Gain an insight by listening to this Faststrack episode on how retail needs to regain revenue. The pandemic has hit small and big retailers around the globe. People are in fear of loosing their jobs or savings. Any time there could be a bank imploding and thereby destroying the retirement savings of millions of people. Politics is changing directions. Everyone if blaming each other for their failures. Citizens and retails seem to be frozen by the horrid daily news. There is a way to continue living and serving customers while protecting jobs.
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Transcript of this episode
Welcome to today’s Fast Track Edition. So today’s topic is how retail needs to regain revenue. We’ve been seeing in the last few months since all a pandemic and all these things that are happening that companies are suffering in the volume of revenue that they have massively lost.
And when you look at it, for instance, at retail, most of the people aren’t going to the shops. So you are actually becoming aware, even if you go to the shops at the shops are not full. It’s not only just because of social distancing and all these other things. People notice during lockdowns that there’s still a possibility to order online. This changes the mindset of people. We could say that the buyer’s attitude towards an alternative option of otherwise going to a mall, going to a shop, going to some retailer.
Many people have got used to ordering online
It doesn’t matter whether we want to order our groceries, whether we want to order a new pair of sports shoes, whether we need clothes for kids, all these different things. I know that, of course, of the last few years, many people have got used to ordering electronics online, whether it’s computers or tablets or MacBooks and other kinds of stuff. Everything you can nowadays order online. You can even order guns on online, which is just crazy when you think of it. You can even order your, your new weber grill. That’s the thing. You can do all these things online.
There are very few things that you cannot actually order online. And just looking on Amazon: Amazon is such a huge market participant now in the current situation. They have massively grown. And what’s retail doing? Retail is partly standing there with either empty shops or partly filled shops. Yes, gradually, they are getting their stock back in. Because, of course, some of them have stocked and that is produced in China and if shipping has problems or Korea, none other places, then there’s a big difference. If this stuff is stuck somewhere in quarantine and on other things as well.
Do I want to order products from this in this platform?
People are starting to rethink and say, do I want to order products from this in this platform? And that’s the thing. Even if I want to go and buy it from retail, am I going to find the product I need? Let’s say I want to go and buy, for instance, a special pair of shoes for let’s say for walking on stones and you’re going into a into a lake and you don’t want to go barefoot or trying to fill your way somehow with sandals or anything that eventually float off you. But you actually are looking and you need, of course, a certain size fits.
You might go and say, well, I’ll go to a retailer who sells sports equipment, I know they should have it. So you go there, you make the effort to travel the distance, go into the shop and noticed. Oh, heck, they haven’t got my size. They haven’t got the size, maybe that I need for my partner or for my kids. Then, I think I wasted maybe an hour, two hours traveling back and forth and coming back home with nothing. I think this is crazy. I can go to order it online and I get it next day delivered.
They don’t have the stock that the buyer wants
That’s when retail is starting to get hurt: Not, only because the buyer then decides to buy online, but because they don’t have the stock that the buyer needs and wants. And that eventually starts moving the buyers attitude towards thinking, am I going to bother going into the city, going to go to the mall and try to figure out if it fits? I just order it online. Last time it worked. It was quick and easy. Order online again.
Boom means that retailer has lost that client because the client is going to buy and buy and buy online. They’re no longer going to bother. Of course, the retailer maybe has an online shop and is able maybe to at least turn around the game a little bit and say: “hey, we’ve got it somewhere’s in stock, we can ship it to you. You’ll get it tomorrow.” Then, OK, let’s at least a good alternative, I can consider that. And if that works and it’s perfect, why not?
They have neglected the online stores
The thing is, most retailers haven’t been doing that. They have neglected the online stores, services and mail delivery because it’s always been like the online mail delivery and brick & mortar retail. Today mail delivery and online retail is practically one area – you could say – because how many people nowadays order from a print catalog? There are plenty of people in certain age groups but even there, if I have all the convenience of sending it back, if it doesn’t fit, if I don’t like it and so on. Then you say it’s less hassle than with the classic mail order, that is maybe still a little bit outdated and not as fast as Amazon, and that’s where even the mail order services will lose.
Let’s have a look at retail. So imagine yourself. You’ve got your retail shop. Your store is more or less moderately filled with stock. You’re looking in the morning and afternoon: people are in the store. Nevertheless, it’s not really that much that’s going into the tills. The checkout’s show that there isn’t that much being bought. Maybe then there may be some few things. But your store isn’t full. It isn’t buzzling. They’re not like 20, 30 people waiting to pay at the cashouts. All your cash outs are not really busy … now and then somebody comes. But it’s some small item or so, whatever. It’s maybe not worth to bother opening the store. Online might be better. Maybe they haven’t used it first.
Get people back into your stores
So you have to get people back in, but what if people don’t want to go back in and then say, “I don’t want to in this city, you have to wear masks and you have to travel here and then you’re not able to sit here and able to sit there and some convenient and not exactly the most pleasurable experience”, and that’s where you have to think, OK.
I have to take my goods, my offers to the client. So I have to change my business model after I realign my focus and say, “where are my clients?” So I have to start thinking: Where are the clients? What are these clietns that I can reach and? How can I maybe get their attention?
The thing is, let’s say your client area that you are focusing now for your current project is maybe the age group of 40 to 60. If you run campaign on tick tock, it might Help? Maybe their kids see it and show it? But realistically, not really. Unless they are in marketing. Otherwise, you don’t really going to get them.
They’re going to be on Facebook? With all the garbage that’s been posted a moment on Facebook, on this pandemic and that thing and these riots and everything. I think that those who are able maybe to afford your products are not going to waste their time and energy being on Facebook. They’ll be even outside because they just don’t like it. Television ads? I don’t know. Television ads that’s actually long past its its history. No, really. So you might be even better with newspaper.
If you do not know your costomers how do you want to get buyers?
Of course, with newspapers and all the printed things, you don’t really know who is really reading the ads. You do not know if they looked at the ad and then visited your website, as this can not be tracked.
But the key thing is, you have to find for each audience group, what makes them unique. Where are they? What do they consume? What are their typical hobbies? Where might I be able to reach them? Maybe, maybe my competition isn’t even bothering because they say, “oh, we just do Facebook and Google ads.” We maybe run ads on eBay because maybe the wife is trying to sell off the old gear. That’s not necessarily needed. And so on. And that’s what changes the business, because people are somewhere else than they used to be.
Is your targeting going to help regain revenue?
So you have to be aware your marketing targeting is no longer going to be in the old areas where you might have been advertising as well on Instagram or even using a other platforms (e.g. Whatsapp). It’s not it’s not going to bring U.S. retailer any gains. You’re going to burn a lot of cash flow. So that’s the thing. You have to really decide where are my clients and how do I want to target. It depends very much on the demographics in your localities and so on.
So you have to have laser focused on what is relevant for the people and what where you are going to get the attention. Social media is going to be more and more an issue for many businesses because you’re not going to get the attention that you’re going to have to be targeting certain other places. This changes the game as well on Google: You are not going to be able to gain the attention at the level that you want. There are other places where you can gain that attention. In a long term, generate a high revenue with these people.
Be super focused and your will regain revenue
You have to be super focused on your audience and know exactly how they think, how they handle the daily schedules now in the current situation. That makes a big, big change. So. Let’s go. In the next episode, as we’re further deeper and seeing how you can really adapt that and as we’re focusing on how you can increase as well to the level of what’s actually being put in the order cart.
