(Almost) liveblogging of the Infopresse day on retail: the impact of web marketing on offline sales methods

Here are my notes from the conference by  Stéphane Drouin, founder and partner, SVM

“RETAIL IN THE AGE OF GOOGLE”

Stéphane Drouin reminds us at the start that the consumer is changing, and that some retailers are slow to adapt to their behavior. He tells us about the Google effect, a term symbolizing access to information online, but regular readers of this blog will see nothing new in it: the consumer is more autonomous, less passive, wants convenience and immediately ! 

We are reminded of the life cycle of a purchase, saying: “Turn consumers into shoppers, and turn shoppers into buyers” (I would add a fourth step making buyers brand ambassadors, and returning customers). There are two "moments of truth" in a retail purchase: the first contact with the product (in store), then a second, at home, when the product is consumed (online merchants do not take advantage of the latter to impress, in my opinion).  

In "brick" commerce, 70% of decisions to buy take place at the point of sale, but 13% of buyers leave the store without buying what they wanted to buy (online, the quality of "landing pages" seems even more important for this reason). Mr. Drouin goes on to tell us about the in-store conversion rate, to be managed at three levels: store, section, then catalogue, to balance marketing efforts: in the era of Google, the "brick" now lives same challenges as online: there are enough visitors, but you have to increase the number of buyers, increase the size of the shopping cart and build customer loyalty to increase its lifetime value . From our side, it's a good sign: e-commerce is starting to shape brick-and-mortar retail 

It reminds us of the 5 A's of retail (which I think could be used very well online too):

• Welcome
• Approach
• Accompaniement
• Membership
• Goodbye!

Of these, support is the most difficult: retail staff are undervalued and lack qualifications, and new tools have to be found to help them, particularly online and through in the market (information, readability). Stéphane Drouin recalls that the conversion rate after contact with a human (in-store advisor) can quickly rise to… 95% (statistic from a group of American pharmacies)!  

The buyer spends 30% of his time buying, and 70% of his time searching… Drouin says “we have to bring Google into the store” to remedy this situation. Shopper marketing , a new approach in retail, aims to apply this culture of conversion to retail : this current has a leader, Proctor & Gamble, which is divesting from mass advertising, and reinvesting in shopper marketing and … in interactive marketing, in particular by opening a direct sales site. Shopper marketing also affects collaboration in a vertical: consumer, manufacturer and retailer.         

20-30% of a chain's buyers represent 70-80% of the sales volume of this banner: this segment deserves specific marketing: it comes back to the retailer more than 20 times a year. At the same time, he makes 50% of his purchases from the competitor, which betrays a conversion and loyalty problem.

The reasons for the visit (our personas in Internet strategy) replace demographics (traditional segmentation), we now wonder how a category is purchased rather than how a brand is consumed: we refocus on the needs and motivations of the buyer , which are prioritized according to the volume of visits and the volume of business generated (our personas approach therefore seems to be compatible with this offline method).

The inclusion of in-store kiosks presenting the company's website help consumers find information in the absence of advisors , particularly at FutureShop. SVM has also worked on the organization of wines in grocery stores by refocusing on the needs and motivations of the consumer. They organized them by type of taste rather than by provenance and suppliers: this approach increases sales, because the type of taste is more of a decision lever for the customer in inexpensive wines (this observation comes to defend the approach decision levers and a good information architecture and online catalog   ). A similar approach was then applied at Vins en Vrac, with a continued increase in sales of 35%! To sell the hardwood floor at Rona, assembly instructions and the necessary complementary products are presented, because the possibility of assembling the floor yourself increased the confidence of the buyer. At Botanix, in-store product sheets look more and more like a Web product sheet.

Which product triggers an emergency visit to a particular retailer? How could we make the most of the customer who makes an emergency visit? Which product category should be prioritized for shopper marketing? With which partners (brands, retailers, manufacturers)? Who is the target buyer, his need and his motivations, his behaviors? What strategy do we use (education, engagement, emotion, entertainment)? It often takes a combination of signage, education, product mix and discount offers.

A final observation: because of their effectiveness, web marketing approaches are now making their inroads into offline retail!