How to Manage a Social Media Crisis: A Practical Guide for Brands

On social media, things can move blindingly fast. Sometimes, it’s an Instagram post of an egg going inexplicably viral. But sometimes, it’s a PR crisis that seems to come out of nowhere.

Your best chance to make it through a social media crisis is to prepare ahead of time. Have a solid plan, a list of key stakeholders and responsibilities, and a clear chain of command.

Of course, it’s even better if you can prevent a crisis before it begins.

In this post, we’ll look at methods for spotting potential issues as they emerge and how to shut a problem down in the early stages. If that doesn’t work, we’ll show you what to do if you end up with a full-blown social media crisis management situation on your hands.

Before the crisis

An organization adopting a proactive communication strategy should take the following into consideration:

  • Monitoring and response frameworks.
  • Identifying key online powers (people and entities).
  • Checking ownership of social media platforms.
  • Being clear on the resources needed in the event of a crisis.
  • Training the social media team.
  • Including social media in risk assessment procedures.
  • Controlling IT in the organization to ensure the required information gets out in due time.

Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared

During the crisis

The damage has been done and the organization needs to rescue the situation. As you go about handling the situation through digital channels always:

  • Monitor the situation to know what people are saying about you.
  • Maintain consistency in messages sent across all channels.
  • Think about packaging content for every social media account.
  • Involve stakeholders to guard against rumors and wrong information.
  • Be quick at responding especially if you have the right answers to queries.
  • Reinforce accurate, updated communication across all departments and branches.

Social Media CrisisAfter the crisis

Just because you have the crisis handled does not mean that is all. There are other issues to be attended to which include:

  • Let your stakeholders know the crisis is over to restore the good name.
  • The crisis management review should look at what strategies worked, which ones failed and figure out ways to improve.

The size of an organization is not a factor when a crisis occurs. Whether big or small, the organization requires an efficient digital communication strategy. This will ensure the public and other key stakeholders have all the information they need about the crisis. Withholding information that should be in the public domain is disastrous, as people will make speculations that could hurt your brand. The pressure could be too much, but if you have a great communications department, there is nothing to worry about.

If you want to have an easier time during a crisis, adhere to the before, during and after stages. If you at least foresaw a problem and planned on how to handle it, it will be much easier. This will help you regain consumers’ trust and your brand’s reputation.

8 Social Media Crisis Management Tips for Businesses and Brands

  1. Create a Social Media Policy

The best way to avoid any type of social media crisis is to create a solid social media policy for your company. It should provide clear guidelines to those who are posting on your brand page. Your social media policy will be different based on factors like your industry and the size of your company. Following are some subjects all social media policies should include:

  • Guidelines for Copyright
  • Guidelines for Privacy
  • Guidelines for Confidentiality
  • Guidelines for Bran
  1. Secure Your Accounts

Poor passwords and other social media security risks can quickly expose your brand to a social media crisis. In many cases, employees are more likely to cause a cyber-security crisis than hackers are. Do not share passwords among the various members of your team who need access to your social accounts. Always use systems like Hootsuite to control use permissions and grant the appropriate level of access. If you have a centralize access, then it also allows you to revoke access for employees who leave the company or move to a role that no longer requires them to post on social.

  1. Use Social Listening to Identify Potential Issues

A good social listening program can track and analyze an emerging issue on social media well before it turns into a crisis. Monitoring brand mentions can give you some advanced warning about crises. But if you really want to keep an eye out for a potential social media crisis, you should be monitoring social mentions daily. Social mentions is a metric that captures how people feel and talk about your brand on social platforms. There are many paid and free tools available that gives you advance warning of a crisis while it’s still in the early stages.

  1. Define What Counts as a Crisis to You

Many times people say rude things about you online. That maybe their experience, not actually a crisis. But if many people are saying the same negative things about you on social, all at the same time, that might be a crisis—or a potential crisis waiting to explode. What really identifies a social media crisis for a brand is a major negative change in the online conversation. Even if a many people posting negatively about your brand, it may be best to respond through customer service channels.

  1. Craft a Crisis Communication Plan

A company-detailed social media crisis communication plan allows you to respond quickly to any potential issue. Instead of debating how to handle things, you can take action and prevent things from getting out of control. Acting quick is important when any crises arises.  Your crises management plan should describe the exact steps everyone will take on social media during a crisis—from top executives to the most junior employees.

