What’s a ‘Retail Warm Up'? 

The answer is;

When consumers choose one channel to get warmed up over a brand and go on to make a purchase via another!!

The majority of that consumer ‘warm up’ is going on via 'Social Media' channels whilst using a mobile phone.

This is seismic change in behaviour, and if you need more evidence recent data tells us that we have 107% of the UK population on mobile connections - that's 72.4 million mobile connections!

I recently wrote a few articles on here about analog leadership in what is today a digitally savvy social media connected world. From the engagement I received my opinions resonated with a few people in the multi-channel retail industry, and other sectors?

The thrust of these articles was mainly about the widespread malaise impacting the retail landscape in the UK, probably the same in other territories in that most of these troubled companies are being led by analog CEO's and supervised by the same analog Chairmen - it seems many in the C-Suite prefer to live in the comfort zone of an analog echo chamber these days.

In my experience the board of today have a perception that 'transformational change' is all about technology, tools, gadgets and gizmo's, which is where most of these projects tend to fail.

Any change is driven by 'people', they either act as 'enablers' or blockers, the technology (whilst complex) is merely part of the enablement process.

So if you continue to think and behave like it's still the '20th Century' in what is now a socially savvy dynamic 21st Century digital world it's not surprising that your demise won't take a decade, it's probably already kicked in.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

At no time in the history of retailing, or any other business sector for that matter have companies had free and easy access to potential consumers, and not just those in the home territory but also around the world. 

Use social media to warm up those potential relationships, use what you know to build your own version of 'retail warm up’ that just might encourage the consumer to spend more time with you over a competitor.