DECEMBER - 2020retailtechinsights.com9and then reacting to that across the business. If you can get this right, and it's a big `if', all else can follow as you can prove the value of the speed improvements you make to your site and find ways to convey the right message in the moments when you need to be discoverable for your customers.What all of this means is that digital and performance marketing needs to return to marketing principles. By embracing the opportunities data and automation represent you can outsource some of the heavy lifting and instead focus on what the data is telling you and how this can be applied to your business strategy. Use the tools to find the message, convey your USP, and capitalise on these trends. There are ever decreasing excuses for poor online consumer experiences and heightened expectations abound across industries and geographies. Rather than engaging in a pricing race to the bottom we've a race to the top unfolding - who can make their online brand experience the most engaging, the most impactful, the most memorable and the most useful to today's consumer.So, what now? As we approach the start of H2 2019 I'd advocate a return to core marketing principles, what is it that makes your brand, product, service or industry special? Why should customers want to buy from you? Why did they ever buy from you in the first place? In a clustered and noisy market having focusing on these differentiation factors becomes even more important and if we've reached the point where data and automation allows you to do that, then all the better. How can you re-focus your teams on these principles, away from the data heavy lifting and instead find a way to focus on the strategic heavy lifting-- that's where the real value will lie in the coming years and how retailers can catch up with those customers who are streaking ahead to the horizon. As ecommerce businesses are at the end of the 21st century's teenage years, we need to shake off data preconceptions and set up to understand and objectively review the data we have on our customers
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