12 Top Tips For Retailers
Make social media your friend
1. Open your ears...
You're involved in the social media space whether you choose to be or not.
Listen in to the online buzz in sites like Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Flickr, the various forums, communities and blogs. Try whostalkin, Social Mention, Delver or tuSavvy social media search engines - if you use these sites alongside Google analytics you'll get a good overview of your social media performance.
2. ...before you open your mouth
Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. If you've got a great product everybody's talking about it. If you don't have a great product, everybody's talking about it.
Before getting involved in groups, blogs, forums etc. think carefully about your approach. Sometimes it's best to listen for a while and let your fans do the talking; sometimes it's good to jump right in, like IBM. Ultimately, the more actively involved you're, the more open and transparent you become and this is good. Be prepared to share information or even tell stories about your company or products, like Coca Cola's informative internal historian.
3. Embrace your fans
Your hard core fans are one of your greatest assets, so find your brand ambassadors through social media searches, blogs and forums.
People listen to people, so embrace and reward them - make them VIP's, invite them to openings, product launches, and actively seek their advice and they'll continue to spread the love.
Research has shown that approx 1% of the online community create content, 9% contribute and the 90% consume it. Once the early adopters (your advocates and fans) are involved they'll help fuel widespread interaction, engage the participating community, attract new ones and, as long as it's nurtured, the community will start to take care of itself.
4. Add value
A recent survey*, studying digital marketing effectiveness and online behaviour, reveals that a third (32%) of social network users are likely to click through to a web site featured in a social network, and go on to make a purchase.
But before you embark on a social media frenzy, think very carefully about what you have to offer people there. Not all places are relevant to every business and it's not enough to create a Facebook page and ignore it. Getting involved in this space is about creating & nurturing relationships, providing better customer service, insight, tips, special offers.
Some examples:
YouTube isn't for everyone but Blendtec's $50 marketing spend resulted in over 6 million visitors to their Will it Blend web site in 5 days back in 2006 and shot the struggling company into the limelight. Today, its channel has more than 175,000 subscribers and over 3m channel views.
Monty Python recently put free clips of their YouTube channel with click-to-buy links underneath. It's reported that even though the online content is free, Monty Python's DVD sales skyrocketed 23,000% on Amazon and reached #2 on the Bestseller list.
Twitter isn't for everyone, but Virgin America use it well to provide proactive customer service. And Dell is one of the first companies to publicly state that they created a ROI, '$1 million in revenue' by using it to promote their sales items.
Then there's the mighty Facebook, the world's most popular network, visited by 47% of web users in the UK each month and 12% of its 132m users have registered as a 'fan' of a brand. Online fashion retailer ASOS currently have about 45,000 fans there and if you join you'll be engaged with competitions, free delivery codes and first peeks at their latest products.
Some social networks are working at creating their own micro-affiliate platforms, to allow people to recommend products to friends and earn money in return. So, a presence in the networks might well improve your clicks and sales, but keep in mind, community sites aren't all about making money - it's about reaching your audience and letting them engage with you on their terms.
* i-level
5. Provide tools
Consumers are demanding a more personal online shopping experience. They want relevant, credible reviews and information, they want to hear what others, who think and act like they do, have to say about a product or service, and they need to feel confident about making a purchase.
Provide the right tools, at the right stages to make research, word or mouth, interaction, exploration, comparison and purchasing a cinch at whatever stage someone is at in the buying cycle.
Let's look at Ikea, they've turned product catalogues into much more than a static pdf. They encourage customers to place post-its on pages, circle items, and zoom-in to get a better view. In addition, readers can bookmark, send and print specific pages to themselves or friends.
Ikea also have a useful app for home design that ties directly to purchases. Their virtual planners for kitchens, bedrooms, and offices are used to design entire rooms, get estimates, and because it links in with specific product numbers customers can purchase the whole lot.
But there is so much more you can do to ensure shoppers have everything they need to make a confident purchase. Community features like user profiles, kudos systems, rating, ranking, wish lists, 24/7 customer service assistants, avatars, videos, virtual environments, room planners, wardrobe planners, referrals, recommendations, visualisation techniques, 360 rotations, videos...the list goes on and on. The key thing to think about online is 'what services / functions can I add that will make the buying process so much easier.'
6. No place like home
With fans on Facebook, 'How To' videos on You Tube, should you still embrace and engage your customers on your own turf? Yes, you should.