  1. Engage – but don’t argue

When you post on social media and people start giving negative comments then you need to be calm and get engage with the comments instead of starting argument on public platform.  As we’re talking about social media crises, simply issuing statements won’t cut it. You need to have to engage with people who may be saying very negative things about you brand on social platforms. Keep your replies short and avoid getting pulled into a long discussion of what went wrong.

  1. Communicate Internally

Communicating with team members is a crucial part of your crisis management response. This keeps everyone on the same page and will help to prevent misinformation and the spread of rumors. You need to make sure that everyone in the organization knows exactly what they should (or should not) say about the crisis on social media.

  1. Learn From the Experience

When you make it through your first social media crisis, take the time to debrief and examine what happened in past. Always keep a detailed record of everything you did, and how well it worked.

Take the time to examine your future social media plan. Think about what new you could add that would prevent a similar crisis from occurring in the future. And always review your crisis communication plan to look for opportunities to incorporate lessons learned.

How to Use Instagram Videos to Market Your Business

In the age of social media, many businesses have found new and exciting ways to tap into technology and make their businesses go viral. One of the latest and best ways to do this is through Instagram videos and Vine videos. These services only give you a 6-second to 15-second window to capture a viewer’s attention. The clips are easily watchable and shareable which makes it possible for people to remember. Also, the fact that you get to reach millions of Vine and Instagram users is a great plus. You just have to plan out your video and “GTTP” – get to the point – fast. Here are a few ways you can use Instagram and Vine videos to market your business:

Create a Vine and Instagram Videos to Tease an Upcoming Product

Such a short span of time is perfect for teasing the audience about your latest products. Just show them enough to create interest but cut it short of actually revealing the product. This can be done in a variety of creative ways that would surely create a buzz. Rolling Stones magazine does this every month to slowly unveil the celebrity to feature on the cover of the next issue, building curiosity among its fans so they will continue to return. BMW has been doing this for years, look at the video in the section below. They show their fans “just enough” to get excited over the car then close it off with their signature logo and sound.

Unveil a New Product

Vine and Instagram videos are also great ways to unveil new products or services by giving an interesting look at the product and making sure it goes viral at the same time. Taco Bell created an interesting video to announce a new taco showing a taco coming out of a pack of Doritos. Then we had to wait for weeks on the release of the new product.

Engage the Audience with Innovative Ideas

You can simply create an interesting concept video using various techniques like stop motion, animation, or using mobile phone screens. Nordstrom, a fashion retailer, made a social video featuring a number of smartphone screens with people massing Puma sneakers from one screen to another, while Target used their own product, Lite Brite, to make a stop motion video of changing season to wish its fans a happy summer, while marketing their product and creating something unique at the same time.

Let Your Audience Do the Filming

Many businesses encourage their fans to make videos and add creative hashtags. These videos can be about trending topics and include their products or services in some way. User-generated content is essentially free advertising and helps the audience feel involved and be part of your company. ASOS is an online fashion retailer which asked its customers to upload videos of them receiving their packages with the hashtag #ASOSunbox. This allowed them to reach all their customers’ friends who aren’t following them yet, and the best video was uploaded on their official page.

Hold a Competition

Similarly, holding a best video competition with trending and product-related themes, also encourages your audience to do the marketing for you. Many companies, including Dunkin Donuts, who introduced the idea, use this method of marketing on Vine and Instagram.

Tips, Trivia, and How-To Vlogs

Vine and Instagram videos can be very effective as they show your fans you care beyond marketing your product, and also give a refreshingly new and subtle way of marketing. Oreo Cookies does this by uploading countless videos with ideas on how to eat Oreos. General Electric uploaded an interesting video announcing Thomas Edison’s birthday, and one showing fans how to make art with milk, food coloring, and dishwashing detergent. Lowe’s, a home improvement store frequently uploads Vine videos showing customers how to complete a variety of DIY projects in just 6 seconds.

Whether you’re working as a freelance video professional in a big company, or are the head of your own start-up looking for innovative ideas to market through videos, Instagram and Vine offer a cheap and creative platform to help you reach millions of people. This is a great way to help you make money doing what you do best!

