Interesting news out of Australia last week shows a significant drop-off in online sales for January, with a slight lift in instore sales. The business response has been muted, but many are finding they need to beef up their local search marketing.
On Monday, February 6, 2023, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released data that showed real retail sales dipped 0.2% in Q4 to A$96.9 billion. It was widely reported in the media that Australian retail sales volumes fell in the fourth quarter, on the back of three consecutive quarters of growth in 2022.
What hasn’t been discussed by news outlets is the distinction between online and offline retail performance and OmniHyper® digital expert Colin James says it’s important to analyse what’s been going on.
“I appreciate some of the consumer behaviour we are seeing in Australia may be due to the traditional Christmas hangover, and there is also general concern about the economy.
“However, a situation where instore sales are lifting while online sales decline, highlights the need for an omnichannel marketing approach to increase the visibility of bricks and mortar shops.”
While the general media and politicians are focused on the underlying fiscal policy seeing higher borrowing costs resulting in shoppers trimming their spending, Mr James suggests retail and hospitality business owners should focus on harnessing this new consumer behaviour.
US based professional services firm Kalypso spokespeople Jacqueline Collins and Kelly Kornet agree with Mr James and say there needs to be a focus on customer empathy to refresh the instore shopping experience. They say in the past few year’s retailers have been challenged to efficiently adapt to, or drive value, with digitalisation. They say there has been a major shift in retail to address the issues of limited in-store selection and lack of convenience for customers.
“However, a situation where instore sales are lifting while online sales decline, highlights the need for an omnichannel marketing approach to increase the visibility of bricks and mortar shops.”
While the general media and politicians are focused on the underlying fiscal policy seeing higher borrowing costs resulting in shoppers trimming their spending, Mr James suggests retail and hospitality business owners should focus on harnessing this new consumer behaviour.
US based professional services firm Kalypso spokespeople Jacqueline Collins and Kelly Kornet agree with Mr James and say there needs to be a focus on customer empathy to refresh the instore shopping experience. They say in the past few year’s retailers have been challenged to efficiently adapt to, or drive value, with digitalisation. They say there has been a major shift in retail to address the issues of limited in-store selection and lack of convenience for customers.
For their part, they say consumers have seized upon e-commerce to compare and research products across companies, enthusiastically joined social communities through their mobile phones, and happily adopted mobile payment options such as Google wallet, Apple Pay, and Square Cash.
“Brick and mortar retailers need to be more successful.”
Meanwhile Mr James explains that an omnichannel marketing approach has a renewed focus on local search marketing to increase foot traffic, phone calls, and local website traffic. He says bricks and mortar need to reconnect with their local communities, communities being those people walking down the street and those people who live or work nearby.
“Most of our clients are up with the play in their search engine marketing, however we are saying they need to go a step further and make sure they have a presence on the algorithms used by local directories containing information about suburbs, streets, to pick up those customers who make use of the ‘near me’ type searches.
“These are the type of customers who want to purchase something ‘right now’, whether that is to eat Italian, find a hotel, drink craft beer, find a conveyancing lawyer, or buy a Samsung 70-inch TV.
“People standing on the street searching on their mobile phone for goods or services to buy, tend to be very specific in what they type into their phone. So to do our brick and mortar business owners,” Mr James says.
Jacqueline Collins and Kelly Kornet from Kalypso describe the process as putting customers’ needs first. They say an empathy approach seeks to understand the people affected by a given solution, and working back from this they want to streamline all the experiences that happen so all possible channels are singing from the same song sheet.
“One design research practice that can be applied to the retail industry is journey mapping. Also known as experience mapping, journey mapping entails capturing and communicating complex interactions between customers and your brand.
“The goal of journey mapping in retail is to build knowledge and consensus across the organisation while simultaneously building seamless customer experiences across all touchpoints.”
Collins and Kornet say journey mapping captures ‘customer pain points’ preventing a customer from choosing their store or seeing them exit the online purchasing process before the conversion is complete.
Mr James gives an example of a ‘customer pain point’ being where an electronics shop that’s 100 metres away doesn’t pop up on Google Search when a person in the street types in ’70-inch Samsung TV’.
“If you are the owner of that electronics business then your store could benefit from some local search marketing.”
If you are a retail business owner, the news for February 2023 is not that the Reserve Bank of Australia raised the cash rate another 25 points to its highest level in ten years. The real news is that consumers are showing more interest in instore retail, and for a business owner, you need to get on board with this.
Book a Demo
If you are a retailer with a bricks and mortar store, get in touch with OmniHyper® partnerships director Nick Hollows nick@omnihyper.com and book a demo today to talk about omnichannel marketing for your business.
If you are a retailer with a bricks and mortar store, get in touch with OmniHyper® partnerships director Nick Hollows nick@omnihyper.com and book a demo today to talk about omnichannel marketing for your business.