Nitheesh NH
On May 5, 2021, Coresight Research hosted an online event in conjunction with Retailers United, a charitable organization that seeks to reopen America and help retail through the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. The event brought together leaders from selected data and analytics companies to provide insights into the pandemic-led shift to e-commerce and to offer guidance to retail companies on how to transition to digital or reframe digital strategies.
Event host Paul Magel, President of Application Solutions and Technology at professional IT services provider CGS, and moderator Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder at Coresight Research, were joined by four speakers:
Source: Coresight Research[/caption]
2. Getting Seen: Understanding Optimization and Extracting Insights from Data
Amid the pandemic, brands and retailers have had to recognize and adapt to rapidly changing consumer demand in real time, rather than rely on data about long-term past trends. In fact, as Agrawal explained, “that’s never been a great way to do it… 2020 is not how you want to predict 2021.” He added that effective predictive forecasting techniques have become key to retailers’ success, driving the need for further business digitalization.
The beauty of digitalizing a business, in Gebhardt’s view, is that retailers can get real data in real time, which can then guide their advertising spend. Ampd advises businesses setting up online to ensure they invest enough in advertising. Businesses with too low an initial advertising spend will not “actually see the right data, so [they] won’t know if it’s actually working,” Gebhardt warned. He explained that artificial intelligence and automation tools can be used in online advertising to make recommended changes automatically, giving online retailers built-in agility.
3. Social Listening and Social Media as a Sales Tool
Weinswig pointed out that one of the consequences of the pandemic was that retailers felt “somewhat disconnected from their customers.” Temporary store closures meant that retailers lost a touchpoint: “You can’t sit across from the customer… You’re not getting those data and insights like you previously were,” Weinswig said.
Buscaglia emphasized how social media platforms such as Facebook can be a powerful sales driver even with minimal investment—and as a testament to this, some brands have even prioritized marketing on social media to counterbalance the limitations of selling through only one channel. In the digital space, there are different channels of feedback available to brands and retailers. Buscaglia stressed the importance of looking further afield to “the more organic conversations that are happening out there online”— on blogs and forums, for instance. Social media enables brands and retailers to build communities around their products. Furthermore, In combination with behavioral data from customers, these channels allow retailers to understand who their top customers are and really cater to that audience.
Talkwalker’s priority is not only to identify top customers, but to “offer [them] an advantage to being top customers,” Buscaglia explained. She said that many retailers—and discounters in particular—had capitalized on consumers’ uncertainty amid the pandemic by offering different promotions and reward programs. This is an example of “small adjustments and minimal investment” that Talkwalker recommends for smaller online retailers, with Buscaglia highlighting that creating more personalized messaging campaigns, tweaking the product offering or partnering with someone based on consumer demand are ways in which retailers can have big impacts with small-scale effort. Critically, none of these steps are possible without the ability to listen to the voice of the customer through a consistent feedback channel and the data and analytics to make sense of that information and shape a retailer’s strategy.
- Prashant Agrawal, CEO and Founder of Impact Analytics, a provider of artificial intelligence-driven SaaS (software-as-a-service) solutions
- MaryAnn Bekkedahl, SVP of Global Business Development at SaaS e-commerce platform provider Big Commerce
- Cara Buscaglia, Chief Innovation and Insights Officer at social media analytics platform Talkwalker
- Joshua Gebhardt, Co-Founder and CEO at advertising automation toolkit provider Ampd
Transitioning to Digital: Three Strategic Factors
Opening the event, Weinswig laid out the three key factors to consider when developing or reframing an existing digital strategy: “determining the best online selling platform for your business, driving traffic to your online merchandise” through understanding Google optimization, and “leveraging social media as a sales tool” with a continually evolving digital content strategy. 1. Choosing the Right Online Selling Platform Weinswig asked the panel to consider businesses’ first challenge when setting up an online retail presence. Bekkedahl explained that Big Commerce’s clients digitalizing for the first time are best served by a simple option—“a platform that’s got great ease of use… and a low cost… [and can be set up] in about a day or two.” Bekkedahl advises against perfectionism when setting up an online presence for the first time, noting that many businesses opt for an agile approach. Crucially, amid recent severe and widespread disruption last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers did not punish retailers for offering new online shopfronts that were unpolished or changed frequently. In 2021, companies should shift their focus toward optimization, learning from their experiences in 2020 to build up their e-commerce presence and drive continued growth. Bekkedahl pointed to the “phenomenal” example of Walmart, which she said adapted its previous model to become the second-largest online marketplace in the US. A retailer’s choice of platform is also significant for brand identity, Buscaglia said. Choosing an online platform forces retailers to consider what kind of brand they want to be. Furthermore, despite the explosion in demand for e-commerce platforms, Talkwalker has identified a trend of brands choosing to sell directly to consumers, requiring them to build their own e-commerce site on their own platform. Selling across multiple platforms and distribution channels can be attractive, especially for businesses establishing themselves online for the first time, but Talkwalker has seen “even some of the bigger brands” moving to a DTC model and benefiting from simplified logistics, according to Buscaglia. [caption id="attachment_128148" align="aligncenter" width="720"] Source: Coresight Research[/caption]
2. Getting Seen: Understanding Optimization and Extracting Insights from Data
Amid the pandemic, brands and retailers have had to recognize and adapt to rapidly changing consumer demand in real time, rather than rely on data about long-term past trends. In fact, as Agrawal explained, “that’s never been a great way to do it… 2020 is not how you want to predict 2021.” He added that effective predictive forecasting techniques have become key to retailers’ success, driving the need for further business digitalization.
The beauty of digitalizing a business, in Gebhardt’s view, is that retailers can get real data in real time, which can then guide their advertising spend. Ampd advises businesses setting up online to ensure they invest enough in advertising. Businesses with too low an initial advertising spend will not “actually see the right data, so [they] won’t know if it’s actually working,” Gebhardt warned. He explained that artificial intelligence and automation tools can be used in online advertising to make recommended changes automatically, giving online retailers built-in agility.
3. Social Listening and Social Media as a Sales Tool
Weinswig pointed out that one of the consequences of the pandemic was that retailers felt “somewhat disconnected from their customers.” Temporary store closures meant that retailers lost a touchpoint: “You can’t sit across from the customer… You’re not getting those data and insights like you previously were,” Weinswig said.
Buscaglia emphasized how social media platforms such as Facebook can be a powerful sales driver even with minimal investment—and as a testament to this, some brands have even prioritized marketing on social media to counterbalance the limitations of selling through only one channel. In the digital space, there are different channels of feedback available to brands and retailers. Buscaglia stressed the importance of looking further afield to “the more organic conversations that are happening out there online”— on blogs and forums, for instance. Social media enables brands and retailers to build communities around their products. Furthermore, In combination with behavioral data from customers, these channels allow retailers to understand who their top customers are and really cater to that audience.
Talkwalker’s priority is not only to identify top customers, but to “offer [them] an advantage to being top customers,” Buscaglia explained. She said that many retailers—and discounters in particular—had capitalized on consumers’ uncertainty amid the pandemic by offering different promotions and reward programs. This is an example of “small adjustments and minimal investment” that Talkwalker recommends for smaller online retailers, with Buscaglia highlighting that creating more personalized messaging campaigns, tweaking the product offering or partnering with someone based on consumer demand are ways in which retailers can have big impacts with small-scale effort. Critically, none of these steps are possible without the ability to listen to the voice of the customer through a consistent feedback channel and the data and analytics to make sense of that information and shape a retailer’s strategy.