Perhaps I am aging myself with this small confession, but I might have watched Pretty Woman with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts more than once. Remember when Vivien (Roberts) is unleashed on Rodeo Drive with a credit card and carte-blanche spending? The joy and excitement the audience feels with each purchase she makes is why that scene works. It exemplified the American dream of "shop 'til ya drop" not so long ago.
(TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)
Shopping is different now. Less and less is it an activity that people do as a social event, or even out of necessity. When they need something, they go online, click a button, and have it on their doorstep within two days. We never need to go shopping—we order what we want when we need it, and we aren't confined to doing it on certain days, at set times, or specific locations. Thanks to online shopping, we are now constant consumers. With online access, we can buy anything, anytime, anywhere. Shopping has become so commonplace today that it blends into the background, providing no memorable experience for the consumer beyond just a few clicks.
I’ve noticed that smart brands, however, are harnessing the power of social and digital media to re-imagine the shopping experience and make it fun again. The key to retail success in this era of robot-like online shopping lies in finding creative ways to turn it into a real experience.
Questions about using social media are always in the inbox, and one thing I try to make clear is that your social media campaign shouldn’t be solely about marketing. However, if you use it right, it can be your most successful marketing tool.
Sell The Experience As Much As The Product
The notion that experiences make people happier than material objects is increasingly popular. This is reflected in consumer behavior and can have negative consequences for retailers who focus only on product and location. As people spend more of their money on experiences—dining out, traveling, entertainment—and less on possessions, retailers can no longer neglect the customer experience if they hope to survive.
Expectations for customer experience are different now, too, in part because of how millennials engage with the process. They grew up using the internet and mobile technology, and they don’t have patience for inefficient procedures. Outdated processes can ruin the customer experience for millennials, who know someone else can do it better. Customer expectations, combined with advancements in technology, fuel the demand for a whole new kind of marketplace. Retailers need to connect with modern customer expectations and provide experiences that engage the consumer, or risk falling behind.
Use Social Media To Mold Unique Customer Experiences
Social media is one of the best ways to connect with consumers and create a new kind of shopping experience. Recently, I’ve seen a number of retailers use Snapchat to reach customers with unique content. Snapchat Stories can be especially effective; unlike regular snaps, Stories allow brands to collect multiple images, short videos, and text, and share them for 24 hours with a group of followers. The advantage of Snapchat is that content is fresh, exclusive and essentially free. Brands can update content as quickly as trends arise, creating a real-time brand experience.
One company that understands this is the clothing brand Free People. It uses Snapchat in a fun, experience-based way by offering sneak peaks of upcoming collections. The company also uses it to humanize its brand by having employees answer fun questions via Snapchat to provide a glimpse into the company's culture.
Capitalize On Geolocation
In the brick-and-mortar world, some retailers are using geolocation technology to collect data on consumer behavior and create more personalized experiences for in-store customers. Geolocation allows stores to send specific promotional messages to customers’ phones when they stand in a particular place in the store. These promotional messages might include limited-time offers or coupons for products that appear only when the customer is right in front of that product. When a shopper can’t automatically predict what the experience will be like, it revitalizes what it means to shop in a brick-and-mortar location.
Geolocation technology can also track mobile device signals to create a map of what a customer does in a store. Another promising way to use geolocation is by tailoring product offers to a customer’s physical location. For example, geolocation can help promote nearby retailers that offer skiwear when a customer visits an area known for skiing.
Be Authentic And Make Shopping Fun, Regardless Of How It’s Done
With the undeniable might of online retail giant Amazon, smaller retailers can’t hope to compete on the same level. Amazon’s product selection and prices are nearly impossible for a smaller business to replicate. The one area in which smaller retailers have an edge, however, is providing a real experience.
Businesses should be ready to take advantage of consumer’s growing appetite for authentic experiences if they want to compete in the new marketplace. By using social media and digital technologies to connect with customer expectations, retailers can create a new kind of shopping experience, reigniting that lost sense of excitement about shopping again. By incorporating the best of digital into the human experience of shopping IRL (in real life), customers will be able to recapture the nostalgic joy of shopping Pretty Woman-style.
