Can Smart Marketing Save Marks & Spencer? Tracking the Turnaround

Marks & Spencer has hit a reset on its marketing initiatives to arrest the long-term downward trajectory of their business. Let’s dive deeper into M&S’s new customer marketing strategy to understand how it plans to revive the business.

Chairman, Archie Norman said, “Although we are in the hard yards of fixing the basics and arresting decline, we remain ambitious for the business,” as he outlined the progress of Marks & Spencer’s turnaround program in the Strategic Report, 2019Opens a new window .

The Guardian reportedOpens a new window , M&S has had multiple fresh five-year strategies over the years that were extended or refreshed as the company failed to recover. This year’s Strategic Report of Marks and Spencer reported a drop of 3% in the group revenue. Archie Norman identifies several reasons (listed below) for the financial failure of M&S. 

1. Siloed, slow, and hierarchical organizational structure
2. Failure to adapt to market trends
3. Inability to align the store estate with customer preferences
4. Lack of depth and clarity of choice or scale that confuses buyers
5. Higher price perception, lack of scope and reach of food stores, and inadequate facilities and equipment maintenance

Norman acknowledges that the reason for the steady decline of M&S was ‘the disconnect’ with customers due to outdated technology and stale organizational culture. To restore the business to sustainable, profitable growth, M&S laid down a detailed plan for the future. In this article, we evaluate how M&S plans to turn around its fortunes with its smart customer marketing.

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Will Marks & Spencer’s Fresh Customer Marketing Strategy Transform the Business?

Marks and Spencer’s leadership team has identified that catching up with trends, boosting trade with the power of the technology, staying updated with customer preferences, and making their experiences valuable, simpler, and faster can help turnaround the business.

Here are a few initiatives in their transformation plan.​​​​​​

1. Digital First

M&S has long struggled to keep up the pace with its digitally savvy competitors like Zara and Asos. According to Chief Executive, Steve Rowe, “M&S’ in-store technology and systems have been historically underinvested and require improvement.“

M&S now aims to become a Digital First retailer, and its digital transformationOpens a new window includes:

• Optimizing their websiteOpens a new window , redesigning their homepage, enhancing product imagery, simplified checkouts, and improved delivery proposition.
• They are also focusing on easing on-site navigation and delivering personalized experiences.
• M&S has also invested in mobile-firstOpens a new window experiences with tools like Style FinderOpens a new window for visual search. MobileOpens a new window is now M&S’s fastest-growing area of customer traffic and has a significant conversion rate and have upgraded in-store Wi-Fi to deliver better experiences to customers and employees.
• Now, the aim is to reduce long queues by deploying applications to accelerate the self-checkout program.
   

2. Voice of the Stores

To put the customer back at the heart of the decision making, Marks and Spencer is rekindling the ‘voice of the stores‘. Here’s how:

• The front-end employees, who connect with customers, will now be able to facilitate insights into customer preferences, pain points, and feedback.
• Store staff can present a more profound clarity on store management, stocks, profits, and loss.
   

M&S is now focusing on creating a supportive environment with a strong focus on the customers and supporting and empowering employees to create a customer-centric culture.

Learn More: How Can Relationship Marketing Impact Customer Experience?Opens a new window

3. Data Lakes

To deliver better and targeted personalized shopping experiences for their customers and better manage customer dataOpens a new window . M&S plans to:

• Revamp its Sparks loyalty program to create a unified customer data center.
• Create holistic customer profiles by combining online customer data, Sparks customers data, and data from OcadoOpens a new window (an online supermarket).
• Invest in data analytics and digital capabilities to create customer data lakes and draw reliable customer insights.
• Hire data analysts and digital engineers for a digitally enabled and data-driven workforce.
• Embrace customer and store data as a decision pivot, instead of gut, consensus, or hierarchy as decision drivers.
   

4. Rescaling the Prices

Customer data and profiling will help M&S classify the price range to offer a better, targeted clothing range for its customers. Customer-driven innovation will enable:

• Managing supply chains for fast-selling product lines.
• Tweak the prices to give buyers limited yet better alternatives to choose from, making shopping experiences simpler.
• Better align size ranges to fit diverse customer profiles.
   

5. Improved In-Store and Online Shopping Experiences

Apart from scaling the range and making online and in-storeOpens a new window navigation easier for customers, M&S has bigger plans to improve the value they offer customers. The brand will:

• Maintain a price hierarchy ranging from good, to better and best – to include quality, accessible, and affordable everyday products and highlight the value of designer products like leather jackets and cashmere coats
• Declutter stores with fewer, better, and relevant product lines
• Treat their top 20 stores as flagships to offer a destination shopping experience
• Be one of the first retailers to use Instagram’s Shopping featureOpens a new window , where online shoppers can view product info and click-to-buy in-feed and in Insta Stories
   

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6. The Social Strategy

Keeping up with marketing dynamics, increasing their social media presence to observe and respond to customer experience trendsOpens a new window remains the top priority. For that:

• Social media strategy is a part of a more targeted and relevant customer marketing plan for M&S.
• Instagram is now central to its social media marketing strategyOpens a new window to attract young shoppers and move a third of its sales online.
• The social media strategy for food is more about driving brand awareness organically. They have been using smart creatives to drive engagement through gamification, stitching together customer-generated posts, etc.
• The clothing line strategy is focused on conversions with sponsored posts and clear call to actions for sales, promotion of specific products, and conversion-based ads.

Learn More:

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Our Predictions for Marks & Spencer’s Turnaround

M&S is definitely doing something right with its smart customer marketing strategy. The transformation journey will take some time to completely revive M&S, but patience, persistence, and precise execution will see them through. Marks & Spencer and digital marketers, in general, can fulfill customer expectations and deliver long-term, sustainable growth if they focus on these key elements:

1. Keeping a track on market and customer dynamics and devising an agile customer marketing strategy.
2. Being more digitally capable and designing smart mobile and web experiences for customers. Apart from digital marketing, M&S will have to digitally empower their staff to drive more efficiency and productivity in their efforts.
3. Breaking data silos to bring together customer databases to create a unified customer profile to deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences.
4. Listening to the voice of the customers and employees to better understand customer preferences and requirements to align with their needs and deliver the best value and fulfillment to their customers.
5. Simplifying shopping experiences by making their product lines accessible, affordable, and seamless with quick check-outs to drive more conversions.
6. Identifying the preferred social media platforms of their customers and creating a healthy mix of organic and sponsored content to drive awareness, engagement, and conversions.
    

While M&S rebuild their brand, digital marketers can take clues from their story to incorporate the above elements in their marketing mix. A laser focus on customer experience, data, and digital transformationOpens a new window and an effective social media strategy are essential elements of a successful marketing planOpens a new window .

Which are your favorite marketing turnaround stories? Tell us on TwitterOpens a new window or LinkedInOpens a new window or FacebookOpens a new window ; we’re always listening