How shopper insights can boost your bottom line
Knowing your market inside out is vital to generating conversions – the more tailored your services, the more meaningful the shopper experience. The connection between shopper insights and increased return on investment is clear – but how can your business convert potential into profit?
At IGD Display, we have years of experience when it comes to generating useful shopper insights, enabling companies to better understand and appeal to their markets. Of course, limitations will always be a barrier to achieving maximum profitability, but there are ways to break down these barriers and harness your profit-building potential – keep reading for our top tips.
The right people for the problem
If you’ve encountered a problem and are using shopper insights and analytics to gain a greater understanding of the issue, its causes and potential solutions, it’s no use leaving this information in the hands of the IT department when it should be with communications, for example. While your ICT staff may collect this information, it’s vital the data is disseminated to the person or people closest to the problem in a form that’s easy to understand. Surveys have highlighted that making sense of some of the statistics from shopper insights can put limits on non-technical staff, so it’s also important to ensure that data is presented in a way that’s easy to understand.
Multi-department information sharing
Research has shown that companies with departments that cooperate well and share important information get better results from their shopper insight data. Often, the information gathered in shopper mapping activities is pertinent to marketing and merchandising departments, and can facilitate a more joined-up approach to tailoring business initiatives that better suit the target market. By keeping important data within a single department, the understanding of shoppers can be inconsistent across a company, allowing for only partial views of the market. Removing these limitations enables firms to create more unified campaigns and, as a result, ramp up profitability.
Broader measuring efforts
Expanding how your business measures shopper insights can provide important information about the bigger picture; only measuring certain elements of the customer journey and overall experience can leave gaps in knowledge that result in profits suffering. In studies, almost 70 per cent of firms that measure the impact of their shopper marketing have recorded returns on investment, compared to less than 30 per cent of companies with no monitoring in place. By increasing measuring efforts, or setting up methods to monitor how shopper research is implemented, businesses stand to make gains in terms of profitability.
Responsive technology
As measuring shopping insights becomes more and more important, so too does the need for technology that responds quickly and effectively. There are apps and programs available that collect shopper data and present the information in ways that are easy to understand, at important intervals. As consumers increasingly head online, and the in-store experience becomes more of a pertinent issue; receiving regular updates and being able to act on information quickly can be helpful in our dynamic and fast-paced retail environment, where there is little time to lose poring over complex results.
Although there are limitations to profitability within the retail industry, proactive businesses are increasingly aware of how making good use of shopper insights can help break down these barriers. With the right technology, timing and cross-departmental efforts, collection and use of shopper data can make all the difference to a company’s bottom line.
At IGD, we have the tools and the expertise to provide key market insights; our service is designed to enhance awareness and efficiency so your business can boost its bottom line. To find out more, get in touch with us today on 866.916.0977.