What happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object? Just ask every major retailer about 2020. After retail sales experienced a staggering 20% drop from February to April last year, we saw many major retailers fall into pandemic bankruptcy. Although we’ve seen great bounce backs in the second half of the year, driving revenue for retailers is now more important than ever before.
To meet this challenge, marketers must find ways to produce relevant content that sticks. Now let’s dive into a few different ways that retailers can use creative content to drive revenue both online and in-store.
Leverage templates for product category management
With growing product lines and categories, it can be a real challenge to produce content at the same rate as product growth. That’s why a systematic approach can be extremely beneficial for retailers. It’s important to note that a systematic approach does not equate to boring or dull, but intentional and consistent. For example, let’s focus on product categories. If every category has its own flexible template, then designers can easily swap out product shots or pricing to keep up with new launches and lines while maintaining brand integrity.
Although this can be a slow process with manual production methods that require individual versioning, automation solutions can help designers create a variety of templates and quickly release final creative assets. By increasing awareness of product lines and new launches with a templated approach, retailers can quickly appeal to more consumers and initiate the purchase journey.
Maximize promotions for every campaign
Whether it’s a new launch or a seasonal offer, promotional campaigns never stop. Add on new customer offers and app exclusives, and suddenly your promo tracker starts to blur. We know that promotions are well-received by shoppers. In fact, more than half (51%) of consumers find creative assets with relevant offers to be the most memorable feature of creative content. So what’s the best way for retailers to manage promotions across multiple campaigns? Digital solutions.
Digital solutions that can manage multiple offers are the most efficient method, because they cut out the tedious work of versioning that a designer would traditionally have to do. Once a production workflow is established that can manage promotions, such as automation, then retailers can run every promo they can think of to help shoppers along the path to purchase.
Personalized content for every audience
Sometimes it’s not about what you say, but how you say it. For creative content, sometimes that means a geotargeted CTA, daypart headline, or specific product shot. Personalized content isn’t about just the copy or imagery as standalone pieces, but the communication of the creative asset as a whole. Shoppers want to feel understood by brands and they want creative variety. We found that 66% of consumers find creative assets from brands to be repetitive. Once ad fatigue sets in, shoppers begin to tune out or even get annoyed by a brand’s recurrent content. That means the more tailored variety of content shoppers consume from a brand, the more brand affinity can grow.
When the shopper-brand relationship is strong, then creative content can help with the final push of the purchase journey. By creating content per audience segment that drives to both e-commerce and brick and mortar locations, then retailers increase the likelihood of final purchase. When some shoppers are sticking to online-only until 2022 and others eager to peruse every aisle, creating a wide variety of creative content is a must.
Creative Automation for retailers
Retailers can turn to Creative Automation to easily produce all the creative content they need to drive revenue both in-store and online. Create templates with multiple designs and layouts for every product category, scale designs across multiple sizes and channels, and quickly launch promotions to drive traffic. Thanks to our cloud-based software that allows for mid-campaign updates in real-time, promotional offers can be updated in the blink of an eye. Content is separated from design in feeds, which makes creating personalized content at scale a breeze. If you’re interested in learning more about Creative Automation, check out this video or contact us today.