Can Smart Marketing Save Marks & Spencer? Tracking the Turnaround
Marks and Spencer’s leadership team has identified that catching up with trends, boosting trade with the power of the technology, staying updated with customer preferences, and making their experiences valuable, simpler, and faster can help turnaround the business.
Here are a few initiatives in their transformation plan.
1. Digital First
M&S has long struggled to keep up the pace with its digitally savvy competitors like Zara and Asos. According to Chief Executive, Steve Rowe, "M&S’ in-store technology and systems have been historically underinvested and require improvement."
M&S now aims to become a Digital First retailer, and its digital transformation includes:
- Optimizing their website, redesigning their homepage, enhancing product imagery, simplified checkouts, and improved delivery proposition.
- They are also focusing on easing on-site navigation and delivering personalized experiences.
- M&S has also invested in mobile-first experiences with tools like Style Finder for visual search. Mobile is now M&S's fastest-growing area of customer traffic and has a significant conversion rate and have upgraded in-store Wi-Fi to deliver better experiences to customers and employees.
- Now, the aim is to reduce long queues by deploying applications to accelerate the self-checkout program.
2. Voice of the Stores
To put the customer back at the heart of the decision making, Marks and Spencer is rekindling the 'voice of the stores'. Here's how:
- The front-end employees, who connect with customers, will now be able to facilitate insights into customer preferences, pain points, and feedback.
- Store staff can present a more profound clarity on store management, stocks, profits, and loss.
M&S is now focusing on creating a supportive environment with a strong focus on the customers and supporting and empowering employees to create a customer-centric culture.