26 Jul Digital Marketing? Haiz… So Many Gaps, How To Fill?
In 2022, social media platforms are undoubtedly the gold mine for everyone to market our products! Let’s have a small exercise, let’s do a mental tick on whichever platforms we are currently using to market our products:
Facebook ……………（ ）
Instagram…………… （ ）
TikTok…………………（ ）
Online Store…………（ ）
Shopee………………（ ）
Lazada………………（ ）
Done? Well, I believe all of us would at least have 1 of the above checked. Furthermore, most if not all of us have put in tons of effort solely to make sure our products are marketed well on these platforms. The choice to invest in these platforms is a must, but beyond investing in these platforms, we need to take a step further to analyze and even introduce different strategies to fill in the gaps left by purely focusing on digital marketing. This integration comes from the idea of “New Retail”. So what are some of the gaps missing you ask? Well, let’s take a look at some of the gaps we can start patching in order for us to thrive in this era of new retail.
Digital Marketing? Haiz… So Many Gaps, How To Fill?
- Don’t put all your eggs into one basket!
- Always check your eggs as they are cooking
- Centering your eggs around your customers
1. DON’T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS INTO ONE BASKET
Back when I was working in a brick-and-mortar retail store, my manager was inspired and would often spend most of his time focusing on social media marketing. Besides time, he would invest tons of money in terms of advertising our products. However, throughout that period, our sales did not increase significantly. Furthermore, the walk-in rate during that time was immensely low as we were still going through CMCO. Our manager was obviously stressed and looking for ideas to keep his store afloat. That was when we came up with a few amazing ideas!
We decided to start what we call a “Mobile Demo Booth”, we walked around the vicinity of the store with our demo product engaging passing customers with some mini challenges as well as mini games. One of our colleagues then decided to record the process down and post it on our social media accounts. That was when we started seeing an increase in sales! We then proceeded to attempt different ways to connect with more customers.
As such, one thing we learnt from our manager that still applies now, is that social media marketing is a powerful tool, but on its own, the effects it can achieve are very limited. However, when we adopt the concept of new retail, combining social media with other different channels such as physical touchpoints, we can actually reach a wider audience and create a much stronger marketing strategy.
2. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR EGGS WHEN THEY ARE COOKING
After noticing this, all of us were obviously excited! My manager is able to keep the store alive and gain revenue, while we managed to get higher commissions (yay!). So instead, my manager decided to take a portion of the funds he used to invest in social media marketing into other channels such as telemarketing as well as our “Mobile Demo Booth”. For the next 2 months, we were surprised by the amount of sales we were getting and our manager looked less stressed and had more time to relax as well. So he gave us full control of how we want to utilize the funds.
2 weeks down the line, our manager was shocked to find out the monthly fund was used up in just 2 weeks but there was only a slight increase in sales comparatively! We spent the funds on games and challenges we can play with customers as well as some treats to keep each other motivated! We obviously had a meeting and decided to start looking into what was truly bringing in sales. Turns out, most of our sales came from returning customers due to telemarketing and there were no changes in walk-in customers from the walking booth!
From then onwards, before we invest, we would look into which of the marketing strategies we are applying are actually giving us the most returns while also keeping cost at a minimum for other strategies. So an important aspect for us to reflect would be whether we know the way to measure our online marketing success. In the current era of new retail, to succeed is to assess our performance, to identify the areas we need to improve in.
3. CENTERING YOUR EGGS AROUND YOUR CUSTOMERS
After optimizing our strategy, our manager believed we are practicing proper new retail marketing strategies. Thus, he wanted us to challenge ourselves to get more sales within our areas and offered an additional team bonus to whichever team did the best in terms of sales. We were very motivated and we strive to attract more customers and to close them! This continued on for 2 weeks before all of us lost our motivation. Why? Well, the social media team had a 3 minute average response time and had tons of enquiries, but none of the customers wanted to buy the product without testing it, even if they did, it took 5-days worth of convincing before they even considered buying.
The demo booth team on the other hand could close customers easily, but the foot traffic around the store was very limited, the whole team had an average of 3 sales a day. The telemarketing team was even worse, they would sometimes spend much time introducing the product only to be met with a “I’ll think about it” or “Not interested” after nearly spending 5-10 minutes on a call. We were completely devastated. That was when our managers realized we became so focused on the commission and sales that we forgot the most crucial thing, our customer!
In line with the concept of New Retail, our manager actually got us to focus on working with each other instead of against each other to provide the best service to our customers. Rather than closing customers online, we now set up appointments for them to visit us or even real time live sessions for them to ask us and demo the products for them. The telemarketing team focused on calling to follow up on appointments and spending short and sweet calls to contact previous customers and introduce promotions instead of selling.
Our effort drove most of the online customers to visit our stores where we can easily demo the products and get their interests while optimizing the amount of energy spent on each customer. By centralizing our efforts on customers, utilizing multiple channels to market products to customers and always checking the returns of our strategies, we were able to find a mix that not only is effective use of resources, but one that actually generated lots of revenue for our store! However utilizing all of these strategies is only the beginning, the true challenge, is to integrate all of these channels, becoming what we call “New Retail Marketing”
The trends as well as the gaps for an effective digital marketing strategy does require time as well as the know-how’s before it can be successfully implemented. Interested to find out what this new retail marketing is? Want a more in-depth breakdown of the strategies personalized according to your business? Wait no further! You can check out our Professional Certification in New Retail Marketing. If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.
Written by Bryan Law Chu Zheng,
SHRA Corporate Trainer
Bryan is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He is a major in Psychology with a retail background. He has a deep passion for human interaction and personal development.
You can catch him dancing or playing the uke on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
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