As technology continues to disrupt users’ every day activities, shopping being one of the main ones, we sat with Walmart CMO Tony Rogers to hear his vision about the future of retail in America, including what he calls omnichannel customers-and how to attract them.
“Our priority is to create more of what we call omnichannel customers, customers that are shopping us and acting with us not just in the store but also online, on their mobile phones, etc.,” Rogers told WHOSAY VP Marketing & Creative Services Jenna Sereni during an interview conducted in the aftermath of the 2017 ANA Masters of Marketing and first published by ClickZ.
Rogers said Walmart is “putting a lot of resources into the mobile experience” as the giant retailer realizes they have to increasingly interact with customers on these platforms in addition to in-store and through traditional media such as TV commercials.
But there’s a caveat. “Our observation is there’s a lot of activity in the world of digital media, mobile media that is harder to track and harder to prove an ROI,” Rogers told Sereni, before revealing that efforts to reach and engage customers are “platform-specific.” “Sometimes, on some platforms, it may be more image-building and brand-building whereas on other platforms it may be more about an item and a price trying to get you to buy in that moment. I think the key is to use the right message in the right place at the right time.”
Despite the massive growth in digital, “the vast majority of shopping and the vast majority of transactions still take place in a store and that’s gonna continue to be that way for a long time,” Rogers said. However, here, too, the game has changed. “[The] challenge is to find ways to make it more fun and more entertaining to go to the store,” he said. “[If] we can come up with some ways, we call it retail-tainment, where we can have celebrities in the store or demos and sampling new products in the store or just fun activities that make it a more interesting way to spend a little bit of time then we found that that’s what really resonate and people respond to it.”
For Rogers, the future of retail will belong to those who “are gonna be able to pull this omni channel proposition.” Among them, Walmart; a retail giant with the resources to invest both online and offline. “[It’s] probably gonna be easier for us to continue to develop the digital tools than it is for someone to come in and develop a physical footprint of five thousand stores around the country.”
In-store transactions, online shopping and smartphones as associates are just some of the things that Rogers envisions as the ultimate experience of shopping at Walmart. And the CMO seems cautiously optimistic. “Many people are so used to a brick and mortar store down the street that it’s gonna take a consistent drum beat of communication to continue to move people along this continuum: more and more people think of Walmart not just as a brick and mortar store but also as a huge website.”
Enter, experiential; something CMOs have been citing as the new wave of influencer marketing.
“We have so many celebrities that come through here and it’s amazing how many of them have some connection to Walmart in their past. Invariably, you’ll hear them say, ‘I worked at Walmart when I was a teenager or had Walmart in my town and it was the place to go.’ And so it may surprise somebody that’s not close to the company to hear that but for those of us who are here you really get used to the notion that these celebrities have some pretty basic roots and they have a lot of familiarity with our brand.”
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