Shop.org Blog

Like many Americans, I experienced a strong sense of sticker shock last weekend when it cost me $80 to fill up my minivan.  For the last couple of years, I have resisted the idea that consumers, with the exception of people living in rural areas far from the nearest shopping center, would shop online to save money on gas.  But, with the prices as high as they are right now, I think we’ve reached the tipping point.  The question then, for online retailers, is whether you make “buy online, free shipping, save money on gas” part of your marketing message.  Is it helpful to remind people that they are spending so much money on gas?  Shipping costs are going up.  If you are offering free or discounted shipping, it will further erode your margins.  Any thoughts?

I just uploaded Morgan Stanley’s Technology Trends report by Mary Meeker to Bazaarblog along with my commentary.  In my opinion, this should be required annual reading in our industry.

Enjoy, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in Huntington Beach at the Merchandising Workshop!

Fundamental elements of the customer-marketer relationship are changing faster than retailers can adapt. In fact, they’ve already changed! While it seems obvious most of us are only beginning to appreciate something important: How customers interact via the Web with a brand is an experience.

Ok… seems obvious but let’s frame it in a new light that may strike you as a little odd:

At a very high (basic?) level Web retail is not about clicks, conversions, optimization… it’s not about the numbers or the metrics. It’s about your ability to create hunger, desire or capitalize on a human being’s latent intent. It’s about stimulating, comforting, rescuing and helping (etc.).

The Web is inherently interactive and increasingly social. This sounds trite and simple but it cannot be under-stated.

Recently, I suggested that authentic digital experiences must be the future of online customer acquisition and challenged the affiliate and search marketing industries to step up to the plate. This week I’m qualifying the opportunity a bit more since some are a bit skeptical. I’m also explaining why it’s urgent to start making change.

Retailers are continually hearing the mantra: “Participate and have a conversation with customers.” Why? It’s because of this newly realized element of interactivity among Web users. The power of this element is breathtaking when one considers its raw EXPERIENTIAL power… the Web’s ability to make humans feel a certain way.

According to Keller Fay Group (2008), Americans have 3.5 billion brand-related conversations per day. With a population of 300 million, that means the average American engages in over 10 such conversations per day.

We know that 8 out of these 10 is likely more influential than any advertisement or paid sponsorship. Why? Because nearly 80% of consumers trust recommendations from friends, family, and trusted sources over any form of advertising.

What are you doing to foster such conversations under your umbrella?

Perhaps you don’t see the opportunity clear enough. You may ask, “why should I bother to foster conversations?”

Here’s why: By providing customers and/or prospects with access to trusted recommendations (and other forms of authentic, relevant, engaging content) marketers stand a better chance of winning their business.

Customers are finding new ways to participate in various online activities. Sure they still love search, but they’re rapidly finding more social and participatory elements such as product reviews, product design suggestions and a new thing called “crowdsourcing” (more on that in weeks ahead) to be helpful and even fun. Remember fun? It’s powerful stuff!

The world belongs to companies that can…

1. Identify the right micro-verticals where consumers engage deeply
2. Activate new or existing consumer communities that welcome their participation
3. Make the ‘network effect’ work for them through syndication & aggregation
4. Think the way industrial designers think about ergonomics – in our case it’s form factors of media consumption

So says Jeffrey Rayport, founder of Marketspace LLC.

So how can one become one of these companies?

As new customer behavior patterns emerge new marketing practices are needed to capitalize on them. We need to create them. Customer acquisition and retention cannot survive on traditional strategies like affiliate and search marketing alone. Intercepting customers during buying processes is no longer enough.

What are these new strategies? Some call it “conversational” marketing. Whatever name you give it, this emerging practice area is all about joining in with customers – listening to them and interacting on a more intimate level.

Quite literally this translates into socializing with customers and prospects – a skill set that is a bit foreign to most marketing departments (beyond traditional market research). After all, we’re not formally trained in good listening skills or prone to making altruistic gestures. Rather, marketers expect measurable return on investment (ROI).