Why do online stores fail?

“It’s Fashionable …”, “It Seems Easy …
“Come on, this is going to be a shot …”

“I set up an online store and I’ll be mounted on the dollar.”

Every day more statistics are released by experts on the growth of E-Commerce. The idea seems logical, there are less costs, I do not have to have commercials. Anyway, everyone talks about it. It seems easy.

An Online Store has to be easy, right?

Every day that goes by it does not stop surprising me the amount of people who start to create online stores thinking that it is easy. Let’s leave one thing clear. Any business is hard, requires persistence and clear ideas.

In many cases critical knowledge that is essential for the launch of the business.

The question is: Business or Hobby?

If it is Business …



A minimum level of knowledge of Online Marketing is absolutely essential if you want to have an online business. In an Offline business you can be located in a mall and have a good product and the business is almost alone. Online NO. The reality is that most fail. They have no traffic, there are bad conversions, there is a lack of control of the metrics that drive the sale.

How can you hire Online Marketing services if you do not know what you are hiring?



This is an industry full of scammers willing to charge you for SEO when what they really do is take your money every month and they are not doing anything for you, taking advantage of your lack of knowledge.

Community Managers taking advantage of absurd fashion… And even the neighbor next door is a community manager, with a license to sell smoke.

And when you ask for tangible results, you only hear: “… No, no, social media does not measure ROI, it is measured by engagement, community …”. In short, and many other words.



You Need Knowledge

The other day a person interested in working with my agency told me: “In my online store there will be music, it will be different”.

I told him: “In your online store what there must be are sales. First, sell and then, if you want, we’ll talk about music. “

When you are not clear about what works in Online Marketing, it is very easy to focus on elements that are not important, sacrificing what really is important. Many mistakes are made with online stores. Here you have 10 of the most frequent errors that I see.

1. Do not work the sales and navigation process

Before putting on music, before creating carousels with beautiful images … Get to optimize the sales and navigation process. Use some Analytics with a behavior code like Crazy Egg and see what your website visitors do based on the heat maps.

Define a clear objective and optimize your metrics. It’s about selling, and when you have this before you can start buying traffic to scale your business.

2. Your home is to sell not just an image

The home of your online store is a showcase. Many entrepreneurs of online stores believe that the function of the home is to show how beautiful your website is. Bad idea … The function of the home is to sell. Be clear, in exact steps, what you want people to do when they go to your website.

3. Think you design once and never again

99% of the owners of online stores believe that the work is done by activating the online store when, really, you launch an online store and, depending on the feedback on sales, conversions and interaction with the web, now you must be doing redesigns to optimize your website.

4. Not having a plan to optimize the store

A good optimization plan can be one of the most effective and cheapest Online Marketing weapons for an online store. Most people who launch a website do not take the time to follow a plan that, month by month, allows optimizing the web to increase sales. They become obsessed with more traffic instead of, before, optimizing conversions.

5. Wait until the organic traffic arrives

SEO traffic takes. Also, it’s a very bad idea to rely 100% on free traffic. Online entrepreneurs ready, they diversify the risk and do not depend only on a source of traffic, but they work more traffic weapons.

6. Do not understand that the texts are the commercial ones of the Online Store

It may be that you do not have commercials in your online store, but the texts are the same as your commercials, and they sell to you and your product. You have to put a little heart and good copy behind … It is not to be taken lightly, because it can be the difference that you sell or not.

7. Being without a plan to segment the database between non-buyers / buyers / and product segments

The E-Commerce business is in the list of emails; Therefore, the better the segmentation, the more sales you will generate. There are many who set out to create an online store business without taking into account that the key is in its list of non-buyers and buyers, its most important asset.

8. Create more steps than necessary in the purchase process

In your offline store would you put obstacles before going to the cashier? This is just what many do in their Online Store. They create a lot of obstacles that lower conversions. The idea is to make it easy, not difficult. Analyze your sales process and ask yourself: Could a 6-year-old boy navigate here? If not, make changes.

9. Not having a long-term strategy to acquire clients

It is always easier to sell to a happy customer than to capture a new customer. The E-Commerce business is in acquiring clients. The more customers you have and the more repeat purchases you have, the more solid your business is. Having this clear, incorporate the metric controls to go measuring these two data is essential.

