One of the toughest challenges for Digital is to create real-life actions (getting customers through their doors) for Retail Brands. Traditional advertising marketing printing channels like Direct Mail, Newspapers, Yellow Pages, and others have continued to decline in both popularity and effectiveness as consumers are drawn to Digital D2C (Direct to Consumer) strategies and campaigns. Therefore the real challenge for digital professionals is not only to improve Retail Brands Online Marketing footprint and presence but more importantly to drive “foot-traffic” into their retail stores. According to Altimeter Group 2015, Digital Strategist Survey the main obstacles retailers face when using digital advertising channels are as follows:
- Lack of Proper Roles – 34% of surveyed digital strategists said that they don’t have the proper roles to make digital marketing advertising campaigns effective.
- Lack of, or Low, Budgets – 57% of surveyed digital strategists mentioned that lack of, or low, budgets as one of their biggest challenges to execute digital advertising strategies in their campaigns.
- Executive Support – 35% of surveyed digital strategists expressed that lack of top executive support is one of their biggest digital marketing challenges.
- Not Priority – 54% of surveyed digital strategists noted that digital is not among the top priority for many Retail Brands top executives.
No Retail Brands can’t afford to ignore Digital, and its actions, anymore! Losing market share, growth, and sustainability are the biggest risks for retailers who ignore Digital! 5 Digital actions Retail Brands should invest in to create foot-traffic into their Brick&Mortar stores:
- Prioritization – Retail Brands need to enable Digital as a priority. Top executive support is required to make Digital a priority.
- Allocation – Allocation of financial resources and budget to Digital. This is needed in order to create and deploy effective Digital strategies.
- Creation & Execution of Digital Strategy – Once financial resources and budget is allocated to Digital a strategy needs to be created. A good online strategy combines targeting, tactics, platforms, and actions. A great deal of research (analytics, case studies, proof of concept, demographics, KPI’s creation, etc.) is required at this action.
- Get the right Digital Professionals – There are no one-man armies! Digital entails copious requirements, nuances, and details that require significant knowledge and experience to execute properly. Get the right professionals and be aware that a quality always comes at a price. Working with experienced digital professionals often makes the difference between effective results and frustration.
- All Digital efforts must seamlessly integrate with customer in-store experience. The goal is to create online/off-line consistent personalized, and memorable experiences to visitors.
Indeed e-Commerce has dramatically impacted the way consumers do most of their product discovery, however walking into stores to make their final purchases is, and will continue, to be the most crucial touch point for retailers (Altimeter Group research shows consumers are still doing 90% of retail purchases in Brick&Mortar stores). So as traditional printing advertising channels impact and effectiveness decline Retail Brands must to invest in Digital with the sole goal of creating a seamlessly online/off-line consistent personalized, and memorable, experiences to visitors.
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