The Coronavirus pandemic has dramatically changed the retail environment. Distribution channels have undergone major disruption and the way consumers shop has changed radically. Even if Covid 19 is eradicated in the future, there will be no going back to the pre-Coronavirus retail environment. It has changed forever.
For the foreseeable future at least, fashion retail will be online. Many consumers are not able to venture into physical stores to buy clothes—their lockdown rules prohibit it. Even consumers in areas with more relaxed lockdown are reluctant to shop as they did pre-Covid 19. With consumers continuing to focus on online shopping, brands and retailers must also move to the same focus—online. For retailers who had not previously embraced the online environment, this will pose challenges. However, it also presents a number of opportunities, and CEO Consult will now share the best approach for you to ensure that your brand not only survives, but thrives.
Stay visible
Before you do anything, take a deep breath (i.e., do not panic). The biggest mistake retailers could make now is to make rash decisions, for example, to save money by cutting advertising costs. If advertising spend were reduced, the outcome would certainly be reduced sales, reduced market share and reduced brand awareness. And that is not the way to survive, let alone thrive. Of course you should look at your marketing strategy, as there are likely to be many ways to improve your ROI, but now is not the time to reduce visibility. In the current retail environment, the Mere Exposure Effect is perhaps more important than it has ever been.
Focus on your customers
Rather than trying to survive by looking inwards, look outwards—to your customers. The more you can understand them—what they need, what they want and how they are behaving now—the more you can help them to see that your brand is the one for them. Use all the data and information you currently have about your customers so you can send the right messages to the right audiences in the right places at the right times.
Keep an eye on your incremental ROI
While we stress the importance of advertising and exposure, of course you want to be sure that your advertising dollars are giving back to your business as much as possible. It is always important to calculate your incremental ROI to see exactly how much money each campaign is returning.
If you do not advertise in-house, be sure your advertising partner can provide you with this data. Basic ROI is not enough, as you need incremental ROI to help see the sales generated from a specific campaign.
Retargeting campaigns when working with advertising partners
If you do work with an advertising partner, in addition to ensuring they can provide you with incremental ROI data, they should also be able to provide you with the following information so you can verify that your advertising dollars are being well spent on retargeting campaigns:
– How they measure the incremental revenue from your retargeting campaigns
– Which websites ads are on and what the performance is for each
– The ad sizes and creatives that have generated the largest number of sales
– The rate of new customers that the ads have brought in
– The audiences that most of the budget is targeted at, e.g., top level viewers or abandoned basket
Your advertising partner should also welcome your involvement in optimising and controlling your audience and creative targeting to ensure you are investing in the best websites to maximise incremental sales and minimise costs.
Ensure your marketing lifecycle is working
Although the retail environment has undergone dramatic changes due to Covid 19, people are still buying. And because they are online now more than ever, your potential online consumer audience has increased like never before. For example, the use of smartphones is now almost four hours each day, doubling from pre-Coronavirus times, while those viewing online media has increased more than 60% (Nielsen).
This makes it extremely important to fully optimise your marketing lifecycle to attract new customers, convert sales and increase your customers’ lifetime value.
Now is the time to shape your business to thrive in the new retail environment, and CEO Consult, experts in lifecycle marketing for display, can help you plan a strategy to help your business ride out Covid-19 – and thrive beyond.