Some retailers will be satisfied with following the crowd, others blaze trails. This begs the question: Can you afford to wait to implement pioneering and innovative digital marketing strategies, or will you help lead the charge?

The best way to answer this question is to make sense of and prioritize these emerging, digital acquisition and retention strategies. Your decision should ultimately be based on your market’s active use of digital technologies. If a social, experiential marketing approach is right for you, begin testing now. Eventually you can vet strategies to decide which are worth continued investment.

Before all else, the key to success in today’s digital, multi-channel shopping world is a bold, new mindset. This way of thinking is what feeds new decision-making and creative strategy development processes. I admit… I’m making it sound pretty easy so we’ll get into the details on HOW to do actually dip toes in the water (safely) and experiment with social marketing in weeks ahead.

Greetings

The content team is hard at work putting the finishing touches on our upcoming merchandising workshop and also working hard on putting together the agenda for our Annual Summit.  This is a busy time for Shop.org, and coming right at the nick of time I would like to introduce Artemis Ebneyousef.  She is our new content manager who started on May 1 and has already taken Shop.org by storm.  If you would like to email her, you can reach her at ebneyousefa@shop.org.   

To further meet the content needs for our membership, Shop.org is going to begin a quarterly webinar series and we are hoping to have our first installment in the next few months.  We think this is an additional way to add value to your Shop.org membership and also continue the information sharing that occurs at our events. 

We would like to ask the community if they have any ideas for topics that they would like us to cover in our first few webinars.    You can either use the blog to make any suggestions or write me directly at joseloffl@shop.org.

Thanks and enjoy the long weekend.

Larry Joseloff

VP, Content, Shop.org

Successful, Daring Marketers are Focusing on Authentic Forms of Persuasion to Win & Keep Customers.

Customers today have access to so much content — and have so many ways to gather news and information — that the likelihood of your corporate message penetrating the clutter is virtually nil. Instead, if you engage the audience in a conversation and learn what the social community is looking for and concerned about, you might be able to persuade them to hear your message.
In other words…

“There is no market for your message.”

David Weinberger at the 2007 New Communications Forum

Let’s take a big step back for a moment and realize how selling on the Web is quickly becoming less about marketers’ supply meeting up with customers’ demand, and more about customers themselves actively bringing their demand toward supply. In fact, they’re CREATING supply in many cases… and taking action to monetize that supply in a niche community setting.

Given the Web’s increasingly social nature, today’s customers are bypassing “interceptive” strategies like search and, yes, affiliate marketing. No, affiliate marketing isn’t dying or threatened but it IS challenged to change. How? Affiliates are challenged to do more than just shuttle traffic and get ‘in between’ demand and supply. Affiliate networks are challenged to house more than just ‘helpful interceptors.’ Marketers expect networks to provide value-added resellers. Or as blogger, David Lewis refers to them, “value added pre-sellers.”

Getting back to the consumers… they’re increasingly choosing a variety of non-traditional paths to discover products and services – faster and easier than ever before. Says Jupiter Research:

Social and community sites affected the purchase decisions of 51% of online shoppers aged 18-24. This is far beyond any other age group, which averaged less than 26%. A total of 36% of online shoppers influenced by social/community sites said they buy offline even though they use online social/community sites to make their decisions.

So what’s a savvy marketer to do? The answer may seem radical. Today’s marketers must help customers find, consider and purchase products and services by creating authentic digital experiences. That’s the new twist – and it’s not just a load of hyped-up social media spin.

This new paradigm will be fueled by the recently announced Data Portability Working Group. This consortium of unlikely partners (including Plaxo, LinkedIn, Google, Sixapart, Facebook and Yahoo’s Flickr) are banding together to ensure users of the “social Web” can have power over the data they’re putting out there. By making sure social media sites and services are interoperable the user experience becomes simple, the social information portable and shared. It’s the first step toward providing marketers with a serious “social marketing platform.”

How exciting is that?!