconsidering what client unwaveringness implies. The focuses per buy model isn’t close to sufficiently home for generally clients. We need to casing steadfastness, maintenance and beat lessening, in more human terms. Making a client experience that is beguiling, paramount and extraordinary stays basic.
How might you remunerate your clients for their engagement? Web-based social networking activities, for their User Generated Content and brand backing on the web? This implies Retail’s people group administration on social channels is critical.
It isn’t fantastical to perceive how client rewards and motivations will soon wed demonstrations of corporate social obligation (CSR). Millennials enthusiastic have confidence in adding to a superior world. Let’s talk about clients who contribute to social and group great. Millennials will relate to brands that show and exhibit nearby group, Occasions and causes that we can all identify with.
Progressively, marking in an assorted and worldwide town, implies not just exhibiting how your items improve your world. It also motivates your image supporters. This makes not just realness and increases the value of your image, yet can make viral crusades on the web. It can convert into better deals.
For Retail, progressively gainfulness and expanding business development will mean appropriations of SaaS devices, the cloud, better versatile engagement with clients and more refined utilization of social channels and correspondence channels with clients, similar to SMS. Decreasing operational expenses, pulling in and holding new clients will be less demanding. Say, 2016 will be about doing things you were talking, arranging and willing yet unable to do in 2014 – 2015. Retail gets up to speed with computerized patterns and new IT arrangements.
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