A STRATEGIC PATH AIMED AT INCREASING STORE VISIBILITY
Starting from online to bring the customer into the store: this is the much-discussed dilemma in the world of large retailers.
A theoretical concept that comes up more and more often, but one that is proving very difficult to translate into strategies and, in turn, concrete actions. The focus is on online user behavior, increasingly sophisticated and unpredictable, opening new paths and actions that also create new opportunities for dialogue between consumer and store. It therefore becomes essential to build the online presence of one's stores in order to communicate with users who carry out a local search before going to the store.
The company building the right ecosystem to enhance its stores in order to engage with users is THUN, a leading brand in the gifts sector present across Italy with nearly 1,000 stores. The Italian retailer invested in local store communication together with RetailTune AI, a technology platform specialized in Local Digital Marketing, which designed a strategic path aimed at increasing the online visibility of stores through the centralized management of the main touchpoints used by users: Google Business Profile, Facebook Locations.
The results achieved
The first pillar of the project is data normalization, which makes it possible to standardize THUN store information across all local channels. Opening hours, addresses and contacts are always kept up to date to give users correct, complete information. According to the Multichannel Observatory, in fact, 79% of Italians consider the web the main source of information when buying products or services. 52% say they search for information online and then buy offline — in other words, they do "webrooming".
The second pillar of the strategy is the constant publication of promotions and events running in store. The RetailTune AI platform is in fact able to deliver organic, non-paid communications across the brand's own touchpoints. The Drive to Store banner is thus distributed centrally across all Google Business Profile listings and on the individual store pages in the Store Locator.
The third pillar of the strategy is the ongoing work of optimizing and monitoring touchpoints to improve store rankings on search engines. Data normalization, in fact, is only the foundation of Drive to Store — of the utmost importance is above all the continuous oversight of data. This is where the RetailTune AI platform steps in, overwriting data as needed to maintain consistent information.