You must be willing not to make money in the first transaction and then recover it in the following transactions.

And The Most Important Error

10. Not having a Marketing and Investment Plan to start the store

Having an E-Commerce business that works is a serious business, it’s not a hobby. If you are not willing to create an online store in conditions, with a design that sells, an aspect of branding and an investment in the launch, better not do it. Yes. You have to invest in SEO, in Adwords, in having a CRM, and whatever it takes to make the business work.

When you tell people that they have to invest in Online Marketing to make their Online Store work, it bothers them. They tell you that you do not know… That there is something called social networks and that this does not require investing.

If your intention is to launch an online store and wait for them to come… Of course they can already accommodate themselves, because they will wait a long time.

It’s a bad idea to go against the laws of gravity. To think that you can fly does not change the fact that, if you jump from a skyscraper, very, very bad things happen.

This is not complicated. It’s not much different than an offline business. You have to invest, you have to sell, you have to measure your ROI, look at the numbers. And you must scale what works.

And you, do you want to have a successful online store that generates constant sales?

The Brand It’s not just business, it’s personal

IT IS NOT PERSONAL, IT’S ONLY BUSINESS. MYTHICAL PHRASE THAT HAS RESONED IN OUR LIVES SINCE THE PRONUNCIÓ TO THE PACINO, INTERPRETING CORLEONE IN (THE PADRINO)

In a way, it is something that has governed the way in which our business fabric has been formed up to now. I would say that it is one of the bases of modern capitalism, everything to grow, all because of the results. And I say until today, because it is no longer valid, what you do is personal for many.

Social responsibility has become responsible business, win to win has become win-win, and where it did not matter what you did, today there are millions of eyes watching you. In fact, this changes some of the things that have governed the construction of brands and that will define the way forward.

Many have defined and treated the Brand as that distinctive sign that differentiates you in a market, that carries your promise with you and that we activate in the points of contact that accompany our communication. This, following the analogy with Corleone, is only business.

Today the Brand is the sum of everything we do and what we do not. What we sell and what we do not What we say and what we do not. What we defend and what we do not. What our employees are and what not.

Today an employee has the same power to build and destroy our Brand, as the best television spot you can afford. Today a consumer has the same power to build and destroy our Brand, that the best billboard campaign you can afford.

Today the Brand is something personal. It is something that accompanies you, it is something that is related to you, that wants to share concerns, challenges and interests.

Today Brands have more information from us than ever, and that is Personal. Today we decide what works and what does not, and that is Personal. The Z generation, the iGen and the Millenials, already tell us that almost 70% will not tolerate those companies that do not humanize their actions, that are not responsible and that do not impact positively on our lives. These generations will not work as much for money as for shared values, these generations will not move for who you are, but for what you do.

Caring for the most human part of your Brand, your employees, your audiences, the people around you is to build a business, because there will be no Brand that survives believing that this is not Personal.

 

IN THE END, THERE IS NO BUSINESS WITHOUT PEOPLE

The 5 mistakes with which brands and companies are killing engagement

THE ENGAGEMENT IS NOT THE ANSWER THAT IS ACHIEVED WITH TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING AS THE CONVERSATIONS OF THE NEW ERA OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONSUMERS AND COMPANIES

One of the buzzwords of recent times is engagement. The engagement has become the term used to talk about what matters in social networks and what should be measured (compared to numbers). It has also become the key to explaining why one thing becomes viral and another does not. And it has also become the key to understanding why there are companies that manage to establish solid relationships with their customers, when others do not achieve it as much.

But getting that engagement is not so easy. The brands and companies expect consumers to respond to what they are doing and to connect with them, but sometimes they make big mistakes in their marketing strategy at all levels that makes that response not occur. From the outset, they forget one of the key points to understand how this engagement works. To achieve this, marketing does not matter as much as knowing how to create solid and lasting relationships. Engagement is not so much the response that is achieved with traditional advertising as the conversations of the new era of relations between consumers and companies.

They are only selling, when they should be giving

Brands and companies expect a ultra-responsive response from consumers and seek that they are able to create high-quality relationships with them. They want them to respond to what they are doing, forgetting many times that this response is very marked by what is done and said. There is more to think about the conversations we have with other people in our day to day. Are we the same talking to everyone? Do we respond equally to everything they tell us?

