As a fashion retailer with both a bricks-and-mortar and an e-commerce store, your aim is to make your online-only customers and your in-store customers aware of your other channels, encouraging them, should they want to interact with your brand cross-channel and device, they can - seamlessly, without hassle. Sounds great! But are you truly making the most of omni-channel retailing for your fashion brand, and is this really the best way to boost your presence cross-channel? We’ve gathered some top tips to make sure you are!
If the customers who are buying from your brand in-store, why would you force your digital channels onto them? You need to first understand what makes them buying from your brand in-store over online. Asking customers to fill in surveys to determine their user journey and purchasing motives can help you tailor their journey accordingly. They might browse online before coming into store, or they might despise online shopping, in which case, forcing your online store onto them through email marketing or remarketing ads, could be doing more harm than good. This is why audience segmentation is crucial when marketing to your customers.
This is why your brand needs to embrace an omni-channel strategy. You need to be able to clearly demonstrate your USPs cross-channel to all customers. You have a channel that the others don’t, so you need to use this to your advantage. In an article published by the Harvard Business Review, they discuss the seemingly backwards transition of Amazon, having opened their first physical store in Seattle, America. Surrounding Amazon’s transition to a physical store, Xueming Luo, a marketing professor at Temple University reinforces the advantage bricks-and-mortar stores have over online-only brands: “Traditional retailers’ strength is the in-store shopping experience, and they need to play that up.” So, don’t simply disregard your physical store, even though the digital space continues to develop and open new opportunities up for e-commerce, your physical store is your most valuable USP!
For your brand to begin to take centre stage in the fiercely competitive industry of retail, you need to not only understand your audience, but you need to make each of your omni-channel strategies customer-centric. The only way you’re going to grow your brand is to confidently build strategies that resonate with your target market. Building engaging strategies that deliver high conversions cross-channel can be tough, so if you’re looking to analyse your digital channel performance, check out our guide to omni-channel marketing for fashion retailers – download your copy now!
