How Can We Align Our Digital Marketing And Digital Customer Experience?

Digital Marketing Strategy is marketing products or brands with one or more forms of digital media. To be competitive in digital marketing in today's conditions, brands need to interact with customers regularly.

Digital marketers track what is viewed, how often, and for how long sales conversions occurred, what content was working or not working. It can follow the process until the product reaches the end-user from the shelf or warehouse.

Digital Advertising Strategies

In simple terms, digital ads are the promotion of products or brands through one or more types of digital media.

Digital ads are different from traditional marketing strategies. Contrary to popular belief, it is not just about social media platforms such as Google Adwords, Yandex Direct, Facebook, and Instagram.

The Aim and Purpose of Digital Marketing

The key to success in Digital Marketing is to define goals and measure how successful they are. The goals you set for your Digital Advertising strategy must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely). When defining your digital marketing goals, you should consider aligning with your overall business goals and key performance indicators.

This can only be summed up as awareness, acquisition, and transformation. Different online tactics will support other parts of this customer journey. Once you've set your goals, you'll need to summarize your digital advertising strategy and see how you will use it to meet your digital marketing goals.

Identify Your Customers

An effective digital advertising strategy starts with defining customers and goals. You should find creative ways for your customers to understand who you are and what you are doing as a business before visiting your page. This is where the buying game comes into play for digital marketers, and it is the crucial and most challenging step to attract the right customers.

Websites, e-commerce stores, blogs, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine; mobile platforms, and video sites like Youtube, search engines like Google and Yandex are effective ways to attract new customers you optimize your digital media environment. Therefore, it is essential to define your target market and target audience before starting your company's digital advertising campaign purchase section.

Identify Your Competitors

The purpose of defining your competitors is to understand that allows you to develop your digital advertising strategy based on a competitor's perspective. What you learn about competitors plays an essential role in your campaign setup. Seeing yourself as unrivaled and doing nothing about it will make it difficult to define the correct target audience for digital marketing. All you have to do is find businesses similar to yours. However, you should not limit your analysis to a specific size of competitors. Focus on USP (unique selling point). For example: Identify the extra features, good ingredients, and points you stand out in your product compared to your competitor.

Role Definition

Explaining your business's goals and objectives to your team and customers are considered the most efficient digital marketing strategy.

Determining the roles of each member of your team before starting work is crucial to the marketing strategy. This will make your digital marketing strategy clearer and more specific.

Inform the team that will create the digital advertising campaign in detail. They are part and complement to your marketing team.

While talking about product-oriented retail, service-oriented retail, technology-focused retail, we have entered the age of customer-oriented retail today. As technology continually evolves and diversifies, it has become an element that feeds customer-oriented retail.

Until yesterday, companies in the sector have used current/finance, corporate resource planning, supply chain management, information management, sales management, product management, warehouse management, etc. to do their jobs better, invested in applications and infrastructure systems.

Today, with the changing consumer profile, there is a tendency to invest in new generation information technologies to acquire new customers and retain existing customers. Data management and big data, especially mobile technologies, customer relations management, contactless-mobile payment systems, unmanned safe, e-commerce, internet of things (IoT), social media, digital marketing, artificial intelligence, etc., show interest in applications and make preliminary investments.

The goal in retail is to digitalize the customer experience. Two significant technology trends should not be ignored to make this happen—data information, i.e., big data analytics and omnichannel strategy. Devin Wenig, president and CEO of eBay said in an interview that those without omnichannel marketing strategies in retail are less likely to survive, and the distinction between commerce and e-commerce will disappear.

Using knowledge in retail is also extremely critical. Customer data circulating in the digital world plays a significant role in determining the future of retail. Digital content transformation into data, data into information, and information into new job descriptions and new business processes are almost the lifeblood of new generation retail.

REPORTS SIGN MOBILE SHOPPING

Non-governmental organizations, technology companies, consultancy companies come together to determine the new roadmap of retail. In recent days, the United Brands Association (BMD) and PwC revealed by Vodafone Turkey Prepares Turkey's Future Retail Sector Report findings have been announced. According to the report, digital transformation in the retail sector will open job opportunities for 675 thousand people. It is reported that the total retail market, which reached a size of 700 billion TL by the end of 2015, provides employment opportunities for more than 2 million people. Of the total share of organized retailing in 2 percent of Turkey's e-commerce market, it is still expected to rise.

According to the research, six fundamental trends trigger a change in the world, affect shopping behaviors, and promise new opportunities: Convenience, store, customer interaction, dynamic supply chain, robust reliable-flexible background systems, and digitally equipped human resources. The common denominator of these trends is digitalization.

The global average of the research shows that the importance of mobile devices in retail shopping is increasing. While 45 percent of consumers state that they use mobile channels to find the product they are looking for, 52 percent think that shopping on mobile devices is easy enough.

The key to shopping online for consumers in Turkey to mobile devices. According to the research; Consumers in Turkey increased their purchases through mobile devices compared to other countries in the last two years. Consumers in Turkey prefer to shop via their mobile devices with four points on a 52 percent rate ranks the world average.

