Meeting Customers Where They Are Amid a Culture of Convenience
For retailers of all sizes, the key to driving brand recognition and ultimately sales is connecting relevantly with consumers by meeting them where they're making purchasing decisions.
The expectation of convenience is ever growing among consumers. In fact, 77 percent of U.S. consumers cited convenience, including comfort, speed, accessibility and availability, as a key factor when making purchasing decisions, according to a recent Morgan Stanley Research AlphaWise survey.
Knowing that success lives at the intersection of purchase behavior and convenience, where do you go from here?
Identify Micro Target Audiences
Dive deep into research to really understand the priorities of your ideal consumers, including what drives their purchase decisioning. Using audience data to illustrate specific shopping behaviors and preferences, you’ll be able to uncover actionable audience niches to drive more relevant connections and ultimately support a frictionless shopping experience. Browsing patterns, purchasing behaviors, location data and loyalty program engagement can all provide actionable insights to improve your targeting and messaging strategy, delivering a more personalized shopping experience.
Support the Omnichannel Experience
While the share of e-commerce sales in total U.S. retail sales has been rising consistently over the years, a drive by many mall parking lots on a Saturday will illustrate the brick-and-mortar resurgence. Today’s shoppers are blending both online and in-store experiences, whether it's browsing products online before buying in-store, ordering online for curbside pickup, or checking out an item in person before making an online purchase.
We see this illustrated through Gen Z. According to a 2023 International Council of Shopping Centers report, 97 percent of Gen Z consumers said they shop at brick-and-mortar stores, and 95 percent said they shop online for convenience. Further bolstering the need for a frictionless omnichannel experience is the fact that 82 percent of consumers use social media for product research, with 55 percent of Gen Z preferring TikTok (as opposed to 52 percent of millennials preferring Facebook). Of course, with the ever-changing social landscape, it's important to monitor how habits evolve to ensure continually relevant connections with your customer.
Shoppers today crave a seamless experience, from social to online to in-store and back. Providing that consistent and frictionless experience can be a catalyst to them preferring your brand.
Leverage Advanced Measurement
A shopper’s purchase journey is hardly linear, which is a key consideration for how to measure the success of your campaigns. To understand the full picture of your shopper campaign performance, it's important to not only measure the performance of individual campaigns but also take into account how all efforts as part of the holistic communication strategy are working together to drive both online and offline sales.
Advanced measurement such as foot traffic and sales lift studies can get you closer to attributing success to your paid media efforts and prove out return on investment for offline sales in particular. Tracking in-store visits tied to media exposure in tandem with online activity can help us paint a better picture of the purchase journey and the moments that lead up to it.
Mike Oelhafen is associate media director at True Media, an independent media agency.
Mike Oelhafen, Associate Media Director, True Media
With 40 years of experience, Mike is a seasoned marketing and media strategist with both agency and corporate marketing experience. He brings a reputation and tenacity for finding creative solutions to business challenges that deliver proven results for a range of retail clients.
