Retailing for Dummies

Best Practice Tips From Our Editorial Advisory Board Members

"A common customer complaint for online purchases is that they're buying from someone who may be selling hundreds of thousands of products. If you have in-store expertise in even a small portion of these products, you should be trumpeting that to the best of your ability. Use employee-written Q&As on your site and include pictures of products as they exist on your floor. Take pictures of customers buying the product in your store. Having a brick-and-mortar presence is increasingly a rarity, so if you have one it's an investment and a competitive advantage you should use across all channels." — Richard Sexton, founder and president, Carolina Rustica

● "Successful cross-channel retailing now and in the future depends on forgetting all the channels! The goal is to deliver a seamless experience to your customers wherever they choose to shop. Make shopping and engaging with your brand omnichannel. Consumers should shop with you because of your brand, and the channel should fade into the background. With this in mind, every tactic, strategic decision, and marketing and operational detail gets a laser-like focus, and the customer gets an exceptional experience." — Margaret Moraskie, senior vice president of marketing, Boston Proper

● "Figure out how to compete or coexist with Amazon. You'll never beat it at the price game, so if your product is available on Amazon, you'd better be sure that in the minds of your customers they need more than just fast delivery at a low price." — Mike Faith, president and CEO, Headsets.com

● "Servicing the customer is more important than ever. While customer service is essential, staffing levels are low and each customer interaction takes longer, with a sale not guaranteed. Motivating and training employees must be a top priority. If a customer leaves your store unsatisfied, they may never return and could become an online-only shopper with a competitor." — Kathy Doyle Thomas, executive vice president, marketing/development, Half Price Books

"Think customers: With customers in full control, monitoring their behavior and making adjustments to meet their needs is a must in 2013.
Efficiency: Ensure that you can deliver orders quickly, expedite returns and handle all queries in a timely fashion.
Merchandising sophistication: Continue to elevate the customer experience you deliver, differentiating from assortments to execution.
Make mobile a priority: From optimized mobile sites to tablet shopping experiences to in-store efforts, mobile must be front and center for all retailers.
Socializing: Embrace social media to understand how consumers are using the channel relative to retail." — Lauren Freedman, president, the e-tailing group

● "Target your customers, not your personal preferences. I've seen a "monument to self" bring down many a company, large and small. New management wants to shake things up; creatives want a great portfolio; new owners want a flashy look to dazzle friends; and the poor customers get left out in the cold. The once-successful company shrinks and goes in the red. Sure, change can be great, but change to fit your customers' preferences, not your own. They'll reward you with sales." — Susan J. McIntyre, founder and chief strategist, McIntyre Direct

● "The best counter to stagnation is an activity that's diametrically opposite to comfort food marketing. You need to try new ideas. You need to test. Companies that saw significant double-digit growth in 2012 most likely tested new ideas in 2011. "Overnight" success usually takes a year or two. If you didn't test significant new concepts in 2012, you need to get some ideas rolling in 2013. Those successes will propel your growth in 2014." — George Hague, principal, HAGUEdirect

● "Maximize contribution to profit and overhead from all channels. Think as a cross-channel marketer, taking full advantage of the web and print catalogs, not the web or catalogs. It's not a matter of trading/selling expense dollars, but rather making certain the dollars being spent generate a positive incremental contribution to your company." — Stephen R. Lett, president, Lett Direct

● "Retailers shouldn't assume that replicating their brick-and-mortar store online will result in multichannel success. Rather, retailers have to analyze each product category they sell and each service they offer and determine how to best use the channels in each scenario to delight their customers and optimize their business. For example, an e-commerce site can enhance the store experience through extended assortments, recommendations, personalization, upselling, cross-selling, inventory visibility across outlets, product reviews, deep product content, how-to videos, end-of-season clearance, store locators, and more." — Richard E. Last, chairman of the board of directors, Shop.org

● "Technology is finally in place that allows for optimization via personalization. If I've never clicked on a yoga mat, I shouldn't see creative for yoga mats on a website or via an email. If I've demonstrated from previous clicks or purchases that I prefer a certain brand, say Tumi, then I should be exposed to appropriate Tumi products throughout shopping, in emails or even in retargeted banner ads on other websites." — Peter Cobb, co-founder and executive vice president, eBags.com

● "Now is the time to leverage multiple channels and incorporate loyalty strategy. Turning your loyal customers into advocates will be pivotal going forward. Let's face it, emails, TV ads, sponsored ad clicks are perishable; consumer advocacy is more far-reaching and powerful. If you can leverage your customers to do some heavy lifting to drive traffic and sales, you'll certainly find new revenue streams." — Howard Wyner, CEO and chief marketing officer, Scentiments.com

How to Do Mobile Marketing Right in 2013
Mobile marketing starts with the end in mind first. Looking through your company's ad calendar for the year will give insight into where you should head with your mobile marketing plans for 2013. To date, most companies haven't been able to successfully execute the ability to include mobile into their standard marketing plans — e.g., signage, print (flyers, circulars, magazine ads, mailers, direct mail, etc.), media, PR, etc. Every aspect of marketing can have a digital asset that drives consumers to purchase more quickly.

There are quite a few aspects of mobile marketing that should be considered, including social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, to name a few), apps, mobile websites, landing pages and mobile ads, along with the push/pull mechanisms that drive traffic — e.g., SMS, QR codes, email, NFC and others.

Starting with the end in mind first, complete in full your mobile app/web strategy in order to have a complete digital asset to drive consumers to an action for return on investment purposes. Once this is in place, then identify each of the items on the ad calendar to ensure there's an action to mobile included.

For example, run a new product campaign using signage. On the signage include a QR code or text to action that takes consumers to a specific mobile landing page that directs them to an action — e.g., make a purchase, drive social interaction, scan a coupon for use in-store. Allow the signage to become a live engagement vs. just a message that foot traffic would walk by and forget.

Always remember that behind every good strategy with a push/pull mechanism there's a content management strategy that needs to be embedded into the workflow. If you were to just launch a complete campaign of QR codes, text messages, emails or used NFC to gain traffic without a workflow to manage the content that's being delivered, it's really the same as taking a carton of flyers and dumping them out of a plane in the hope they hit the right target. A well-thought-out game plan with a workflow strategy will ensure success across mobile marketing.

Last but not least, ensure that your analytics team is carefully tracking campaigns in order to successfully engage the data and deliver the proper message to each individual consumer. The data will be there with a well-thought-out campaign and can be an extremely powerful tool for A/B testing and strategy movement going forward.

Mobile marketing is here to stay; get your strategy in place now so you aren't behind the curve in the future. — Marci Troutman is the founder and CEO of SiteMinis, a mobile software solutions provider. Marci can be reached at marci@siteminis.com.

1 2 3 4 5 All Next »

0 Comments

View Comments

Cover Story: Retailing for Dummies