The consumers have changed! With the online retail stores gaining momentum, the customer’s appetite for consistent, seamless and personalized shopping experience is ravenous.The retailers are at loggerheads vying to catch the consumer’s attention.
Today’s customer is empowered with such abundant digital technologies at his fingertips that shopping is not just about the quality of product anymore, it is the experience that needs to intrigue, entice and get them hooked.The retailers have to up their marketing game and lay out their bait in multiple streams.Thus the need for omni-channel retailing arises.
So how to implement an omni-channel retail strategy to optimize today’s customers’ shopping journey?
Strong online presence: Optimize your web store for streamlining your brand experience across platforms (mobile, tablets and desktop) to fulfill customer orders regardless of the channel they originate from. It is quintessential to be active and responsive on all your social media sites to attend to a service or product failure immediately.
Consistent brand identity: Brand consistency is important to win the trust and loyalty of the customers. Align all your marketing messages and ensure that they are compatible with your brand image. An unrelenting brand consistency provides the much-needed credibility and recognition for your product.
Custom tailored content: What was the last marketing email message that piqued your curiosity? Most of the marketing messages are trashed as they bear neither relevance nor appeal to the customer. Spend time understanding your customers and learning what they expect from your product and brand. Contents containing giveaways, chances to win or offering invaluable tips are bound to boost your conversion rates. Intelligently tailor the content to suit the expectations of the intended recipient.
Customer data is the new king: Omni-channel retailing deals with multiple platforms, providing a gateway to a massive amount of customer data generated through e-commerce, websites, social media sites and mobile app. Invest in technologies that will enable you to build user profiles and analyze data in real time. Both the online and offline interactions of the customer should be recorded that will aid in reaching out to the customer at the right place just at the right time.
Link customer experiences: The offline and online interactions with the customer provides valuable insights into their lifestyle, preferences, and habits throughout their shopping journey. Capitalize on these interactions, link them and eventually work to improve their shopping experience. Create a customer preference framework which encompasses all online and in store preference of the customer and predict the next purchase of the customer based on their previous shopping preference.
As Seth Godin rightly said, ”Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers”. It is imperative for retailers to capitalize on the omni-channel strategies to adapt to the seismic shift in consumer behavior and demand, and convert it into a competitive advantage.
