The digital transformation of retail networks

Today, a digital presence is essential for flexible and agile business communication with customers, allowing companies to stay in touch and providing new solutions for remote relationships. A website, a social media profile, or a presence on online maps gives businesses an opportunity to share important information, such as product availability, delivery/shipping information, opening hours, security measures taken, how customers can get in touch (email, private message, comment, review), and how they can get support and advice. More than ever before in this situation of need, more attention must be paid to the expertise of sales agents, who offer online advice to potential clients or insurance companies, who remotely assess the claims of clients and real estate companies, and who survey a house to be sold by video conference.

Thanks to the perfect combination of strategy and technology, Like Reply is not only able to support local business networks through the stages of recovery, but also to pursue digital marketing initiatives at a scalable level for the entire network. This is how the team aims to offer the retail sector a strategic and operational solution that will enhance its online presence. Retail is the main industry that has the potential to customise its communication strategy, taking into account the complexity and scalability at network level.

Digital transformation allows stores to get in touch with the consumer, to respond to visibility objectives, and potentially to achieve a conversion. The benefits of a digital presence for retail networks range from strengthening brand identity and increasing in-store traffic to ensuring consistency of communication with guidelines.

The management of the digital presence of a sales network inevitably raises the issue of the time needed to perform a specific activity sequentially for each of the stores involved in the project. To be effective, a programme of this type requires every local business to be managed as if it were to all intents and purposes a customer in its own right, with its own personalised touch points and advertising campaigns. Taking as an example the delivery of advertising campaigns, this approach requires a lot of time to be spent on repetitive, low value-added activities, such as:

Configuration and activation of ad services for each point of sale

Continuous updating of campaigns in accordance with changes to the business network (i.e. store closures or new openings)

The frequent need to monitor creative activities to ensure consistency between the central and local messages, both in terms of the products and the offers communicated

To meet this need for scalability and efficiency, Like Reply has developed BLocal, an in-house platform that allows brands to easily enable and manage digital media advertising services for their network.

The platform is presented in the form of a marketplace, from which individual points of sale can purchase and customise their own ad services that the brand has previously configured and released to the store.

Contact the Like Reply team for more information or a demo.