• by Karen Staughton , over 1 hour ago

With November here, retailers are planning for their biggest day of the year: Black Friday. But with the pandemic, how are major brands going to keep this year's experience from being a bleak Friday?

COVID has created a chasm between the shopping and buying experience, making 2020 a sea-change moment for every business, especially when it comes to brick-and-mortar stores.

The good news is that 70% of people said they’d prefer to shop in store rather than buy digitally, according to a Google/Ipsos study. So how can retailers encourage consumers to get off their iPad and back in a (socially distanced) line for that 6 a.m. doorbuster?

Here are three tips to get shoppers excited for the holiday season.

Point, click and discover.  Discovery is the key to unlocking the magic of the in-store experience, full of unseen possibilities. In online shopping, discovery is data-driven and impersonal. But stumbling IRL upon that must-have item often comes down to a chance encounter on aisle 12. And the bridge between these two worlds is in the consumer's pocket: her phone.

As visual search becomes platform-agnostic, consumers can discover added context for anything that’s in front of them. A branded shopping app, for example, allows users to point their phone at an item in the store and see rich, branded content like the kind they already welcome on social platforms. This content can span lifestyle and brand aesthetic to functional information – like how to operate an espresso machine or how to match a shirt to create an outfit.

Shop with your personal bot. The key to building trust with consumers is two-way brand interaction. In-person retail has experts, and that personal attention adds humanity to the sales interaction. But what if retailers could add an online element of useful facts to push consumers to make that purchase while in the store?

With a branded bot as their personal shopper, consumers can get in-store recommendations on their phone, find discounts, and discover new releases that enhance their experience. Marketing could use this tech to leap from personal shopper to personal shop. Driven by personal data on ecommerce and app platforms, brands can create exclusive access to curated in-store experiences.

Advocacy Is everything. Every moment a consumer engages with a brand contributes to the brand experience. Physical retail is full of magic engagement with the brand’s looks, feels, scents and sounds. Yet that magic deepens when it’s been created just for you.

Using customer data, marketers need to create in-store, hyper-personalized experiences where that information works harder to delight the senses than merely drive conversions. And if they can engage consumers this way, they're building advocacy — which lives at the core of a meaningful (and ultimately profitable) relationship with the consumer.

The Bottom Line

Despite the shockwaves of the pandemic, traditional retail will remain a crucial stop on the consumer journey. As people return to stores for Black Friday, traditional retail will serve as the gateway to a new shopping era. And as customers return to normal, a study of their emerging expectations and demands will lead the way towards tech-driven innovation.

This will be a major shift for many companies, but an essential one. No matter how consumer behavior shifts, romancing those moments of in-store interaction holds the key to inspiring customers to fall in love with brands in exciting new ways.