As they point out in the analysis, to understand where the failure of brands is, you just have to open the email inbox and analyze the mails that the brands have sent us. Possibly, most of them just try to sell us something. This type of content is not really what generates engagement or what makes it always work. To achieve this, we have to go a step further and offer added value. It is not only about selling, but also about giving.

The product is enough (and it is not)

Another of the big mistakes that weigh on the relationships between brands and their consumers is in what one expects from the others and what they offer. Companies tend to think that what the consumer is looking for is their product or service and that is more than enough. However, what they should be seeing is the photo as a whole and reality as a much more complex element. Consumers not only want to get hold of that product at that time, but they also expect a deal that covers all stages and that is always positive and good. A study recently pointed out that 81% of consumers find their dealings with the company frustrating, which is a very serious problem.

Actually, brands and companies are not trying

At this point, the analysis points to a very interesting element and one that invites companies to examine their conscience. Are you really trying to position yourself and get that engagement so talked about and analyzed or are you just getting carried away by the market itself? As they point out in the analysis, if you analyze what brands and companies are doing you can conclude that, in general, they are doing things simply well enough. They are in the middle. But the average does not seem enough (only 22% of consumers consider themselves loyal to a brand).

This is a problem. Brands and companies capture the consumer when he makes a purchase, but then do not work to maintain that relationship, so that it becomes solid and durable and can therefore provide benefits in the future.

They abuse their privileges

Possibly every consumer who has had to face a telecommunications company at some point in their life will feel very close to this point. There are companies that simply use their dominant position as a lever to connect with consumers and that may work in the moment, but it does not help to create solid and sustainable relationships with the passage of time.

In social networks, for example, the question is how the brand faces the different content dynamics. Publishing offers and product information over and over again, for example, does not help to create engagement, but rather makes the situation a bit annoying. The company becomes one that is filling the timeline of the social network with very little relevant information. The important thing is not so much how and how much is published, but rather to do it with what the consumer needs and when he needs it.

They are highly secret

Or what is the same: everything is secret and everything is confidential information. Nothing to show how you can do anything in your house and nothing to explain what the keys to the product are. The idea of ​​the secret formula has been one of the recurring elements in brand strategy and in the positioning of companies over decades and centuries. For many companies it continues to work, but for others it will not do so much. Above all, we must bear in mind that the market has changed and that things have done with it. Consumers are increasingly reticent at closed doors and want more and more transparency. The challenge for companies today is to balance the mystery with that need to create trusting relationships based on transparency.

Create a movie commercial to sell your vitara

IF YOU THOUGHT YOU WOULD NEVER BUY AN AUTO OF 96, WAIT FOR YOU TO SEE THIS COMMERCIAL. NOW 2 MILLION PEOPLE WANT TO BUY IT.

For most of us, selling a used car usually involves placing an ad on a popular website or in the corresponding section of a newspaper. But when Eugene Romanovsky wanted to sell his old SUV, he wanted to do so by creating the most spectacular announcement for his Suzuki Vitara of ’96.

Using his knowledge of visual effects, this Latvian resident in Israel created a 2-minute epic video showing everything his reliable car can (and can not) do. From driving underwater to visiting the space, to a safari with dinosaurs and going out in Mad Max … it’s no surprise that this video has been seen more than 2 million times since it was uploaded to YouTube recently. Here you can see it. Prepare popcorn!

Using his knowledge of visual effects, this Latvian resident in Israel created a 2-minute epic video showing everything his reliable car can (and can not) do. From driving underwater to visiting the space, to a safari with dinosaurs and going out in Mad Max … it’s no surprise that this video has been seen more than 2 million times since it was uploaded to YouTube recently. Here you can see it. Prepare popcorn!

“My best friend”. This is how he presents his truck at the beginning of the video, titled “#BuyMyVitara (Buy My Vitara)”. He also says that he has had it for ten years, which could devalue it, since it means that he had other owners before.

The clip combines a description of the characteristics of the vehicle with images that show it in natural environments, in which it emphasizes its all-terrain power. So far it seems to be a professional commercial made by the manufacturer.

