Marketing in the New Era of Retail: What to Expect in 2023 | Marketing Activities

Retail sales posted their biggest increase in eight months before experiencing a sharp decline at the start of the holiday season in November. Consumer demand followed a similar trend as influential events followed, including inflation, a global recession, and supply chain problems.

Despite these challenges impacting retailer margins, consumer spending behavior, and U.S. retail growth, growth could slow to 2.9% year-over-year in 2023, but retail has been stable over the past two years. Yet evolving consumer spending habits and behaviors, combined with macroeconomic conditions, force marketers to innovate when dealing with complexity.

Here’s what you can expect next year.

Changes in consumer buying habits
As e-commerce sales steadily increase, shoppers are losing the benefits of face-to-face shopping such as fitting rooms, buying multiple sizes of items to return the ones that don’t fit, or resorting to “bracketing.” It will be As a result, retailers are grappling with a surge in product returns, and returned items may not return to shelves and instead end up in landfills. It will hurt retailers’ bottom line and build up billions of pounds of returned inventory. to the landfill every year.

Returns are part of the shopper experience, but retailers can avoid economic and environmental impact by meeting customer expectations and needs. Leverage ratings, reviews, and user-generated content to educate shoppers about product selection to help shoppers make the right product choice the first time, curb the rising trend of returns, and improve customer satisfaction can be increased.

Increase in multiple touchpoints
The pandemic has not only changed where consumers shop, it has also impacted how they do it by accelerating online shopping and driving consumers into the digital realm.

Shopping in 2023 will require more brand intent as consumers shift between scrolling through apps or comparing prices and reading reviews on their computers. The new consumer buying journey involves multiple touchpoints and channels—not just in-store and online shopping, but social commerce, owned apps, and online communications—and requires new approaches to marketing. Mobile channels, in particular, are increasing their share of overall US online sales, reaching 41.8% of retail ecommerce sales in 2022. As omnichannel commerce grows, marketers and retailers alike need to focus their omnichannel marketing efforts to reach their audiences.

The goal of omnichannel marketing is to tell a cohesive brand story, support each other, and build loyalty across all customer touchpoints across all available channels (online and off). For example, a customer may view a product through a retailer’s app and receive reminder emails to her highlighting the item, the nearest store, and booking options. These details make it more convenient for customers to receive their products even faster, and personalized communications create a smoother experience. In the new year, retailers will need to adopt omnichannel marketing strategies to cater to where and how consumers shop, creating a seamless experience.

Evolving Loyalty Program
During the multi-touchpoint buying process, many consumers use their digital devices to compare product prices and read reviews to find the best deals. As shoppers focus on cutting costs without sacrificing quality, it’s getting harder for retailers to maintain customer loyalty in a sea of ​​low prices. Traditional reward programs — where purchases equal points — are of low value and no longer cut it for consumers. Loyalty is more than just offers and points. It’s about creating unique and positive customer interactions at every point in the customer experience.

Loyalty programs like IKEA and Target let you convert points into dollars to save money on purchases, but in 2023, retailers will offer personalized, relevant rewards, such as cashback and discounted member prices. You will move to programs that provide some more tangible value to your customers. Even Starbucks and Delta have integrated two loyalty programs so a customer can earn one mile for every dollar he spends at Starbucks, and double the miles when he buys Starbucks while traveling. can. While retail competition is fierce, these loyalty programs differentiate retailers and encourage customers to buy more, engage more often, and increase loyalty.

Personalization powered by a customer data platform
Personalization will become even more important in 2023 as retailers embarked on a digital transformation in the last two years. From awareness to purchase, each stage of the customer’s journey requires a certain amount of personalization to engage the customer and capture their attention. According to McKinsey, 71% of his consumers expect companies to offer personalized interactions, and 76% are frustrated when they don’t deliver, driving them to competitors.

Leveraging customer behavior and zero and first party data to create personalized content plays a key role in engaging customers throughout this journey, but it is easier said than done. Customer buying behavior is rarely linear. Often involving multiple devices and ever-changing, it is an integral part of retail marketing. , you can create a scalable and comprehensive view of your customers across multiple channels. Customer data can also open up revenue avenues for retailers through Retail Media Networks (RMNs). RMN is a retailer-owned digital platform that enables marketers to access customer first-party data, including purchases. retailer website.

Personalization is a requirement for customer engagement in 2023, with exponential growth in retailers using CDPs to create a 360-degree view of the customer and leveraging customer data to create RMN.

From pandemic shutdowns to supply chain issues, retail disruptions have demanded new agility and innovative solutions for brands to attract and retain customers. In 2023, customers will continue to seek personalized and valuable content at every step of the purchasing journey. Rapid digitization requires retailers and marketers to adjust their strategies to be more customer-centric, more digital and more profitable in the long term.