August 25, 2016 · 9:45 am

Shopping Until You’re Dropping

Today’s screed is mostly about shopping (or selling, I suppose). I read some results from a research report and I think you’ll probably share my thinking about what the data shows: more of what we already know.

In a recent study UPS and ComScore released a U.S. study revealing changes in consumer shopping preferences and buying behavior. A total of 5,000 U.S. consumers were surveyed. The results indicate consumers plan to research and purchase more frequently using their mobile devices, they are influenced by social media, and free shipping continues to drive purchasing decisions.

No real shockers, but as with any study there are some nuances to the findings that are instructive. Nearly everyone (93%) shops at small retailers and 40% of them wanted to support the small business community by doing so. 49% couldn’t find what they needed from traditional stores so they turn to more niche retail outlets. Better prices (57%) and selection (49%) are the top reasons for purchasing online after researching an item in-store, which to me smells like an opportunity for bricks and mortar. After all, while there’s no doubt online sellers don’t have the same cost structure as offline, they have other challenges that can level the playing field.

One thing is returns. When a purchase is made online from a retailer that has an online and physical store, 39% of consumers who make returns prefer to ship the product back while 61% prefer to return the item to the store. When making an in-store return, 70% purchase an additional item compared to only 42% who make a new purchase while processing an online return. I suspect that this “ease of returns” is a selling point for pure physical retailers. According to the report, only 62% of consumers are satisfied with the online returns process: 67% review a retailer’s return policy before making a purchase, 66% want free return shipping, 58% want a hassle-free “no questions asked” return policy, and 47% want an easy-to-print return label.

The study provides insight to help retailers increase sales. 48% of online shoppers said they ship items to the store, with 45% of those saying they made additional purchases when picking up their orders. Free shipping remains the most important option during checkout according to 77% of online shoppers. More than half (60%) have added items to their cart to qualify for free shipping.

Most of the above seems fairly intuitive, but it never hurts to have our own intuition supported by facts, does it?

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August 24, 2016 · 10:59 am

How To Stay Engaged With Your Consumers

OK, so you buy into my thinking on the need to stay engaged with your customers and potential customers in a meaningful way. Now what? That’s a question my clients and I face all the time so let me share a few things we’ve done to promote that engagement. Feel free to borrow!

The first and most obvious thing you can do is to support listening via social media channels. If you haven’t set up a listening dashboard, I’d make that a top priority. Hootsuite is a good place to start, and it can also be useful in populating those channels with content. There are plenty of other tools out there for listening, but listening and responding when appropriate is what we’re after.

Part of what we’re after is to become a friendly subject matter expert in the eyes of consumers. There are plenty of channels in which to do so, but what’s important is that you not try to be in every single one. Unless you have a support staff of a dozen people, you’re going to have to pick the channel that is most meaningful to your customers and focus your efforts there. My guess is that it will be Twitter since it’s the most interactive.

Next would be a decision about some longer form content. This might be on your own website, a blog, maybe a post on LinkedIn or Medium. Try them all and see which drives traffic and engagement. Remember, there is no garbage can on the Internet so whatever you write for one platform is probably reusable on another.

What do you write about? Start with thinking about how many questions do customers ask you in a week. The answers to each one of those questions can serve as the basis for a post. Unless you’re a masochist like me, you needn’t write every day either. A couple of times a week is a lot for most folks. Write about your customers. Featuring a long-time purchaser rewards them and shows all the others that you’re grateful. Explain a common problem your customers have and how you’re solving it for them.

Ask yourself how you keep in touch with your best friends. Don’t treat consumers any differently and you’ll be on the road to a productive, engaged relationship. Make sense?

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August 23, 2016 · 10:59 am

Measuring What Matters

English: A business ideally is continually see...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I read an interesting report from the Forrester folks this morning. It is about business-to-business marketing but I think it’s instructive to any of us who are in marketing. It’s called “Metrics That Matter For B2B Marketers” and you can read it here. I’m a big fan of the premise:

B2B marketers must do more than measure activities like click-through rates and event attendees; they need to show how their activity directly affects business results. This report shows marketers how to provide insight on the things that matter most to their executive peers and the board — growth in revenue, profit, and customers. While marketers need to capture a wide range of metrics, this report focuses on measuring marketing’s contribution to revenue as a function of customer acquisition and installed base growth.

When I was in TV and marketing (which probably should have been called business development) was a relatively new concept (as opposed to sales which was there from day one), I always felt that part of my role as “the marketing guy” was to demonstrate that marketing was part of the revenue-generating part of the team. The only way to do that was to quantify how what I was doing was driving sustainable business.

Fast forward a lot of years. All of us in marketing are deluged with data. The problem, as the report points out, is that many folks take the easy way out and measure the easy to find stuff while ignoring the pieces of information that may be more impactful to the business but harder to discern. As the report says:

Marketers need to measure a lot of things to understand what is working and what isn’t. Unfortunately, most get stuck measuring activity, not value: More than half (61%) of the marketers we surveyed admitted that most of their data work went into reporting on how they did, not showing how marketing drives better business results.

Measure what matters. Measure quality over quantity. Don’t “manage to metrics rather than performance.” OK?

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