Retailers of all types can leverage social monitoring to increase sales, improve customer satisfaction, and personalize marketing campaigns. From grocery to fashion, all retail brands require some form of digital marketing. Brick-and-mortar stores need to work even harder to compete with the popularity of eCommerce.
Thankfully, social monitoring firms exist that will give retailers some direction on what their consumers desire and truly need. It’s about collecting the data that allows a brand to develop solutions that drive traffic and maximize sales. Here are just a few ways in which a social monitoring agency can create digital marketing solutions for retail:
Omni-Channel Marketing
Social monitoring is a means of tracking conversations in a social space, which can include keywords, concepts, and terms. It helps a brand decide where their audience resides online. Additionally, it can examine the ROI of in-store campaigns and measure how it carries over to a digital space.
Mentionlytics
This is done by creating in-store campaigns and encouraging your consumers to post about the experience online. Hashtag marketing is one prime example of this. From images to posts and videos, it’s a means of building your brand through audience promotion. If you have clearly defined KPIs, social listening can help you understand the type of advertising that works for your physical locations.
Product Development
One of the biggest benefits for retailers when it comes to social monitoring is the ability to have your audience steer product development. Social Industries is a social media monitoring agency that helps you track consumer reviews to determine what types of products are resonating with online communities. This is ideal information to have prior to investing in untested inventory or development.
Online Reputation Management
The retail industry is worth over $3.5 trillion dollars and is growing exponentially. The competition from eCommerce is stronger than it has ever been and if you own a brick-and-mortar store, you have to be inventive about how you market online. Social monitoring enables you to understand and get to know your customers on a deeper level, rather than passing through the store.
Smart Insights
People feel more open to sharing their thoughts online. This can work to your advantage. Although a business may receive a bad review every now and then, people are really watching how you handle it.
Social monitoring allows a retail business to address an issue immediately, rather than letting it fester. Apologies and simple offers go a long way for a disgruntled customer. And if you can turn them around in public, that’s even better.
Content Marketing
The type of content you choose for your digital campaigns can be inferred by the social monitoring you perform. Some platforms are better for certain types of content. If you wish to showcase a lot of media, Instagram and Pinterest are great for hi-resolution photos and videos.
Interactive content, like polls and quizzes, create lots of engagement on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This can also include future concepts like virtual and augmented reality. Why not develop a virtual store online that people can shop in? Or an app that incorporates your retail in a camera program? The sky is the limit when it comes to content marketing that generates a buzz. Don’t forget to consider mobile-friendly formats for optimum exposure!
Personalization
4/5 consumers state they are more likely to use a retailer’s promotions if they are tailored to prior purchases. That means people want you to pay attention to their individual needs, as much as possible. Social monitoring allows you to create more meaningful experiences for consumers that drive brand engagement and loyalty.
Sprout Social
The extra special you can make someone feel, the more likely they will continue to do business with your company. The analytics that monitoring provides allows you to form laser-targeted campaigns that have deeply informative results.
Localization
You can gauge the success of in-store campaigns through social monitoring. Agencies like Social Industries make advertising locally a snap. Using store-specific information, you can create a greater sense of relevancy for consumers.
Store management should offer hyper-localized ads which encourage people to further engage online. You can then measure the effectiveness of these campaigns and how they translate to digital interactions.
Market Opportunities
If you listen to enough social media, you can always stay one step ahead of the trends. It allows a brand to seize market opportunities before the rest of the competition catches on. Robust reporting created from the metrics collected through monitoring helps to identify market drifts and make more informed business decisions.
PCCW Solutions
Growing your paid presence through digital advertising can be challenging for retail brands. It is one of the largest types of ecommerce there is and thus the competition is hot. Astute social monitoring will give way to deeper consumer insights that can drive ROI. But the best part is the ability to know your customers as individuals and provide a product they truly want.
Our platform lends itself to retailers of all sizes and industries. From superstores to chain stores, grocery and pharmacy, start running digital campaigns that convert into foot traffic.