Customers V/S Products: Which Needs More Focus In The Retail Business?

Guest Author: Enalito

“It takes months to find a customer and only seconds to lose one”

Customers — a crucial business element are hailed as the true kings of the business since 20% of the customers are known to drive 80% of the business. Without customers, retailers can lose or win in the market by how well they wow their customers. Such notions of customer acquisition and retention have driven the retailer’s efforts to drive business growth.

Customers Need To Be Impressed With Latest Market Trends

In an effort to make the brand be on top of the mind, the retail industry uses the best marketing practices to connect with its customers. This is so because online shopping experience has tremendously evolved.

Today’s customers expect personalized communications at all stages, prompt customer service on multi-channel touchpoints, and want the entire shopping journey to be centered in and around their requirements.

They wish to be understood well — enough with effective engagement on their chosen channel no matter where they are in the customer lifecycle.

Such eCommerce trends are being picked up by maximum of retailers to scale their revenue, optimize up-sell and cross-sell strategy and stay updated with the latest business and marketing practices.

Customers Expect Personalized Experience

To meet the needs, it becomes important that the business collect information on their customers such as their preferences, likes and more things alike that can determine their purchase decisions. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, it is easier to collect data on one’s customers, analyze it and make decisions really fast in real-time to automate personalized marketing.

One particular practice that’s being taken up by the retailers and marketers is to group customers based on similar actions, behavior and purchasing information — known as Customer Segmentation. This process helps retailers to differentiate their high-value customers from others. Through customer segmentation, businesses get to know about the customers at the risk of defection, loyal, promising new — so that the sales approach towards them have relevancy.

Retailers use customer segmentation to optimize marketing communications and improve customer service. It strengthens their customer relationships and puts a better use of decided marketing spends. For a customer, it gets easier to relate to the campaigns and respond much faster to the personalized call to action.

But apart from customers, Products — another important business element have the potential to change the course of the business completely and yet it is often ignored!

Product — The Neglected Gold Mine Of Retail Business

Retail executives and marketing stakeholders are too quick to brush-off the product’s potential to drive sales strategy. It is so because catching up with the buzz around customer-centric strategies have shaded the value products brings to the business.

Products are the prime reason why customers choose to connect with the store. Either the products fulfil their needs or attract them to own it. Simply put, the business wouldn’t exist without its products.

Products are revenue-enabler, profit-maximizer, and growth- accelerator. When retailers achieve success in creating product demand, customers are allured on their own to make purchases; leaving behind the need of running after customers and bringing them to the store.

On further examining, products are loyal to retailers rather than the customers. Customers are not unique to you but rather shared even with your competitors. They would visit, shop, be loyal to you at one point and then may completely disconnect. While your products are truly yours even after they sell-out because they bear your business logo and remind people from where it belongs.

But how to achieve the maximum benefits from products? Sell them more and more? And get the store’s shelves empty as quickly as possible?

This can’t be achieved by products being idle on the store’s shelves. A product has only one expectation from its retailer — “SELL ME!” To do so, retailers should truly know each of their product’s demand and the appropriate market audience to sell to. Every product has its own individuality that can attract purchases from customers. But buying pattern of products differ and there can be comparisons made to understand which products are store’s top-sellers, most-profitable, average-performers or at risk of not being in demand anymore.

Just like how retailers analyze customer’s behavior, in the same way, product buying behavior is tracked and analyzed to understand which products are helping or hurting your store’s performance. Similar performers are grouped together for a fast and effective way to make decisions over those product clusters.

Product data analytics reports about the customer’s response towards its products — whether they’re attracting customers or not. These powerful insights guide in product marketing with a targeted approach to its interested customers. Such granular level decision making consisting of 360° product analysis can completely optimize sale strategy to make the necessary inventory and marketing adjustments towards assured returns.

- an analytics and marketing automation app pulls data from your eCommerce platform to report on product performance and how has it been contributing to your store’s sales. Powered by AI, it intelligently makes product clusters such as ‘Checkout Candy’, ‘Sleeping Giants’, ‘Fast Premium’, ‘Recent Whales’, ‘Money Makers’ and more so that you can have the best product mix for your store and can take corrective measures based on Enalito’s insights for increasing product’s selling performance.

Its in-depth evaluation helps you compare products and product clusters, suggests optimal discounts to increase sales, predicts LTV of products and helps you market products to its likely buyers.

Want more? Enalito’s predictive product analytics can predict new product’s performance so that you plan and decide its best marketing strategy with promising high returns.

Originally published at https://www.shipworks.com.