Deloitte's 2015 Retail Industry Global Powers Report, which covers the evaluation of the year 2015, also included future trends in the retail sector. The wind of technology will affect the future as follows:

• Mobile retailing: It is expected that mobile retailing will continue to grow aggressively in the coming period. In 2015, 65 percent of the world population will use smartphones, and 83 percent of internet usage will be with these devices. Retailers are expected to respond by offering free in-store wi-fi and optimizing mobile-friendly websites. Also, the importance of privacy and security will gradually increase; Trust, transparency, and protecting customers' private information will become critical factors in ensuring loyalty.
• Faster retail: Speed remains a significant trend in retail. These are applications such as rapid change of fashion, products and surprise discounts on sale for a certain period, pop-up sales points that will provide fast access to products and services, prevention of waiting for payment queues with self-service kiosks, same-day delivery, and instant access to information. Just a few of the trends we will encounter in scope.
• Experience retail: Retail is now directly related to the product and the experience. Retailers will continue to offer innovative solutions that enhance their customers' purchasing experience, such as social media campaigns, music festivals, fashion shows, and interactive displays. On the other hand, customers expect an uninterrupted and consistent customer experience on all channels, whether they are in the store, online, at home, or on the street. To provide customized messages, information, and offers to customers, retailers need to invest in big data, and on the other hand, educate customers on information security/privacy and the purpose of using this data, and create trust by providing transparency.
• Innovative retailing: In 2015, the retail industry will continue to change with new technologies and innovative competitors. Three-dimensional printing, internet of things, etc. With the introduction of new applications into our lives, retailers need to respond quickly to innovations using market data and create their new applications in the product, customer experience, and business model.

The retail industry is on the verge of a significant transformation once again with mobile and internet. Until today, internal management-oriented structured and current / finance, corporate resource planning, supply chain management, information management, sales management, product management, warehouse management, etc. the sector that invests in applications and infrastructure systems; with the digitalization of the customer, it went to a new customer-oriented structuring. In short, the retail industry has to change and transform itself as the customer becomes digital.

While the retail industry is expanding to a large extent towards chain structuring, the concept of product sales in these chains is evolving towards the customer experience life center. Beyond knowing the customer, taking part in every screen and medium where the customer is will be the top priority of the brands.

Digital solutions are becoming more prominent in providing a better customer experience to meet the diversified and increasing expectations of customers. In addition to the physical store environment, brands in all digital channels such as mobile channels, e-commerce, and even wearable technologies will be the vital retail stores of the future.

In summary, the retail sector can reach its customers through multiple channels and provide him with speed, quality, accessibility, product/service information, reasonable prices, and products according to his needs. It will achieve digital transformation to the extent that it can offer and offer all technology tools integrated.

How does the e-invoice / e-ledger / e-archive system, which has been implemented within the digital transformation scope in the public sector, change and transform the retail industry? What is the transition tendency?

The primary purpose of the transition to e-invoice, e-ledger, e-archive solutions; We can summarize as they transition to full automation and making things faster, renewal of tax legislation, tax monitoring of electronic commerce, increasing tax revenues, reducing taxation costs, making the taxation process transparent and ultimately preventing the informal economy.

Since the retail industry is a sector with high turnover, monitoring the informal economy is exceptionally critical. By adopting e-invoice archive solutions, informality will be prevented, and the organized retail industry will achieve controlled growth. E-invoice archive solutions will reduce costs and enable the retail industry to work efficiently.

With the new arrangement of the Revenue Administration, in addition to the existing 20 thousand taxpayers in the private sector, 30 thousand taxpayers with a turnover of 10 million TL or more have to adopt e-invoice, e-ledger, and e-archive application as of 2016. Based on this, it was necessary to prepare large retail companies and medium and small retailers for the digital transformation process. How and how should retail companies take their e-transformation journey steps; what should one expect from integrator companies in this regard?

Companies should first determine whether they fall under the obligation or which the obligation will cover operations. Although it is possible to switch by meeting the minimum requirements within the scope of the requirement, it will be necessary to make technical and legislative improvements in business processes for the interoperability of these new generation devices to be used with existing ERP systems and other electronic applications. Companies in the retail sector have to choose a business partner who knows their sector and is specialized here, at the same time, has a good command of e-transformation legislation and is competent in technology.

Boyner Group Omni-channel Director Sedat Yıldırım:

"The customer has already become an omnichannel; it's the retailers' turn."

Taking firm steps towards digital customer access strategy with its new generation retail approach, Boyner Group signed the most preferred digital shopping application with the Hopi brand. Boyner Group Omnichannel Director Sedat Yıldırım explained the new retailing understanding shaped by the customer's changing shopping habits. “What is important in retail is anticipating what customers want and expect and offering innovative services that respond to their expectations. Of course, e-commerce is essential for this. Providing customers with the opportunity to shop online and touch the brand whenever they want has become an indispensable part of retail. However, what matters most is that retailers provide the same quality of “customer experience” in all channels. The physical store, when online and mobile is combined, and the omnichannel integration is provided correctly, it becomes a revolution for the customer and the retailer. In the future, it is inevitable that retailers who cannot use these three channels well and are not able to use them well will be removed from the market. One channel is the customer himself. Retailers will either transform or disappear; I don't think there is another option.

Customers changed their behavior years ago. You can now see a customer in any store looking at a product's specifications or the price or stock in another store on his smartphone. Almost everyone sitting in front of his TV is looking at a second screen. Most of the time, that screen is a pre-study of the next day's store and the products to be bought. If you're not there, your store's traffic will drop rapidly. Retailers strive day and night around the world to keep up with this development. On the other hand, if you cannot provide a mobile and web-supported experience to the customer in the store, you should not be surprised that your customers buy products from a completely different retailer when they leave the store. The customer has already been omnichannel, it's time for retailers...