A three-step approach for your retail strategy: stand out and win more retail sales in 2024

It’s no secret that the last few years have caused chaos for retailers globally. To survive you need a robust retail strategy that focuses on long-term and short-term profit for your business.

According to the Centre for Retail Research forecast in July 2021, total retail sales in 2020 will fall overall by -4.6% compared to 2019 (or a reduction of £17,281m). The level of retail sales will not regain last year’s level (2019) until 2022.

With reduced consumer spending, competition for retail marketers converting customers is tougher than ever. Marketers need the right tools, and skills, to optimize a winning digital marketing strategy and cut through the noise to convert even more customers online. [si_learning_path_module_shortcode_block id=154071]

Of course, the rise of online is another major factor that has influenced the…

E-commerce businesses cannot stay on one platform if they want to get ahead of the competition. This is where e-commerce multichannel marketing comes in

Channel loyalty doesn’t exist; buyers check different channels before they make a purchase. Even with promos, they still compare offerings. Take Amazon prime day for example. Some 76% of shoppers plan to visit other channels before making a purchase. Around 46% of them compare prices at Walmart, 40% use Target, 39% try brand websites. E-commerce businesses cannot stay on one platform if they want to get ahead of the competition. This is where e-commerce multichannel marketing comes in. Multichannel marketing involves promoting and selling on every channel that your customers can interact with you on. [si_guide_block id="122303" title="Download our Premium Resource – Omnichannel marketing planning guide" description="Our omnichannel planning guide will outline the differences between omni and multichannel marketing and then help you…

Starting up in the e-commerce sector is a challenge because of market saturation, which is why many savvy business people opt to buy an already established e-commerce store

The exponential growth of the e-commerce sector cannot be argued with. The Office of National Statistics reported that the proportion of adults aged 65 and over who shop online trebled since 2018, rising 48% in 2018, a 32% increase on 2008. While the percentage among all adults who have bought goods or services online was 78% in 2018, and this is a figure set to grow further. In less than a decade some of the largest e-commerce brands such as Amazon, eBay and Alibaba have grown to a colossal size and there is always scope for new brands to make their mark. Retail has changed for good due to the truly global nature of e-commerce. There are zero barriers or…

Awareness of smaller retailers is on the up, but winning the high street battle will come down to a niche product offering and a personalized shopping experience

Following countless announcements of high street store closures and a long line of large retailers reporting financial difficulties, new research from Pure360 has revealed that nearly three quarters (72%) of British consumers want the government to do more to back the growth of smaller, independent retailers. The research, which commissioned YouGov to poll a representative sample of GB consumers, found that nearly half (42%) would consider shopping with an independent retailer because they prefer to support smaller operations over a larger retailer. In addition, over one in five shoppers said they like to compare price and product offerings between larger retail brands and independents, before going on to make the final purchase from the smaller retailer. …

"Almost all members of Generation Z prefer to shop in bricks-and-mortar stores" - IBM & National Retail Federation

Online sales continue to grow in importance, as shown by our compilation of ecommerce growth trends. But for many businesses, the days of double-digit, year-on-year growth in online sales are over. We are now in the era of ecommerce optimization where, to maintain growth, businesses are having to innovate their growth strategy, for making their online experiences engaging and persuasive.

As the world of digital continues to transform, with different generational segments of the population adapting to technology at their own distinct pace, marketers keep a close eye on retail ecommerce trends and developments. With artificial intelligence being hot topic for the future of marketing, trends like conversational commerce, using chatbots and voice search have been closely associated to widely-adopted online shopping habits amongst millennials as…

Should you be using omnichannel marketing to boost customer experience?

It has now become vital for brands to inject their unique voice in every communications channel that they make use of, be consistent with pricing policies and promotional offers to avoid any confusions for potential buyers. More and more brands are wanting to move towards an omnichannel experience, integrating the offline with the online. As Christina Dam, Product Marketing Lead of Square suggests, “A great omnichannel experience feels familiar to the customer, regardless of the channel.” Hubspot defines the omnichannel experience as, “the ability to deliver a seamless and consistent experience across channels, while factoring in the different devices that consumers are using to interact with your business.” A 2017 ecommerce survey of 1,164 U.S. small and medium retail business owners, conducted by Square and Mercury Analytics, found that: 56% have a physical store 21% have a pop-up store, or pop-up at events 34% sell…

Chart of the Day: A gradual transition from desktop-first to mobile-first for EU5 ecommerce?

comScore has recently released their EU5 report - detailing the ecommerce trends and benchmarks in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Mobile reach vs. Desktop reach for selected products

In the first group we see that consumers are more likely to access retail sites across all product categories through a mobile device. In the second group, consumers are more likely to do so through a desktop device. *"European countries divide in two groups: the mobilefirst group (by reach), which includes the UK and Spain, and the desktop-first (by reach) group which includes France and Germany. (Italy sits in the middle.)"

Top three retail sites, by % reach

Amazon is still dominating all ecommerce markets in the UE5. Amazon's reach is 41% in Spain,…

How you can get more bang for your buck on Google shopping

The truth is competing in Google Shopping is hard, but if you are a retailer it is fundamental to success online, considering that more advertising spend is now spent on Google Shopping than Google Search in the USA.

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There are 7 main strategies that you can implement to maximize your success on Google Shopping.

First, segment your campaigns by branded and non- branded search queries. You will find that performance will vary considerably between the two so it's important to change your bids…

All online businesses need to move quickly to embrace a multi-channel strategy

All of us online business owners agree that our website visitors and paying customers are, by far, our most important asset. It makes sense. Everything we do is targeted towards satisfying prospects, gaining their trust and hopefully, convert them in to paying and recurring customers. That’s why most of our marketing and sales efforts are focused on bringing visitors to our website (or app). To convert this great story into industry terms, business pros live and breathe conversion rates and ROI metrics. One important conversion enabler (or ROI generator, if you’d like) is related to the business’s customer communication strategy. I’ll focus on this one, in this article. Online customer communication is a wide topic: It covers customer technical support, online chatting with prospects, answering frequent questions on different channels and much, much more. …

Google starts tracking credit card transactions to assess online ads effect on online and offline sales.

Every marketing manager has always sympathized with John Wanamaker's famous phrase "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Digital marketing has helped alleviate some of the problems of attribution, by tracking of digital media. But unless someone is clicking through to purchase on your site or tracked by call they make via the site, it's very hard to attribute offline store sales to a particular online ad campaign. But this limitation is now reduced which is BIG news for multichannel retailers. Yesterday Google announced it is now tracking consumers card transactions both online and in-store. The ability to track in-store sales is a real breakthrough in attribution, as since 92% of all US retail sales still take place in-store. Without it marketers are limited to focusing all…