7 tips on making digital communications the cornerstone of your online sales strategy
1. Create Loyal Brand Relationships
You need to consider customer service — how it is a part of your brand and what interactivity you need to provide to assist customers pre- and post-purchase.
When buyers make a purchase online directly, companies can learn a lot about an individual’s profile and preferences. You can make a deeper and meaningful relationship online with your consumers — and now, with the general availability of content management, email, e-commerce and social commerce technologies, you can easily maintain and control the brand experience.
2. Incorporate Loyalty Programs
Building your online e-commerce capability means you have more control over promotions and loyalty programs that can benefit your customers and your brand.
3. Focus on the Entire Brand
Let your customers access your whole product range. Your website is the online equivalent to your “brand store” — think Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Store or NikeTown.
Here you can expose visitors to your full offering, and cross-sell or upsell in ways that e-retailers can’t or won’t. In general, e-retailers are brand-agnostic. This means a customer choosing to buy a Samsung television online might be offered a Panasonic DVD player or a Sony (NYSE: SNE) surround sound system as other items to complement and complete their purchase.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that companies are choosing to become e-retailers in their own right (where they can cross-sell and upsell products) in addition to selling their goods and services through third parties.
4. Give Customers What They Want
Use personalization. This is your opportunity to tailor the online experience for your visitors. The more information you can collect about them, whether implicitly or explicitly gathered, the better you can tailor information and promotions presented to meet their needs. This may not only help conversions, but also can build the value perception of your brand. Ask yourself — what do visitors really want out of the site?
Maybe it’s just more-detailed product information than they might find on an e-retailer’s site, or the ability to know which retail outlet to choose. Consider presenting links to all your e-retailers with their pricing, so the price-sensitive shopper can find the easiest way to convert.
5. Manage the channel
You need to consider your retailers and e-retailers, and plan how to manage any channel conflict. This can be done either through technology or negotiation.
You may choose to direct traffic to your channel, allowing customers to choose based on location or price, or you may have obligations to direct more volume to new or established channels based on retention or growth strategies.
6. Performance Metrics
Taking the proper measurements of the traffic and behavior on your site can not only help boost conversions, but also help you better understand visitor behavior so you can adjust the messaging about your brand or products.
Determining what is not working might be more important than measuring what already is working. The ability to adapt and change content easily and test out different messaging or promotions will quickly improve your bottom line.
7. Socialize Within Your Community
Using social media may help bring traffic in, but if you control the equivalent of the brand store, why not keep the conversations going with your own community?
Branded communities tend to give more-specific value to the brand owner and the members, allowing for greater communication and collaboration around the brand. Your branded community can associate customers with others of similar interest (for example, how your product is used) to give ideas or inspiration, even letting community members become involved in product feedback and innovation cycles.
It will not only give your audience an integrated experience, but also give you credible references that go beyond what your marketing writers can do.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 16th, 2010 at 4:05 am and is filed under Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed.
