The Leading Marketing Solutions in Retail Technology

A retail company that offers goods or services aim to provide a way to draw shoppers’ attention. The practice of selling the products or services of a business in order to attract clients is known as marketing. Effective marketing also goes a step further, as a company will also find avenues for potential revenues to attract clients.                     

What’s Marketing?

According to American Marketing Association, marketing is defined as the method of developing and implementing products, goods, and services to establish markets that meet the individual and organizational goals of pricing, promotion, and distribution. 

History of  Retail Marketing

The history of retail marketing goes back a long way. For thousands of years, people have been trading. After the Industrial Revolution modern marketing has changed its form. And, distribution for goods and services has popularized.

Here is the history of marketing;

• Print ads, the 1450s: When Gutenberg invented movable type printers, print advertising allowed retailers to distribute prospective consumer brochures and fliers.
• When the first magazines were produced and published in the 1730s, the advertisements were published in magazines.
• Posters, 1839: Posters were becoming famous for companies’ marketing campaigns.
• 1867: People began renting commercial billboards for their campaigns.
• Radio Advertisement, 1922: businesses began marketing their products on the radio for the first time to reach more people.
• TV Advertisement, 1941: At this time people started watching TV ads.
• In 1954, the revenues of television ads surpassed the revenues of magazines and radio ads.
• Telemarketing was developed in the 1950s, with businesses using the telephone to attract potential customers.
• Mobile ads between the 1970s and 1994: Technical developments have allowed new internet marketing technologies, such as e-commerce promotions, database marketing, guerrilla marketing, and computer spam.
• In 1973, Martin Cooper invented the mobile phone.
• In 1981-1984, IBM introduced the first personal computer.
• In 1984, Apple released the Super Bowl commercial shot by Ridley Scott. This ad cost nearly $ 900,000. This ad reached 46% of the people in America.
• Printing has also become more comfortable with the invention of personal computers. Print ads increased in 1985.
• Between 1990-1994, 2G technology emerged, and SMS (text message) marketing started.
• Television advertising revenues increased from 2.4 billion to 8.3 billion between 1990-1998.
• Marketing began with the advent of search engines (Yahoo, AltaVista) between 1995-1997.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) started to become popular between these dates.
• Search Marketing, 1995: Companies began to work on advertising a product by sending search engines to a website. Organizations have also started using the optimization of search engines or SEOs to boost website traffic by using consumer-type claves on search engines.
• Blogging 1998: Businesses and individuals began creating blogs to exchange personal or professional data. Blogging 1998:
• PPC, 2000: This year, a pay-by-click system was created for internet marketing in which a company charges a small fee each time an ad is clicked on.
• A new era started with the spread of the internet in the 2000s.
• Marketers understood the importance of engaging with their customers.
• Spam e-mail marketing started in 2003.
• Social Media, 2003: Social media websites were popular now for people to exchange information and ideas, including commercial messages, with those on the web.
• Google Analytics, 2005: Google offers reports for website owners to help them see if they are hitting their market and reach their target audience.   
• In 2007, 3G technology began to spread.
• In 2012, the number of mobile internet users reached 113.9 million. People started to shop on the phone and on the internet. Also, the new habit has emerged: people are doing research and going to offline shops.
• Companies increase their online marketing budget.

The evolution of technology has changed the form of marketing. Marketing has shifted from offline to online with the development of the technology. So, what’s changed?

2. Online vs Offline Marketing

Online marketing and offline marketing differ from each other in various ways.

• Online Marketing

The aim of online marketing is reaching potential consumers through a particular banner, articles, video, images, flash animation, etc. Campaigns are planned as a simple temptation to the visitors in which a specific website of business wants to attract. 

Online marketing media involves “website/blog, social media, email marketing, search engine marketing, content marketing, video blogging, etc.”

Offline marketing aims to create brand awareness and reach the target customer via offline platforms. There are various methods of offline marketing approaches, such as through print media as well as non-print media.

Offline marketing media involves; “television, radio, brochure, flyers, banners, newspapers, pamphlets, posters.”

The main difference between offline and online marketing are: ” Measurability, long-term exposure, advanced targeting, real-time result.”

• Measurability 

Google Analytics and AdWords are examples of online marketing tools that provide data and examine various metrics available on the web for online campaigns. The tools help retailers in observing the impact of an online marketing strategy. The rate of ad visibility, clicks and conversions are some of the parameters that are examined in order to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. 

When it comes to offline marketing, there is no practical way to measure the marketing campaign’s success rate. Conversion, visibility, or overall effectiveness of an ad, because it’s impossible to tell from print media, radio or TV ads whether the audience was, or was not, persuaded to make a purchase. But the change in the number of visitors coming to the store can be compared in the marketing period to see the campaign’s effect.

•  Long-Term Exposure

Online marketing is a continuous process that can provide long-term exposure to a target audience if appropriately implemented.