But the video becomes more interesting when, after walking at full speed between leopards and other wild animals, the Vitara appears between dinosaurs and sharks (yes, it can apparently become a submarine). The final touch is given when it becomes a rocket and flies to the Moon.

Eugene Romanovsky acknowledges at the end of the video that not all of these scenes are real, but he uses them to his advantage: “That explains why the truck is in such good condition,” he says. It does not clarify the value for which it is offered, but invites interested parties to contact each other through Facebook.

The owner is not an improvised. He works as a special effects supervisor at the Gravity animation studio, based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Stunning Corona Beer message

A couple of months ago the marketers of Corona managed to explode all over the world their paramilitary campaign and the commercial they did with Diego Luna in which he sent a message against the wall that Donald Trump promised to build on the border with Mexico once he occupied the presidency of the United States.

In use of the slogan “Let’s make America great again” (we are going to make America excellent again), Grupo Modelo has used this controversial phrase to make a commercial video for the Corona brand, claiming of course what we all know, America is a whole continent that touches the two poles on the planet and is not exclusively the United States.

The Corona brand has been able to identify everything that symbolizes feeling American, wild, united, we are not divisions but mixtures, “our colors make us proud”, from the passion for football to the taste for the spicy. Poetry, art and song, thirty-five countries.

The copy is quite clear too: “Enough of using our name to generate divisions. That is not what we are (…) We are 35 United States that today we dress with only one shield, because Americans are all that is why America has always been great “. Then he launches a new logo for the continent.

#AméricaEsGrande, always has been. It is our continent, it is passion and struggle, diversity and wealth. We are family and it is time for the same shield to unite us. # Defeat yourself

Real influence of SEO strategies in ranking

The development of content marketing in the digital field has been a revolution for marketing and advertising on the Internet. Through web ranking, companies and organizations try to improve the knowledge and access of their addresses in what web search refers to.

SEO strategies have substantially modified the relationship of communication and the interrelation between users and organizations, to the point of creating an almost perfect search system in relation to web ranking. In this same case, social networks have acted in recent years as an engine that has increased this type of strategy, creating a true phenomenon of professionals dedicated to SEO, content marketing and web ranking of organizations, and creating itself A whole new field emerged alongside the online dissemination that allows a very detailed knowledge of the needs and interests of users on the Internet.

As we said, within the SEO world and web ranking, companies and blogs have used social networks as a springboard to exert a greater influence on the searches of users, which has meant a revolution in terms of dealing with Internet users, more if possible, when most of the social networks have derived to pure platforms of content and SEO that allow a greater knowledge of people, given the large number of information they can obtain through their profiles.

Let’s see then what are the conditioning factors that clearly affect Internet searches and mark the SEO strategy:

  • Use of the keyword. For a long time it has been considered that the key word or phrase should be placed in the body of an article and highlighted in bold, while in reality the important and most efficient thing is to place this word in the title and subtitle of the articles. It does not indicate that keywords in the body of the articles have no interest for SEO, but search engines first attract those titles with those words. At the same time, they need to offer a unique content or as distinguished as possible, which allows to identify the contents with the searches carried out.
  • Inclusion of reference links. For a long time it was believed that putting links in the body of the article was beneficial for an increase in SEO ranking, however, that of linking all the articles has passed to a better life. Currently, the inclusion of quality links (one or several) is considered important, which is what improves the ranking ranking and, better, the longer the link has reach. That is why the number of links and the quality of the links do not count.
  • The structure of the articles. The composition, length and ease of loading are the fundamental and most important elements in the SEO strategy. In addition, another relevant fact is the need to have unique and original content distinguishing between repetitive and copied pages.
  • Inclusion of the main link. Contrary to what can be believed, in the articles in which keywords are going to be used, it is important to only enter once a link to the place to which we want to channel searches, since otherwise it confuses the search engines when linking to the web and the results appear.
  • Utility of social networks. In social networks, various profiles are used for a greater projection in SEO. For example, the elements of social networks that can most influence SEO are the number of followers and contacts, which is known as a reference profile, the age of the profiles and the interaction with this of profiles, comments and answers, that can suppose a greater volume of publications of interrelation with blogs.

