As the CEO of a retail marketing generation company in the beverage industry, I have noticed firsthand how the generation is being temporarily tracked and how COVID-19 is further accelerating existing trends. COVID-19 has caused major changes in customer behavior, as companies drive spending directly to customers.
Liquor retail outlets were among the businesses declared essential and, according to Nielsen data, the alcohol industry saw a 55% increase in a single week in March. Liquor sales increased by 75% on the same dates in 2019.
The expansion of new channels and fitness rules have accelerated generation adoption, and I expect this to result in several permanent and seismic adjustments in the beverage industry.
Direct call to the customer for urgent and in-app orders.
Similar to the grocery industry, there has been a huge shift in customer demand to order their alcoholic beverages for delivery, preferably online. According to Rabobank, alcoholic beverage e-commerce was a $2600 million industry in the United States in 2019, with a 22% year-over-year development, with beer, wine and alcohol delivery rates at grocery retail stores expanding from one hundred percent to 150%.
COVID-19 has only accelerated adoption, with wine clubs like Winc reportedly seeing a 578% increase in new member registrations in one week in March. Sales from markets like Minibar increased by up to 500%, according to the CEO and co-founder
While those virtual features provide other retail outlets for logos, logos are building direct relationships with customers and marketing where they didn’t before, as Amendment 21 imposes a three-tiered business ecosystem: from logo to store to customer. Big tech corporations are trembling to improve this, giving logos the team to market directly online, develop logo loyalty, and leverage fashion merchandising techniques and data, all while complying with legal regulations.
Brands are taking charge of the power dynamics of stores, as seen in the broader retail market with DTC companies. In doing so, they open up new advertising opportunities. According to eMarketer, U. S. consumers spend nearly twice as much time online as they spend watching TV.
In my experience, online advertising provides a greater opportunity than TV advertising because you can leverage multiple types of media and link them to contests, microsites, and spouse pages, as well as provide holistic storytelling for your brand. Millennials and Gen Z are open to exploring new brands, but storytelling is key to conquering this market.
Digital marketing will do in-store marketing and operations.
As brands have more power to advertise their virtual storytelling, I’ve noticed them dramatically increasing their spending to integrate virtual into stores. The virtual signage industry is expected to be $31. 71 billion in success through 2025, according to Grandview Research.
There have even been new tactics to introduce the virtual into the outlet, such as bottles of truly augmented wine. At Perch, we bring virtual storytelling to thousands of outlets and paint with beverage brands to match virtual content with physical products and measure customer behavior.
It is vital to see which products become more productive through testing and updating sales strategies. Consistent A/B testing opens up new opportunities to analyze and leverage knowledge as a transformative advantage. There are a variety of web-based equipment available for A Online Testing/B, such as Optimizely, Unbounce, and Crazy Egg. Consider taking it a step further by bringing those virtual skills to the store as well.
Beyond the undeniable artistic optimization, consumers want to check what kind of content is driving sales. In my experience, you’ll notice that it’s not just product discovery, but also cross-selling between product lines that drives the highest sales. To paraphrase Glengarry Glen Ross: Always check.
Similarly, IoT sensors are deployed at retail points of sale to provide unprecedented visibility and insight for operations and logistics. CoolR Group, for example, has a generation that allows brands to view the shelves and refrigerators of their retail networks in real time to decrease the expense of restocking shelves that would possibly already be full.
Technology is the technology of the future.
Much of this generation is relatively new, so keep in mind that the industry is still in the early stages of adoption. However, I expect that those who take a generation-driven technique will eventually see benefits in terms of pricing and data. While sensor generation is expensive, I’ve noticed that many of the related prices are coming down over the past five years. When contemplating deploying a new generation, be sure to find out if it will pay for itself through the return investment of a reduced service requirement.
From online retail to physical retail, generation opens up transformative opportunities to build relationships and interact with consumers in new ways, all fueled through knowledge that will accumulate by several orders of magnitude. COVID-19 has only accelerated those trends and enabled virtual marketing touchpoints that have never been had before.
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