Offline marketing approaches generally run for a period you pay your broadcaster for it.

• Advanced Targeting 

Digital marketing can target your audience precisely specifically. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Instagram can target ads directly to the preferred audience, and it can be seen how many impressions that the ad reach. Campaign’s location, target audience, and duration can be set to reach customers most effectively.

Traditional campaigns can target specific audiences limitedly. The platform can be a home appliances magazine to attract customers who are interested in home products or TV series, which is watched by a particular group of people.

• Real-Time Results

Online marketing campaigns can be set quickly. It can be seen the effects of marketing campaigns, and the change can be done on the way after launch. Ad placement, adjustment, and targeting success can be examined in real time. 

TV, radio, and print media can only be measured, adjusted, and targeted at the speed in which the newspaper, billboard company, or radio station can run the ad. After the campaign, the effect of the advertisement can not be examined as online marketing. 

3. The Technologies Leading Digital Transformation In Retail Marketing

Technology is leading digital transformation in retail. Digital marketing, analytics, omnichannel retail, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, facial recognition, cloud services are some of the terms that become prominent in our daily life. 

Retailers can offer automated and customized retail experience that makes shopping easier for their customers owing to new technology. For example, Amazon Go eliminates checkout lines and cashiers by using AI technology. And, the cashier-less store concept popularized in the retail sector by the Amazon Go store. Moreover, AI uses billions of data to foresee the future. Data that is collected by using analytics such as demographics of the customer and customer traffic helps retailers to make strategic decisions, personalize and enhance customer experience and increase their profit. Digital marketing is another term that became crucial to the importance of e-commerce. Digital coupons, emails, increased ads, virtual storytelling have become more and more popular with digital marketing. The shopping experience is completely changed by AR. For instance, customers are able to try on clothes virtually via AR. This technology decreased the return rate of fashion items significantly. More than this, there is also cloud technology that leads retail. Retailers can decrease their software development costs in a significant manner.

Retailers developed strategy especially in marketing in order to keep up with the technology. Customers are looking for more personal experience nowadays. Retailers need to satisfy customer needs to not suffer from the competition. In digital marketing, retailers gain leverage from social media. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and E-mail marketing are the most customer-centric platforms. It is easy for retailers to get in front of people likely to buy their products and convert them into sales. Retailers can target their potential customers who are specifically interested in the products and/or services that are offered in retail. 

Pricing also has importance in marketing. The price of the product should set strategically to increase the effect of marketing. More than this, customer trends are not set in stone. So that retailers need to adopt changing customer trends and set fluctuating prices strategically due to seasonal and market changes. To do this, retailers collect data about customer reactions to the changing prices by using analytics. Analytics are also useful in analyzing the demographics of the customer and see the effect of the age and gender of the customer on customer interest.

The marketing strategy is not always focused on a specific product. In that kind of situation, retailers can track local conversion rates. If the campaign is based on a specific product group, it’s also important to track if the customer directly goes to buy that product or also interested in other product groups. Image processing technology gives a helping hand in that kind of situation. Furthermore, retailers are also able to track customer journeys and use this information in marketing. 

Sometimes, the marketing campaign doesn’t work well. It is so important to understand the reasons behind in order to improve marketing strategy. The retail analytics and image processing technology helps retailers to understand if there is a problem with pricing, staff interest, product range, etc. by observing different parameters in the store such as visitor count, spent time, interest rate and local conversion rate. 

4. Udentify as a Business Solution in the Retail Marketing

Data is the solution for retailers who want to increase their profits by optimizing their system. Udentify is a business intelligence solution that analyzes customer behaviors in physical stores. Owing to image processing technology, Udentify anonymously tracks customers during their journey in the physical store and can estimate their age and gender. These insights can be used in different areas such as; marketing, stock optimization, dynamic staff management, SKU range management, and check-out line analysis.  

Following up with the changing sales figures and setting a pricing strategy accordingly are so crucial in marketing. Udentify helps retailers in determining changing sales figures and store density for a campaign. Then visualizes hourly and daily data to help store managers know about their actions instantaneously and take full control over their decisions. Moreover, it’s also possible to track the reactions of the customers to the changing prices. Are they interested in that product group? How many seconds do they spend in that area? Or do they just pass by? How old are interested customers? What about their gender? Retailers can find answers to those questions via Udentify. The data that is collected by Udentify can be used in pricing and campaign efficiency.

Do you want to take a part in the competition? Look alive and choose the best retail technology for your company!

Did you check our retail analytics solution? You can start using Udentify that analyzes the costumers’ behaviors at the brick and mortar shops. Udentify provides local conversion rate, head counting, heat maps, and order analysis. Thanks to the image processing technology, it can follow the customers anonymously, with which it gives meaning to the data that is gathered from the tracking by converting them to statistical models. It enables company managers to take data-oriented decisions by its management interface.

Author

Şerif Ali Enes Yolcu, Başak İncekaş