And just like that January was over, we’re all eating pancakes and love is in the air!
It’s safe to say that it’s been a bit doom and gloom in the world of retail last month. Looking back at 2017 in a haze as many retailers (but not all!) report a disappointing end to the year.
It’s now February so let’s not let all that news bring us down! There’s also a great deal to look forward to as we continue to march into 2018 with arms wide open and prove that retail can overcome the many obstacles it faced in 2017.
Here’s what we’re excited about:
Artificial Intelligence for the marketeer
Proper Sci fi geekery alert! Yes we’re at that point in time, artificial intelligence is now becoming the norm and something retailers are going to have to open their minds to if they want to be competitive.
It’s a bit mind blowing really, there’s now too much data for the human brain to handle on a daily basis which means we’ve needed to bring in the big guns and ask for a little help from the robots.
Using technology such as machine learning and deep learning methods can be hugely beneficial to brands, it’s basically adding brain power to your business that doesn’t sleep.
Machine learning and deep learning methods can assist data analysts to help recommend optimisations to content to improve organic search as well as detecting patterns in real-time to give marketeers an advantage at understanding customers, competitors, or market changes – turning insights into action!
If you want to read more about AI we recommend the following:
“artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-what-are-the-opportunities-for-search-marketers”– Search Engine Watch
“innovation-how-can-brands-keep-up-with-unpredictable-audiences” – The Drum
Understanding the customer even MORE
It’s no secret that retailers, especially if they haven’t already, need to get to grips with their customer data to stay ahead of the curve. Many retailers out there still don’t understand their customer’s behavioural patterns, needs and desires and this needs to change.
It’s time to dig deep into the data and updates in Google Analytics are allowing marketer’s to do this on a daily basis. The standard report function now enables more insight into user-level behaviour within sessions, User Explorer has been re-vamped to include lifetime metrics and dimensions for individual users, marketers can create audiences and publish them for analysis within the platform which enables comparison between different audiences over a period of time and finally conversion probability – Google can now identify recent site visitors with the highest probability of a future conversion by analysing historical data and automatically identifying the patterns between variables within sets of high-value customer. We’re in analytics heaven!
#BFF
We read a great article from Econsultancy last month explaining how the ‘working backwards method is key to superior customer experience’. We’ve been thinking this for a long time now and working with our clients to better understand their customer profiles before implementing any kind of digital strategy. Addressing their customers’ needs/desires and problems using the insight provided by the data.
In 2018 brands should be able to predict their customer’s behaviour even before they can, getting to know them inside and out, essentially becoming their #BFF.
GDPR
Ok…this one isn’t as exciting BUT very important and ties in nicely with the necessity of customer data. It’s the talk of the town and we all need to get prepared for 25th May 2018.
The regulation is there to protect EU citizens from privacy and data breaches in an increasingly data-driven world. It isn’t new but it’s the latest evolution of regulations on data privacy and protection so if your business is already compliant with the Data Protection Act you should be most of the way there.
We will be dedicating one of our next posts to GDPR, so watch this space……
Let’s not put our heads in the sand after a tricky year, let’s keep them high and rise to the challenges that 2018 will bring.
Remember, the customer is always right!