Retail Digital Transformation

By Marc Weiss - CEO, Management One

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There was a time when retailers only focused on generating traffic in their stores.

Now the conversation has switched to:

• How do I manage social media?

• How much do I budget for marketing?

• How are FaceBook Live and the surge of e-commerce changing my open to buys?

• What 3rd party apps should I be looking at using?

• How do I create ongoing and meaningful content marketing?

There are more questions it feels like than answers. And the stress created can be overwhelming, to the point of possibly wanting to walk away.

Two weeks ago I hosted an indie retail, peer-to-peer meeting in Tucson to address these and other questions and frustrations. The topic was unpacking and understanding what it means to have a digital footprint, a digital culture and what to do about it.

Thanks to some great learnings from experts and everyone sharing their own journeys, we gained new insights and knowledge, and we all left with a game plan and tactics for 2022. To prepare for the meeting, we created a survey so we could begin to capture data on how our community is responding to this digital transformation.

We invite you to take this survey and all who participate will receive the results.

For Management One clients, we encourage you to take this survey with your M1 Retail Expert. You can also contact support@management-one and we will reach out to you to answer your questions.

We had some key takeaways: 

1. Retailers who are paying attention are ramping up and investing more in their digital efforts.

2. A solid social media presence has become table stakes for retailers: it’s a question of credibility; and the driver of credibility is consistency. No need to produce viral hits (although it helps!) - just be authentic, and be consistent.

3. Marketing needs dedicated resources, and those resources need to have solid digital skills.

4. On social, start with Instagram and Facebook. Yes, other platforms matter and TikTok has the buzz and the growth, but IG and FB are still the best places to start if you’re new at social.

5. If you’re an independent retailer, your secret weapon is you - the unique personality and perspective of you and your store. Translate that personality into a digital presence and you have a solid foundation.

6. Have the right people in the right seats - sometimes it’s a full-time hire, sometimes it’s an agency.

7. Real success in digital comes when it becomes part of the culture and core to the business, and all the company’s actions and decisions take digital into account. In everything a retail business owner does, they should ask themselves: how will this be communicated or translated in my digital presence? And this thought should be automatic.

M1 changed its core purpose in April of 2020 to Merchandise Intelligence and Education. We expanded on the educational side of the business during the depths of Covid due to a lack of available information curated for the independent retail community. We have perhaps the largest Indie retail client base in North America and we continue to learn and support our clients to achieve new levels of success. Understanding the current transformation is critical to all of our futures.

Onwards and Upwards.

Marc

Management One is committed to the Indie retail community. We have built a new technology that is an AI - Merchant driven platform to learn and understand new elements of demand and produced over 30 educational webinars attended by over 20,000 retailers and vendors. Management One created and vetted a host of tools to ensure Indie retailers sustain, thrive, and embrace change. We utilize synergistic partners that share our core values and share the same commitment to our community.

Currently, we plan over 3 billion dollars of Indie retail business annually and update that data daily. We invite you to join us and reap the benefits of our educational and data-driven processes to boost profitability and cash flow so you can execute on your vision for the future.