Retail themes to focus on for 2024 & my thoughts on Ai
Wizz Selvey
Strategy Advisor & Mentor | Co-founder Valerie a Women’s Health Brand | Retail & Consumer Trends | Voted Top Retail Expert
Hi friends,
September was a crazy month, I certainly overcommitted myself but did speak at some amazing events which is why you’ve not heard from me as much as usual. Here’s a summary and themes from my time chairing eTail, speaking at The Packaging Show and E-commerce Expo. The top three priorities I’ve been hearing from e-commerce execs are:
Retail themes to focus on for 2024
??Performance marketing v “brand”, a theme I’ve been seeing for some time. As performance marketing profits are squeezed, creating an aspirational brand is crucial. Getting the balance of this is important to win in 2024.
??♀?Personalisation isn’t a one-size-fits-all. Particularly when you start looking at the differences between channel strategies. Define what it means to your customer and think about how you segment your audience.
?? Content is becoming more important than ever, but how do you keep up with the demand? Can Ai help and how to leverage your community to support growth and engagement?
??? Conversion and loyalty are a big focus and a route to more profit. Don’t underestimate your best customers and how close some could be to purchasing. They could be lurking and ready to spend very soon.
?? Ai, how to navigate this fast-moving innovation. What to invest in, how to get buy-in from leadership teams and build trust internally and with customers. Read my below for my thoughts.. and a reframe as I heard a lot of nervousness from execs over the past few weeks on the topic.
A reframe on AI
AI is moving quickly, it’s going to speed up a lot of ways of working. There is worry that jobs will be replaced, but I think this needs to be looked at from a different angle. It will free up time for people to be more strategic and creative in their roles, as creativity is not something AI can do. Where do ideas come from? All the greatest inventors through time have fostered their natural creativity, in order to innovate, from the lightbulb to aeroplanes. These ideas all came from humans!
The biggest opportunity for AI is to use a combination of AI and human intelligence together. If we go back to the customer, we have all experienced a frustrating customer service bot. Brands and retailers should use technology to support staff and not replace them, so they can spend more time with customers and offer an elevated experience.
AI also has the opportunity to provide a huge amount of job opportunities that we can’t even fathom yet. 10 years ago we took photos on special occasions, and we now all have a camera on a device in our pocket. This hasn’t meant that photographers are out of work, it has created a whole new revenue stream and a variety of new jobs. There is also more need for content than ever, as every business and individual is putting out many images and videos across multiple platforms. We can’t imagine what AI will mean for the creation of new types of jobs yet.
Take some of these examples, such as live shopping, when customers are given the chance to speak to either a brand expert or an influencer and then often instantaneously shop any of their given recommendations. Chinese shoppers are already way ahead of the game on this one.
Live shopping will be a huge way to combat digital fatigue, as it increases the length of customer engagement online through the power of human interaction. AI can support this way of serving customers online through more personalised experiences, integrated into the live shopping experience, and supporting sales experts.
The second trend I see developing further is text communication, or ‘conversational commerce’. If brands can get close enough to customers to get their phone numbers, this can be used as a tool to increase loyalty and spend. I like to think of it in the context of how many emails we all delete without reading each day versus how many texts we open and read. If a brand is texting you, it makes sense psychologically that you’ll think of them as closely as you do a friend. So this presents a huge opportunity to forge a deeper connection with people.
Are you ready for Black Friday?
Black Friday, Cyber Mondays, potential Christmas discounting and January sales are creeping up on us... This time of year can be hugely challenging for profit with many discounting and promotional strategies being run and the pressure to compete. Not only can it be damaging to a brand’s profit, but also to their perception by customers. Having a solid strategy in place at this time of year is crucial, about when and if you’re going to discount, how often and what the offers are.
There are plenty of ways to use promotional tactics and strategies without plastering flat discounts all over the website. Think strategically about, when, how and where you will offer promotions, if any.
A few ideas to consider to not devalue your brand or give away too much profit
- Offering to email subscribers only
- Tiered discounts
- Offering additional value in other ways
This is something I work closely with clients on, to increase their sales but ultimately to maintain profit for their brands.
Here are two ways I can support you this peak trading period whether you are participating in Black Friday or not:
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Do you need some retail therapy?
There are three months left of 2023, and many are thinking about next year already, I certainly am. What can I focus on for the rest of this year and where is my vision and direction for 2024? My 1:1 strategy mentoring has been described as retail therapy… so what does it involve? I work with businesses that want to scale their brand to the next stage of growth. Themes we usually focus on:
?? Positioning for more stand-out - often the first point of call as this is WHY your brand is not achieving the sales it should be
?? Omnichannel strategy growth - where are you focusing, what needs to change and where is the biggest opportunity for PROFIT
?? Increasing sales with retail partners - often under-potentialised and more important than ever
?? Marketing to create a disruptive brand - create the HYPE!
?? Outsourcing and scaling teams to stay in your zone of genius and fall back in love with your job
?? How to build the business that aligns with the life you want to lead - crucial to the business's success and your happiness (and often ignored)
I do this work with founders, C-Suite and corporate teams.
If you have a consistent niggle that something isn’t right and can’t work out why you are not getting the traction you deserve, get in touch and let’s have a chat.
I have been described on more than one occasion as a brand therapist. The difference is you come away with clear actions on what to focus on, and how to implement the strategies we develop and I am by your side to support you.
What else has been happening in my world
As well as September being insanely busy with speaking engagements, I’ve had some awesome workshops with clients as well as some failures!! With clients, we have worked through:
There have been some huge positives but I’ve also had two big failures this month and this is what I’m the most proud of. Why? Because a year ago I would have crumbled, this time I laughed at one of them and was delighted. Why? Because I’ve built resilience, I took some risks and wasn’t afraid to fail. I learnt a huge amount and now am on a different trajectory. So if you need some encouragement to take a leap of faith then now is the time! 2023 has been a tough year for business, we’ve all experienced it but we will come out stronger as a result. I’d love to hear what risks you’ve taken recently. If you can’t think of one then here’s your nudge. Reply and let me know.
10 steps to building your personal brand
Finally, I delivered VIP workshops at E-commerce Expo to retail execs. I had an amazing experience talking about this topic again and loved sharing my experience, and learnings and hearing everyone’s fears, excitement and willingness to put themselves out there. I have a video of this topic from last year so please check it out HERE .
Beauty and wellness trend event
So this really is the last point, join my next in-person event where I will share the beauty and wellness trends for 2024. You will hear:
Followed by speed networking, I will hand-select groups to network together so you meet like-minded businesses.
I hope you see you there.
Wizz x
MD @ Sitoo | Redefining In-Store Technology for UK Retailers
1 年Really insightful peice this Wizz Selvey, in particular your take on conversational commerce. Speaking as a member of this industry, what’s super exciting for brands is conversational channels can now be the *destination* of creative content as opposed to 160 text characters and a simple URL to another channel like web or what’s in the App Store. Great visuals, video, etc. Channels like Google SMS 2.0, WhatsApp, Instagram messages etc. Great read ??