Innovating in Digital Commerce Amongst Tariff Uncertainty

With uncertainty around tariffs, many brands are facing increased product costs; rising logistics and fulfillment costs; supply chain disruption; lower ROI; and reduced demand due to changes in consumer behavior (e.g. seeking less expensive alternatives). Meanwhile, it’s not okay to sit back and see what happens. Brands must keep moving, constantly looking for new opportunities to innovate to engage consumers.

Since COVID, brands have faced massive global disruption. In our new world, it’s imperative to continuously innovate, test and deploy, while always maintaining flexibility to quickly adapt, or pull back, when needed. In times where there’s a tendency to freeze, we believe that focusing on quick wins and optimization can open doors to the next opportunity.

With deep experience innovating for best-in-class global brands, Astound can help you unlock opportunities within your customer data set, technology platforms, commerce initiatives/experiences and marketing programs, no matter what comes next.

Data & Technology

Many brands have all the customer and enterprise data they need to innovate. But, oftentimes, this data isn’t structured in an actionable way to meet the speed of the shifting global economy and evolving consumer. Working with multiple disconnected data sources decreases agility, ultimately costing you time and money. Thus, undergoing a data mapping exercise is step one in recognizing the gaps and inefficiencies standing in the way of actioning your data.

Once you’re empowered to unlock your data, you can develop use cases around mitigating the impact of tariffs, including elevating AI across your business (AI is only as good as the data foundation powering it). To illustrate, potential AI use cases to drive efficiency and lower costs can include:

• Intelligent Order Routing: Intelligent routing can help businesses ensure they’re using the most cost effective couriers and shipping routes when sending orders to customers
• Customer Care: AI can reduce the cost to service your customers by automating tasks that don’t require human interaction, like order tracking, refunds and account updates. This can accelerate customer satisfaction and loyalty, while also optimizing human labor.
• Customer Experience: Through tools such as recommendations and shopping agents, brands can improve their chance of successfully converting customers, maximizing the ROI on acquisition and retention spend
• Marketing Channel Optimization: AI can help you get the most from your martech investment through tooling such as next best action and dynamic segmentation

And like data, many brands are already sitting on most of the technology they need; they just haven’t unlocked the full potential. Focus on collaborating with your technology and operational partners to understand gaps and additional levers that you can pull within your stack. Astound can help with this, working with partners like Salesforce, Shopify and others to ensure you’re getting the most out of your technology investment. This includes other specialized partners in areas like logistics and payments/taxes, like Avalara, which hosts a weekly Trade and Tariff webinar. Oftentimes, the technology capabilities are there; they just need to be activated.

Commerce Experiences

Brands facing disruption from tariffs must also seek to enhance digital commerce experiences, especially with existing customers, who represent your best path to growth during uncertain times. This starts with accurate visibility of customer behavior, and identifying where experiences can be elevated. Most importantly, brands must continue to break away from silos towards a unified experience—from first touch to the point of sale, including monetizing in-store from digital interactions.

To illustrate, app/SMS push and email can be particularly effective in driving increased loyalty to mitigate cost of goods/sale increases. Open communication, transparency and curation builds trust and loyalty, even during uncertain times. Strategies include:

• Curation: Leverage past purchase history to encourage loyalists to do things like build online baskets of new items, engage with curated experiences or come in-store to try new products
• Transparency: Explain the reasons behind price adjustments, showing that your brand is acting in good faith due to economic events. Be transparent with your customers to demonstrate value by including supply chain transparency on your website.
• Communication: Communicate these messages to your loyal customers, even via email from your executive team

Digital Marketing

As pressure to increase profit margins rises, many brands may be facing reductions in advertising budgets in social media, paid search marketing and TV. But, brands must still meet consumers where they are (e.g. on Google, Facebook, Amazon, TikTok). Brands don’t have the luxury to go dark or to places where their audience isn’t spending its time; you have to be in these channels. So, how do brands continue to drive demand and ROI from popular digital marketing channels, but with less budget? Strategies include:

• Move to Organic: Shift efforts from paid media to “free” organic channels like SEO and organic social media. To illustrate, your audience is likely not giving up its Google search habit anytime soon. With decreased paid search budgets, take the time to focus on being visible in Google organic search within key intent moments when consumers are actively seeking your products. Create and structure content and pages to capture natural demand.
• Conversion Rate Optimization: To take pressure off your paid media channels, invest in on-site conversion rate optimization. Review your customer journey and conversion funnels to recognize the leaks and what they’re costing you in sales or leads. Even a fraction of a percent increase in conversion rates can equal significant increases in sales.

You’re not in this alone! You likely already have the data, technology platforms and appetite to innovate to mitigate tariff risks. Astound Digital can help you bring it all to fruition.

Reach out today for a consultation, where one of our digital specialists can advise you on where your data, technology, commerce and marketing programs can take you in these uncertain times.