The O2O Commerce industry is going to increase over the upcoming years. Online-to-offline (O2O) commerce strategies drive online traffic to make purchases from physical stores. It is a perfect model for all the offline retailers who want to scale their business online.
O2O commerce allows consumers to get the convenience of online shopping with the service of physical retail. Lenskart and FirstCry started as eCommerce websites and now turned into O2O Commerce companies.
In 2020, every retailer felt the burn due to the pandemic and lockdown. People preferred staying at home and ordering things online. As a result, offline retailers faced massive losses.
According to the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), the retail sector faced a massive loss of more than Rs 15.50 lakh crores during the first few months of the lockdown.
Many retailers realized that they need to come online to sell their products. Some restaurant owners delivered food using Whatsapp. Many local grocery sellers started taking orders on phone calls.
This is where O2O commerce helps offline retailers. O2O stores are targeting offline buyers as well as online buyers. The customers get the advantages of both modes. They can look at the products online right from the comfort of their home. On the other hand, they can still go and check for the quality by physically visiting the store.
Amazon has recently acquired an O2O startup called Whole Foods Market.
Use these O2O Commerce Strategies for Offline Retailers
Before entering the eCommerce world, you need to build an eCommerce store. We have a dedicated article that will help you to start your eCommerce website from scratch. If you don’t want to manage technical hassles, we can help you out.
1. Run Hyperlocal Ads
Use Google Ads for fulfilling the users’ search intent. It should be optimized in a way that whenever a user in your area searches for the products, your eCommerce store should appear on the top.
People searching on Google have a high intent of buying those products. There are very high possibilities that they will buy within a few clicks.
Facebook allows you to run Ad campaigns within a radius of a few kilometers in your area. Create a good creative of your physical store and add a call-to-action button to your eCommerce store.
Several eCommerce stores are implementing this strategy. PublicBikes is a great example of O2O commerce where they have strategically included both the options on all of their products – Local Delivery & Store Pickup. They used a Shopify tool called Zapiet.
We have a complete guide to using social media to increase sales. You can refer to it.
2. Leverage Local SEO
Local SEO is something that global businesses can never implement in your area. Most of the websites and eCommerce websites work on their SEO.
However, local businesses and offline retailers can work on their local SEO. The eCommerce website needs to be registered on Google My Business. It is also better if you list your business on several local directories.
What will it do?
Whenever someone searches for your products from your area, then your eCommerce website will appear on the top. A dedicated position is given to local businesses. It helps to create a factor of trust while shopping in offline mode.
Moreover, Google listing includes everything required for your customers – contact information, link to your website, and even direction to your physical shop.
It is always good to work on local SEO because it is the organic and free traffic that you get from Google. There is no need to run ads or pay anything for local SEO.
3. Collect Data From Your Physical Store
Nobody is implementing this strategy right now. Since you have already a pre-established physical store, you can use this highly effective strategy.
Most of the businesses print and use a QR code in their physical stores. They are mostly payment codes from Paytm, Google Pay, or any UPI-based QR code.
Did you know you can even print your QR Code and collect data from your customers? You can use tools like QRStuff or QR-code monkey to generate a QR code. Generate a QR Code that collects the basic data and display it in your retail store.
There are too many options for you. Decide what you want to collect. It can be email IDs or contact numbers. A contact form’s link in the QR code will work well.
Screenshot: QRStuff
Ask the customers to scan that code and fill in the data. Incentivizing customers to scan that QR code depends on your business and marketing skills.
Use this data to increase your sales by giving them festive offers or some discounts on their special days like birthdays or anniversaries.
If you are short of ideas about festive marketing, then you can refer to our article about boosting eCommerce sales during festive seasons.
4. Give Customers A Reason To Buy From Your Store
According to McKinsey, 23% of people prefer to get same-day delivery. Hyperlocal stores have an edge here.
Image Source: McKinsey
Most of the global eCommerce stores cannot deliver products within a single day. Amazon Prime members get it delivered on the next day. This was an important point for us while we discussed 6 ways of competing with Amazon.
Since your eCommerce store is merely targeting the local area of your physical store, it is easy to deliver the products within a single day.
Another important factor to stand-out is to work on packaging. If you are selling something like gift items, or sweets then it is a good practice to deliver items in a branded package.
Ferrero Rocher is a prime example of how packaging can completely change the feel for the brand. Holding a box should make the customers feel special and proud.
Image Source: Pinterest
If you are just starting or your store does not get too much traction, then it is better to use Whatsapp Business. Recently, Whatsapp added a shopping button to make shopping easier on the app.
List your products using the catalog and let your local customers buy from them. You can deliver the products by taking orders from there.
However, building an eCommerce store gives a professional and clean look for a business. We help to develop such online stores.