Whether you’re a brand manager, a marketing director, or a retail business owner, one of your challenges is probably growing sales, especially today. The good news is that we can see from the latest Advanced Monthly Retail Sales Report (see recap below) that sales are starting to rebound. However, depending on your unique situation, your sales might not be rebounding as quickly as you would like. To turbo-charge growth at scale, the following provides a roadmap including tactics you can employ to improve your retail sales while also strengthening your brand’s experience and exceeding your customer’s expectations.
Engage Throughout the Customer Journey to Increase Retail Sales
The key to driving retail sales is to ensure that you are effectively engaging with your customers throughout their journey. Below is a three-step roadmap with key tactics to employ for connecting with your customers at various points during the journey.
Remember that in today’s environment, your customers are expecting your brand experience to match, whether online or offline.
According to a Harvard Business Review paper, creating a personalized experience for the consumer can increase sales 5 to 15%.
However, in order to enjoy this type of jump, you will need to define, align, and measure your customer’s experience along each touchpoint in their purchasing journey. Let’s take a look at the three-step roadmap which shows this in action:
1) Start of the Retail Customer Journey: Build Awareness
To build awareness online, you can use display and video targeted at a broad audience. For offline brand awareness, you can use media placements in print, out-of-home, radio, and TV. At the start of the journey, personalization is minimal. This allows to you to reach as many potential customers as possible, while still having some flexibility on your target audience, e.g. out-of-home placed in specified geographical locations and digital characteristics like age, gender, location, and affinity.
Checklist:
Be sure to have a website that is eCommerce-enabled. This includes a mobile app, if applicable
Create a content strategy for social media and as well for your blog. Your blog will help deliver potential customers to you organically from search engines
Lay the groundwork for a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that will help organize your customer data from emails, social media, your website and your CRM. A properly executed CDP can increase sales by 15 to 20%
Choose an email marketing automation system to help send your brand message to potential customers
2) Midpoint of the Customer Journey: Inform and Educate
To help your customer, you need to give them the right information at the right time. Specifically, this means having content that informs your customer in the format that they like. Create content that resonates, such as in-store video displays that demonstrate the versatility of your product or how to use it. Or on your website, you could have illustrations for how to use your product, instilling confidence in your customer that they are making the right purchase.
When the customer is at your store or website, make it easy for them to comparison shop, with your comparable products as well as your competition. Rest assured, your potential customer is already aware of what the alternatives are to your product. With that in mind, you have an opportunity to draw direct comparisons on your website of the benefits of your product compared to your competitors.
Checklist:
In-store, have digital displays that can help educate your customers. Likewise, feature similar video content on your website
Allow potential customers to join your email list to receive the latest updates
Monitor popular content on your website and promote it
Develop a personalized customer experience using data from your CDP to send the right messages to your potential customers, e.g. personalized emails and ads based on their engagement with your brand
A customer data platform (CDP) is an application that unites your customer data interactions into customer profiles for a holistic view of your customer and your brand’s interaction with them.
3) Customer Journey Destination: Drive Purchase, brand loyalty and repeat customers
Once the customer has reached the point of purchase, you need to make the process as seamless as possible. Additionally, this is an opportunity to deepen the relationship with the customer. Apart from your in-store POS being up-to-date and able to accept any type of payment that your customer wants to make, you should allow your customer to further engage with you. For example, allow the customer to be able to have their receipt emailed to them along with other engagement activities, e.g. initiate a return, receive customer service and locate the closest store. For online customers, give them an opportunity to create a profile where their payment information can be stored safely and used again on the next purchase.
Checklist:
Provide order online and curb-side pick-up
Use omni-channel campaigns to engage one-on-one with your customers
Give your associates tablets that allow them to assist the customer without having to return to a traditional POS register
Final Thoughts and Additional Trends
As noted earlier, disruption has caused some retailers to rethink and quickly retool their strategy. The latest data from the Census Bureau’s Advanced Monthly Retail Sales in July gives some insight into how different retailers are performing and gives you the opportunity to compare yourself against your peers. Read on for our retail sales insights for key categories.
Nonstore Retailers
Nonstore retailer sales in July continued to slow down from the April spike. The latest McKinsey survey now shows the approximately 15-45% growth in online shopping across multiple retail categories should continue beyond the crisis.
General Merchandise Stores
Positive growth for this retail sector has stopped monetarily when compared to the previous month, with a -0.2% change in July
While consumers still appear to be cautious on non-essential purchases, the most recent survey data shows this is starting to improve.
Retail Trade
Overall consumer retail spending slowed its growth in July to a 0.8% increase compared to the prior month, and far from its 16.8% record increase in May.
While consumers are still using curb-side pick-up, the McKinsey survey showed that customers who shop in-store are now showing a preference for self-checkout.
Department Stores
As the summer comes to end, department stores and malls are seeing sales that remain flat. Compared to June, department store sales were relatively unchanged at 0.1% growth.
However, according to the McKinsey survey, consumers showed a strong preference for department stores and retail stores who offer the ability the purchase online and pick-up at the store. 65% of consumers who used this option said they intend to continue using it.
Grocery Stores
After the initial spike in March, grocery stores are still benefiting from consumer demand. The latest sales numbers for July, although slowing, showed another positive increase at 0.4%.
According to the McKinsey survey, 53% of consumers who are using grocery delivery services plan to continue after the pandemic has passed.
Food Services and Drinking Places
Though not as strong as May and June, restaurants and bars experienced another increase at 5% for July.
Google Trends data still shows that there is demand for dining in a restaurant. In the past 90 days, the data shows that the search phrase “restaurants open for dine in” experienced a 650% increase.
The Stratistry team loves nothing more than digging deep into available data and research to derive actionable insights that can help lead your brand to achieve better business results. Contact us to find out how we can combine the art and science of marketing for your brand.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau Advanced Monthly Retail Trade Report 8/14/2020
Matt Ariker, Jason Heller, Alejandro Diaz, and Jesko Perrey, “How marketers can personalize at scale,” Harvard Business Review, November 23, 2015
Julien Boudet, Brian Gregg, Jason Heller, and Caroline Tufft, “The heartbeat of modern marketing: Data activation and personalization”, McKinsey & Company, March 22, 2017
Tamara Charm, Shruti Bhargava, Resil Das, Anne Grimmelt, Eunice Kim, Kelsey Robinson, Salvador Tormo, “US consumer sentiment during the coronavirus crisis”, McKinsey & Company, survey 8/7/2020