In general, advances in digital communication have led to the emergence of a very powerful sector dedicated to studying the behavior of users, their searches, the collection of relevant information and the improvement of dissemination and publication strategies on the Internet. This requires, on the one hand, to work more and be competitive in order to attract the attention of users and, on the other hand, it has greater benefits because it is a much more efficient strategy.

Retail how to adapt to new times

In science fiction movies or set in a hypothetical future, one of the points that usually or used to show and that always attracted attention were the shopping streets. In a moment, the protagonist of the story ends up in a busy street, in which the cars are very different from those of now (yes, they are usually flying or something similar) and in which the stores are totally futuristic. It is a constant when futuristic forecasts are made: the products change and the process of relating to them also does so. Things appear practically alone, the dependents are robotic elements, the store is able to know everything about the consumer?

Many times it has already reached the exact moment that these futuristic films represented (and that is not exactly as it appeared in the story), but the truth is that these stories are saying much more than you might think about how the experience of the future should be. customer in these modern times. The cars may not fly and are not able to skip the traffic jams, but the truth is that things have changed. Retail has to adapt to modern times if it wants to continue connecting with consumers and if it wants to keep up with what consumers’ expectations take

What do consumers expect from the immediate future? How should the stores of the near future be? Although it may seem like a sci-fi movie cliché, stores must increasingly use technology and have to do so because the consumer has become an advanced user of it. If the buyer needs to access the information at all times, if he uses multiple connected devices and if he has experiences that include more and more elements and more and more scenarios, the brands have no choice but to play with it and have it very much in mind to create the experiences that fit your new needs.

The buyer of the present is already an omnichannel buyer, so he also needs an omnichannel customer service. That is to say, the consumer experience is no longer in compartments and the relationship with the brand is no longer carried out only one way or another. Now, consumers are everywhere and they use all the contact channels and all the tools at the same time and the brands have to be up to this challenge.

And this necessarily has a direct impact on the retail and on the sales strategy. After years of reducing everything to a comparative analysis between ecommerce and physical stores and establishing again and again that only one can emerge victorious from the battle, it is time to analyze what is actually happening in the market and see that consumers They want experiences every time in which the lines of separation are more and more diffuse between one channel and another and in which the marks are able to measure up.

The future of retail linked to ecommerce

Does retail have to reinvent itself? The analysts have it clear, as they are also clear that not only should they make a change. As they point out in an analysis at Phys, drawing conclusions from a study by researchers at Singapore Management University, ecommerce must also reinvent itself and be able to change its position. They have to be able to unite all digital with a constant flow of physical products they want to be able to compete actively. In front of them, the stores have to be able to merge their physical presence with a boom of techie elements.

And, in general, all of them have to be able to position themselves in front of the new challenges and to understand which are the new demands that they have to fulfill. After all, it is no longer about some going on one side and others on the other. The sellers of physical stores themselves have started selling online to compete with the push of electronic commerce. Everyone needs to be able to improve their inventory management, to have the best logistics services (the delivery of the product is a crucial moment of electronic commerce) or to be able to multiply their geographical presence in terms of storage to offer better results

This has several ramifications. As pointed out in the conclusions, more and more holistic approaches to sales will be taken into account. That is, instead of completely separating ecommerce and commerce from always, more and more firms will be using their physical stores to provide service and support to online sales. On the other hand, every time the online stores will have much more relation with the logistics part. That is, it will become more and more usual for me to sell it, I will give it. This will happen not only with the products themselves but also with those sold through the store, that is, the products of third parties (as Amazon does).

And in parallel are also emerging new elements that can work to simplify deliveries, such as creating new tools that allow deliveries remain in the hands of individuals to save costs (what is known as the uberization of ecommerce).

Technology enters the store

But the truth is that the changes experienced by the retail or that must live are not only linked to the relationship established with electronic commerce, but also are very marked by the technological advances that are emerging and the positive reaction of consumers to the same. Buyers want more and more information, more personalized services and more memorable experiences and stores have no choice but to resort to technology for it.

The future will therefore be full of intelligent testers, which will allow consumers to have more than simply the image of how they have the product, and screens that will give access to more information about the store and what it sells. Artificial intelligence will create much more complex and much more efficient assistants, while virtual reality will offer more immersive and memorable experiences.

The stores will be increasingly complex scenarios in which consumers will have more and more elements at their disposal.