Here and now in the social media
Experts also point at the changes in communication channels. “We are saying goodbye to Instagram, whose audience has been collected for many years and for the sake of big budgets. Telegram has been developing quickly, and its main feature is giving the information here and now, so we have to make the content specifically for Telegram,” says Ksenia Aksenova.
Some experts also mention an interesting situation with the social media: despite the obvious benefit of having a personal group in VKontakte, many shopping centres have not yet figured out how to work there. Some of them are trying to keep Instagram style, which is wrong as VK audience is also interested in the text, not just a picture, some others believe that their target audience cannot be found on VK, which is also wrong. This social network is probably not a good fit for premium segment shopping centres, but even they can find a smaller portion of their customers on VKontakte.
“The game shopping centres have been playing with social networks, such as Telegram or Yandex.Dzen, has not yielded any significant results yet. Yes, they may have 10, 000 subscribers on a Telegram channel, but this reach cannot be possibly compared to the one they used to have on Instagram or they can now get on Vkontakte.
Brosko Mall has strengthened their interaction with the audience, especially on the social media. “We do not outsource; we strengthen our team. And we also invest into teaching our tenants. We teach them how to work with Telegram channels, how to promote themselves. We have also decided to completely update our website and are going to launch an app,” tells us Ksenia Rudenko.
As for Schukhina, their customers to the shopping centre are presented with the same information as back in 2019, but the accents have changed:
— News about what the shopping centre offers. which key tenants are there. During 2020-2022, 30% of customers stopped visiting shopping centres and a habit of doing so as well as a reason for that must be formed again, despite the more difficult current situation as before.
— to increase the number of returning visits to the shopping centre. Updates about new offers, promotions and campaigns. According to Schukhina, some research states that 25-45% of Russians are now looking for bargains online and offline. It is not a habit for sales, but a current behaviour caused by the income decline.
— Services and everything that simplifies life of a client and makes their visit to a shopping mall more meaningful, such as nice baby care rooms as well as guides for good buys.
“Launching a new tenant, changing the season’s decorations, repairing benches or moving a car park, every event must be presented and sold in order to promote the shopping centre,” says Schukhina.