Challenges faced by Australian Retail Marketers

Working closely within the local retail sector, we’ve observed numerous pain points being experienced by retailers over the past few years. Being a data services company, in our case, we’re listening out for and focusing on our retail friend’s data specific pain points. It’s interesting to note that it doesn’t matter where you look, data always seem to pop us as part of the cause, and as such, with some smart intervention, data can also be the solution!

Of course, this year has been out of the ordinary, to say the least, with the best-laid plans that had been signed off for 2020, now in tatters and businesses changing tack and heading into a direction that will keep them afloat (while tightly crossing fingers for luck!).

There has been a commonality to the pain points within our local retail sector, and even though they were already exponentially becoming more important over recent years, many of those pain points have been exacerbated in the past year due to the pandemic. This has forced many retail marketers to take action now, just to survive this tumultuous period and hopefully beyond. Action needs to be taken now, whether it was part of their original plan or not.

We’ve captured some of these challenges and observations that have been shared by our friends battling on the retail front line, as well as from our perspective looking in. We found that there were seven fairly common pain points that stood out and I’m happy to share them below. I wonder if any of these sound familiar to you?

1. A fairly obvious point, but worth locking in, is the fact that due to diminishing foot traffic, there’s been a decline in natural offline acquisition, hence now there’s increased pressure on search and media spend just to acquire customers.

2. Following on from this and given the high cost of acquisition, capitalisation through driving second purchase – conversion – has also become a major focus for most local retailers.

3. With offline transactions down, retailers are keen to replicate in-store experiences online, particularly as retailers drive in-store customers to digital.

4. The global regression in travel and tourist traffic is particularly effecting our premium and luxury retailers.

5. Conversion rates are in focus as every marketing dollar is scrutinised more than ever.

6. By necessity, traditional offline focused retailers are trying to navigate a new digital world, as Brands are being compared to competitors now more than ever; and

7. A point that we’ve heard loud and clear is that there’s a very strong dependency on data capture – both in-store and online – as the value of customer data is recognised in the mission of driving Customer Lifetime Value

Savvy retailers realise that Customer Experience is the final frontier for them to differentiate themselves, and we all know that customers will be lost if they’re not getting the experience that they expect.

We’re looking forward to speaking with you soon about any challenges that you’ve been experiencing and how we can help. We encourage you to browse around our webstite for more details or get in touch with me directly using the details below.