PIM and omnichannel (marketing) strategies: what are the advantages?
In today's markets, 1/3 of transactions involve the use of two or more connected devices. Checking a Smartphone in a store, buying through a tablet, comparing several offers on a PC… in this ultra-digital world, the customer journey is increasingly complex.
Connected to all the physical and digital shopping channels, the customer can trigger their purchase, change their mind, or switch to a competitor brand at any time. This unpredictable behavior can unbalance businesses and upset the traditional codes of the customer journey.
Opting for an omnichannel process means you can respond to the customer's needs every time they interact with the brand. This method requires a perfect command of the company's product data: images, characteristics, technical features, product descriptions…
In an omnichannel context, PIM solutions provide you with a bird's eye view of the entire customer journey and allow you to coordinate product information at all points of contact. So how do PIM solutions provide a competitive advantage in the implementation of an omnichannel marketing strategy?
Guarantee the consistency of your product information
A logo missing from a product datasheet, a badly formatted image, an incomplete product description… Inconsistency between all your sales channels can make the customer feel frustrated. 55% of today's consumers prefer brands with consistent shopping experiences on all sales channels.
To guarantee the overall consistency of the customer journey, companies are turning increasingly towards product information solutions or PIM. Using PIM software gives you global view of your various shopping channels and allows you to adapt your product content to the requirements and standards of each channel. You can anticipate all potential scenarios by responding precisely to customers at all the stages of their customer journey.
Improve your product information management
Far too often, product data is scattered around several company information sources: ERP, CRM, Excel files… This dispersal of data promotes errors and slows down the work of your teams: time spent looking for product data, duplicate data, use of an incorrect file, input errors…
PIM features allow you to maintain a reliable version of your product data and to reduce the risk of errors in the information that you provide to the customer. Product information is centralized, updated automatically, and checked before being published on all your channels, be they print (product catalogs, brochures…) or digital (eCommerce sites, marketplaces…).
Reduce your time-to-market
In today's market, there are a lot of advantages to the capacity to launch a product or range quickly: strengthening a position on the market, gaining new market shares or accelerating the renewal of a product offer… the time-to-market is a core element in your marketing and sales strategies.
However, managing a company's product data often requires long and time-consuming processes which slow down the time-to-market. Using a PIM solution facilitates the work of the Product and Marketing teams on product related data: centralization of product information, automation of recurring tasks… With PIM, your teams gain in autonomy and efficiency on tasks with low added value. With PIM you reduce your products' time-to-market.
Contextualize your product data
Irrelevant or incomplete product information can create friction in the customer journey. Aujourd'hui, 33 % of consumers might abandon a purchase if the price on an eCommerce site is only indicated in a foreign currency.
By contextualizing product information, you provide the consumer with the right information, in the right place and at the right time. To provide a seamless shopping experience, it is essential that companies adapt their product data to each context. This could mean adapting to the shopping season (Black Friday, Christmas, Cyber Monday…) or to the customer's geolocation when visiting your eCommerce site.
If you wish to deploy your eCommerce offer in a different country for example, PIM enables you to adapt your product information for each country: multi-currency management, translation of contents, compliance with local legislation… A huge time saver when managing a brand in several countries and in several languages.
PIM software enables businesses to rise to the challenges of the implementation of an omnichannel strategy: managing multiple selling channels, managing the customer journey, meeting the demands of consumers… To control your product information from A to Z in the customer journey, check out Goaland PIM solution.