Retailers expect a 10% increase in sales of products or services in 2023 compared to 2022, as artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies will be used more intensively to attract customers and promote brands.
At the same time, retailers are considering resorting to effective methods of advertising in the context of a possible economic crisis.
White Image representatives expect the area of basic food products, clothes, shoes and also cosmetics to stagnate in terms of the number of products purchased, even if at a higher value due to inflation. Also, for electronics and home appliances, retailers’ strategy will focus on mitigating the decline in sales.
To support sales, in traditional and online retail, companies will be investing in 2023 in better data management, in tools that integrate email marketing, SMS marketing and customer support services. All these can only create more opportunities for more relevant and lower-cost communication, which would optimize marketing spend.
“In 2023, companies will be focusing mainly on strategies aimed at keeping current customers, by increasing the zero-party data information databases, collected by granting discounts and other facilities to current customers. Given that the results from social media, Facebook or Tik-Tok are decreasing or even missing in some cases, along with the unpredictability generated, companies concentrate their efforts and gear their marketing budgets towards moving audiences to those much more controllable communication channels, such as email or SMS marketing, which also generates click rates 2-3 times higher than social media and a ROI (return on investment) unmatched by other communication channels”, said Gratiela Lupu, co-founder of White Image.
According to White Image representatives, the advance of technology in marketing will be felt strongly in 2023, ensuring greater visibility of brands and helping to promote products or services more precisely in the online environment, a greater focus on gaining customer trust through delivery of quality content and greater transparency in the use of personal data.
Artificial intelligence will also have a very big impact in 2023 as it will be used to create online content, either for customer responses or informational texts, with ChatGPT, CopyAI and Magic Write technologies being increasingly present in promotional tactics. Thus, the role of marketers will also change, being responsible for both the creative side and the management of artificial intelligence applications for content creation, and the execution time for certain marketing tasks and advertising costs will decrease.
“In 2023, technology and aggregate data will give us a much better understanding of consumers and companies’ relationships with them. Although artificial intelligence can play an important role in marketing activities, it cannot analyse the data we obtain about consumers and their preferences. At White Image, we find methods to obtain these data of potential customers, as well as correctly interpret and implement promotion and sales growth strategies”, said Andrei Georgescu, co-founder of White Image.
At the same time, companies are preparing for a possible economic crisis in 2023. Their strategy in this situation would require that the email marketing service be adapted for such a context, which would require increased attention to the personalization of messages – the maximum use of existing data, but also the tendency to capture new data to make communication more relevant, the generation of quality content and the most pleasant experiences.
In this case, with changes in the purchase behaviour of Romanian consumers, White Image recommends companies to analyse in detail what convinces them to buy, what are the interests of the customers, how they can promote the products or services so as to increase the chance of purchase, to analyse already existing data, but also to automate part of the activities so as to reduce expenses.