Marketing

A retailer’s approach to marketing was considered to assess efforts in raising brand awareness and customer engagement.

In digitally-led retail, marketing decisions are not only key for brand exposure but for aiding frictionless shopping experiences that bolster competitiveness. As brand loyalty among customers diminishes, retailers must adapt by investing in digital marketing initiatives that are innovative and support personalisation.

Loyalty programmes are key for retention

Customer data is central to retail success, and loyalty schemes are a great way of gathering data across channels, helping to provide a single view of the customer. While this enables a more complete understanding of customer behaviour, retailers need to continue to provide innovation in their loyalty schemes to drive engagement.

For instance, Boots’ Advantage card scheme, which has 16 million active members, has continued to evolve. The health and beauty giant relaunched its app in early 2017 with access to personalised offers based on a customer’s purchasing history. Additionally, its Over 60s and Parenting Club extensions to the scheme feature exclusive offers, gifts and personalised emails to drive sales among key customer segments. These developments have been integral to its leadership in the health and beauty sector, and could be a lesson for rivals like Lush and Allbeauty.

The ability to create targeted offers through loyalty schemes helps drive retention, yet only a third of retailers offer one, while under 15% have a loyalty app.

Importance of social media and engaging content

Harnessing the power of social media further supports loyalty and customer acquisition. As customers become more promiscuous, exploiting social media can enable retailers to remain front-of-mind – driving traffic both online and in store.

Without a transactional online presence, Primark instead uses social media to stimulate interest among its c.11 million followers to drive footfall in-store. Frequently posting inspiration from its product range, with clear visibility of its low prices – one of the eminent differentiators for its success – enables Primark to capture the customer’s attention and propel its reach.

Primark also uses social media channels to prompt its customers to visit editorial content on its website, ensuring customers can see more of the range.

Retailers are also leveraging social media for direct sales. Customers can now go directly from being inspired by an item on Instagram or Facebook to viewing it on the retailer’s website in a single click – removing friction for customers.

In late 2017, John Lewis became the first retailer in the UK to trial virtual reality 360-degree video shoppable adverts on Facebook as part of its autumn campaign, supporting its strategy to offer customers “more inspiring experiences both in shops and online”.

Retailers are increasingly creating inspirational content online to bolster engagement and boost dwell time, with as many as 90% offering this as standard. Many in the grocery sector have taken this idea into the physical world, offering recipe cards in-store to drive average basket values, and to compete with recipe subscription services like Hello Fresh and Gousto.

SEO and retargeting

SEO and retargeting are critical steps in securing sales in the digital age. Retailers are dependent on perfecting their SEO to increase brand exposure, with SEO driving 84% of web traffic on average across the retailers assessed.

Amazon has invested heavily in this, ensuring its broad product range is more visible and accessible to customers than its competition – a huge advantage in an era of dwindling brand loyalty.

In 2017, Victorian Plumbing stated it invested over half of its marketing budget in SEO to climb the ranks on Google and other search engines, contributing to its status as the UK’s most visited online bathroom retailer the same year.

Google Shopping is proving common practice too, helping 75% of retailers broaden their reach while removing another layer in search by providing retailers’ product images directly in its search results. It is particularly useful for department stores, as generic product search terms can return sponsored results at non-specialists, boosting exposure.

When done right, retargeting can reignite brand exposure too. When content is tailored towards customers’ interests, email retargeting helps refine the information they receive, and is useful when basket abandonment rates are high. Made.com recently partnered with Criteo to implement a personalised email retargeting programme, which boosted remarketing revenue by 36%.

The use of email retargeting is widespread, with 52% of retailers implementing it as part of their marketing mix, compared with 35% that use online retargeting.