The retail industry has a complex network of physical and online selling channels. Consumers are accustomed to using different devices and channels at work, home and in public, and they expect retailers to offer a seamless buying experience across all of them.
Digital marketing allows retail companies to attract new consumers, convert them into buyers and build long-term relationships with them. It involves a wide range of strategies such as SEO optimization, content marketing and email marketing to achieve marketing goals like increasing brand visibility, driving more sales or boosting online sales.
Retailers need to create and sustain a “retail convergence” in which their physical stores and online sales channels become fully integrated with each other. This is the only way to offer their customers maximum convenience and efficiency. One example of this is the popular trend of in-store pick-up. It allows online shoppers to browse a store’s products on their websites or mobile apps, add them to the shopping cart and then select a store where they can pick up their purchases.
Using data-driven personalization to meet consumer expectations is critical for retail marketers. They need to understand their audiences by combining data from various sources (in a GDPR-compliant way) and use this to send customized messages via different marketing channels.
Retailers also need to know how to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. It is important to focus on metrics that help drive measurable foot traffic into stores such as cost-per-acquisition (CPA), return-on-investment (ROI) and conversion rates. retail digital marketing