Eyeing Consumer Intelligence in Retail

Highlights

1. Customer Acquisition and Engagement: Customer acquisition remains the primary marketing goal for 63% of retail marketers in 2018. Social media updates (58%)and SMS campaigns (26%) were deemed the most engaging initiatives.
2. Top Marketing Activities for 2018: For 95% of retail marketers, social media marketing remains the most preferred form of digital marketing followed by website based marketing.
3. Digital Channel delivering the Best ROI: For retail, paid search (26%) was deemed to be the best performing digital marketing channel guaranteeing the highest ROI for each rupee invested by retail marketers, followed closely by Facebook marketing (24%) and email marketing (21%).
4. Calculating ROI: First Click (35%), Last Click (12%) and Algorithmic (12%) attribution models are most widely used models by retail marketers. Technology limitations (61%) followed by a lack of conviction about the business case (22%) are the biggest challenges while performing attribution.
5. Content Marketing: 69% of retail marketers use content marketing as an effective medium to attract and retain existing customers while 56% leverage it to increase brand awareness. Social media updates (62%) and Blogs & Newsletters (56%) were the most popular form of content deployment initiatives.
6. Increase in Digital Marketing investment in 2018: Eyeing a massive opportunity in social channels, 84% of retail marketers are willing to allocate a higher budget share to social media marketing while 58% of retail marketers intend to increase their spend on search marketing in the coming years.
7. Outlook for Future Technologies: Chatbots , Cross Channel automation platforms & Big Data analytics are the three most promising marketing technologies for the retail marketers in 2018.
8. Challenges for 2018: Handling rising fragmentation due to more channels, audiences and geographies is the top challenge for retail marketers followed by deploying the correct click attribution model for effective measurement of digital channels.