Marketing
It’s time for retailers to stop circling the measurement drain
Chandni Kothari, from Croud, explains that in the post pandemic world retail marketers must shake off unsustainable measurement standards and reset their digital activity.
September 17, 2021 by Chandni Kothari
When COVID-19 brought the US to a standstill in 2020, for many retailers the shift to online was a swift and decisive one, with budgets diverted online and store strategy put on hold.
But for some, the shift to online came with an expectation that an investment in digital was equal to an investment in sales growth. Now, as the customer journey adapts once again, retailers must shake off unsustainable measurement standards and reset their digital activity.
With the landscape littered with the bankruptcy filings of retail giants such as Brooks Brothers and Century 21, it's no wonder that retail marketers are coming under an increasing amount of pressure to perform strongly and consistently. But this pressure is leading to marketers treating digital as a short-term fix that will help them to hit a quarterly sales target.
When used properly, digital is part of the holistic whole, working in harmony with the wider brand activity. A shift in mindset toward measurement will help retailers to prepare for both upcoming tracking changes and a readjustment of consumer behavior.
Stores are now well and truly back in the picture. And a shift in shopping habits should be followed by a shift in marketing methods. This also means going back to running your digital channels, with pandemic learnings. Shifting back to the mindset of brand advertising is a good place to return to. Use the learnings from your performance while revisiting your tactics alongside stores opening.
Despite Google announcing a delay to the depreciation of third-party cookies for almost two years, the change is coming - and it will be here in the blink of an eye. With so many different touchpoints to the retail customer journey, retail marketers have relied on cookies for a long time to build a clear picture of their audience - but there is now impetus to plan for a cookie-less future.
The combination of the return of omnichannel and the need to ween off an over-reliance on cookies means retailers have to start to think less-channel specific and more about building a brand that reaches customers at different touchpoints.
Fundamentally, retail brands must not fall into the trap of attributing only online marketing spend to online sales success – the world doesn't work like that. People don't work like that. Customers need to receive marketing messages in the same way that they are spoken to, which requires brand education and brand building rather than 'buy this now!'. They can discover a brand online, hear an ad on the radio or go into a store. Marketing is all about how brand interactions stand up together, not in silos.
It's less about site retargeting and more about driving attention, desire and emotion, which can be argued as engagement. This takes long-term thinking and, if you don't have a measurement strong enough, then reverting to short-term tactics is inevitable.For example, quick sales to help boost your numbers which inevitably educates your customer that there will always be one and ends up being the only time they'll buy from you
Brands need to take a step from the digital tidal wave and realign marketing activity to business goals. The key to this is understanding channel roles and setting KPIs that fit. For instance, assess what is your message across your prospecting efforts or ask yourself: "can I run a full-funnel strategy within a channel or does it only sit at the top or bottom"? Once you've taken the time to figure this out, then you can look at what digital's role is in the broader picture.
About Chandni Kothari
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