Technology has done a lot to help the purchase process, especially for consumers and for retailers who have embraced digital marketing. The Internet helps buyers and sellers meet on purpose, quickly. Well here’s a new phenomena that you need to help your retailers address.
This study is from Prosper Mobile Insights.
The challenge is that smartphones and tablet computers allow consumers while in a store to search for a different product or better price elsewhere. Even buying from Amazon online. Not a good business model for your retailers who spend a fortune each year on their showrooms.
What are your retailers to do, short of jamming smartphones and tablet computers in their store?
The first step is to make sure your retailers have a mobile and tablet friendly site loaded with your product information and brand message. Then, they can at least entice modern shoppers out of their competition’s showroom.
A great site will also help consumers shop while they are shopping. If today’s consumer would rather look at their smartphone then talk to an associate, then we have to be ready for them.
Also a good mobile site and a sales associate with their own smartphone or tablet becomes a much better sales person. It’s a great way for a sales associate to show video and direct the comparison shopping process for a savvy consumer.
Most brands already have the digital assets needed to help a dealer present their product online. What they lack is a marketing portal that allows retailers to customize and dealerize that content and make it attractive for mobile devices and tablet computers. And, even better, if the marketing portal hosts, maintains and tracks the dealer branded site, it’s even easier for the retailer and better for the brand to stay in control.
Local marketing is changing and the best brands have to change too.