Physical vs Virtual Selling at a Time of Phygital
The current rise in COVID-19 cases is disrupting the world in different ways. For instance, most companies are now encouraging their staff to work from home. Most sellers and companies have gone virtual to stay connected to their customers and business partners. Such companies seem to have switched from physical selling to virtual selling. This adds to the rise of the virtual sales market globally.
With the boom in e-commerce, there are changes in practices and the need for complementarity between physical stores alongside the virtual world of e-commerce and digital technology. This complementarity is now seen as ‘phygital’, which is derived from ‘physical’ and ‘digital’. From smaller steps to grand concepts towards a more phygital experience, businesses can leverage phygital to better connect with their customers and ensure that they deliver a better customer experience.
What is Phygital?
Phygital is the link between the physical and digital worlds. However, it is most commonly used to describe a retail experience or a marketing strategy. What does is to combine the best of digital and physical commerce to create an integrated better experience for the consumer and newer opportunities for retailers and marketers.
This omnichannel marketing term is an approach where all marketing channels work together for shoppers to have an entirely seamless experience. The idea behind combining the physical and digital experience is to draw from the best of both worlds. By doing this, the customers get unique, highly-personalized experiences that have a lasting impression.
Consumers with smartphones have already become familiar with augmenting ordinary life experiences with digital content. Therefore, phygital is a move to adapt fully into modern life. Brands addressing these changing lifestyles effectively will likely gain substantial ground on competitors that ignore the opportunity to offer their target audience immersive phygital experiences.
We cannot refute the fact that consumers themselves (especially Millennial and Generation Z consumers) are Phygital. They are present in both the physical and digital worlds, and they engage in commerce in both places. This makes phygital crucial for marketers and retailers who need to leverage this emerging space to meet the needs of the consumers.
Physical to Virtual Selling
With everything happening in the world, businesses are going virtual. There is transitioning from physical shops to online stores, and this makes the view and role of a physical shop to change. A few years back, we only have to visit a physical shop before buying anything, and this had been a part of the shopper’s psyche. However, the world has changed greatly. There are more people buying things online. Some people don’t find it convenient for going to a physical shop. They prefer to just order online and get it delivered to them. What is now obvious is that over the years, customers have changed in the way they want to buy. Therefore, merchants/retailers/vendors have to step up their game to meet the growing, dynamic needs of customers.
For businesses moving from physical selling to virtual selling, it is important to note that virtual selling can be in different forms. These forms include a mobile app; a branded website; marketplaces like eBay, Shopify and Amazon; advance collaboration technology like Cisco Business Collaboration Solutions and social media sites like Instagram Shoppable Ads, Facebook Marketplace, and Pinterest Buyable Pins. What this means is that there are many ways to sell for businesses upping their game.
A major advantage of virtual selling is that you can sell to your customers anywhere at any time. Besides, virtual selling allows the use of technologies i.e CRM, EDM, data analytics, marketing automation etc, to maintain the connection with the customers, demonstrate virtual demos and create virtual training for the customers. Virtual sellers are very process-driven which allow them to optimize time usage and thus generate better ROI. This can be a pro for companies looking to scale up and grow.
Virtual selling has more advantages over physical selling. However, to succeed in this space, you have to create a customer experience that customer and partners will find engaging. The more you can engage customers, the better you chances of selling to them.
Why Phygital
Understanding the benefits of phygital will make you understand the benefits of virtual selling. Without a doubt, we know that phygital is a win-win for both the physical and digital worlds. Phygital can offer more personalized experiences to customers, which will likely lead to more in-store visits, more loyalty, and customer engagement.
A key benefit of going phygital is that businesses can better combine physical and digital customer data through omnichannel marketing. By combining digital environments with physical stores, brands can harvest crucial customer data on how they shop in-store, online, and their behaviour after a purchase. To lure customers to interact with these digital environments, a brand should provide value to the customer experience. Whether it is for convenience, sharing, excitement, or connecting, phygital marketing tools provide something more unique to the shopping experience for all consumers.
As a brand learns more about its customers, it can provide even better and unique ways to engage with its customers. Such development is suitable for businesses that want to identify customer pain points and design more specific customer journeys.
Phygital information and access allow brands to focus on when customers need what information. This is so because better customer information can lead to better suggestions for similar products. In the long run, exploring various ways to better connect with customers will likely expand the opportunities for brands to lead potential customers towards making a purchase.
In Conclusion
Today’s customers are phygital. Most make their choices and purchases, both digitally and physically. Therefore, there is a need to merge both worlds, and this is what phygital is designed to do. Through phygital, retailers and vendors have the opportunity to meet customers in a kind of space they already know. Phygital combines the best of both the physical and digital space to create an entirely new and better customer experience for the consumers.
The future is about creating memorable and valuable customer experiences. At a time like where digital, physical, customer experience and the advancement of technologies are making waves, businesses should leverage phygital for better branding and improved customer relationship.