Whereas Facebook and MySpace promise 'mass appeal' and a way to attract new people, your own network is the place to harness the opinions, feelings and mood of your community. You can create your own customer feedback channel, generate ideas, improve services, showcase new products, and make sales.
Take MyStarbucksIdea for example - they're prepared to listen and make changes and if enough people are calling for something, they make it happen - most notably free coffees on US Election Day.
Then there's Waitrose, who have launched a social networking site to get customers more involved. Online fashion brand ASOS, who are launching a channel to drive customer interaction. And Asda, who are creating an interactive online forum to compare products and prices on its drive for 'absolute transparency'.
Sometimes your advocates find you regardless, Cadbury's Wispa fans started internet campaigns, groups on Bebo, MySpace and Facebook in an attempt to 'Bring Back the Wisp' These campaigns prompted Cadbury to announce that the bar would be relaunched in late 2007 and the bar returned on a permanent basis in October 2008.
Ikea has an active Facebook page, useful great web site and an 85,000 strong fan site built by the retailer, no, built and run by loyal fans. It promises 'free information about stores, kitchens, furniture, help with the IKEA planner, pictures of products, answers questions, provides spare parts, and shares the love. Say no more.
What these brands and retailers realise is that having a community of loyal people, giving something back, providing openess and transparency is what people want and have come to expect. And if you have the right outlook and approach, they might even build something for you.
7. Don't just sit there
Sell the products people want to buy - if you listen hard enough to your customers, they'll tell you what they want, they'll even help you create new products.
Brands and customers can work together to develop and design new products, take the much loved toy company Lego, it encourages its customers to design everything from robot operating systems to new sets.
Companies like Threadless have built their entire business model on community product design and by involving the community fully in the product design process, Threadless is able to build loyalty for its designs and concepts and to some extent guarantee a market.
Others, like Starbucks, Dell, and P&G crowdsource; they harness opinion and feedback to create better products/services for their customers and making more money for themselves.
8. Make it fun
Turn your products and services into useful and fun applications. Engage your customers with apps that help them understand your products and make the process enjoyable.
STA Travel created a number of widgets that tick both the useful and fun boxes. They make it easy for their customers to take advantage of special offers, make to do lists, set up reminders, count the days til their holiday and even compare the weather at home and abroad from desktops, personal pages and Facebook.
During the US presidential election Burger King launched its 'Poll-a-rizer' - a particularly nifty application that allowed users to compare their own political views with their friends and told users how their own views compared with the social media community as a whole.
Nike+ went a step further connecting offline products online. Their deal with Apple and the development of the nike + ID really builds community around runners. Not only can they measure distance, pace, time, calories burned, they can upload this info to the web site and compare their progress with the world, get personal tips and find running routes.
9. Create virtual experiences
One outstanding advantage traditional retail has over its online equivalent has been the physical store, where you can try out products before you buy them.
The increasing sophistication of virtual worlds and 3D visualisation is helping retailers solve this problem. South Korean fashion retailer i-Fashion and similarly My Virtual Model in the US offers customers the opportunity to create their own 3D avatar matched exactly to their own vital statistics. They can then try on the full clothing range via their computer or handheld device.
A number of clothes brands have provided their clothes for inclusion in well known virtual worlds, to increase exposure of product lines and brand.
10. Start relationships, create partnerships
Shoppers are doing Google searches, checking out the very many comparison and discount sites. In fact, these sites dominate the search results because of the breadth of inventory.
On 'snow day'(Monday 2/2), it was reportedly one of the busiest shopping days on record. By mid-afternoon, the discount site My Voucher Codes recorded 310% more transactions than usual.
If you have products you need to shift make sure, you have the right relationships in for directing people back to your site.
Aggregation sites too may well play a larger role - taking a one-stop-shop approach, so a consumer can find expert reviews, comments, product info and more, all at one website, rather than making consumers do all the legwork.
11. Don't forget mobile
UK mobile internet users have the greatest tendency to access a social network via their mobile handset, with 2m people doing so (23%), compared to 10.6 million in the US (19%).
That given, online will become an integral part of the shopping experience. Retailers are beginning to catch on by providing product reviews and offers to customers via their phones. That means instant access to price comparisons, stock availability, recommendations from other shoppers, promos and digital vouchers.
Mobile retail apps are currently being tested out by Amazon and ShopSavvy, an android based mobile phone app, is already available in the UK. Watch out for US based savebenjis too.
12. Mind your step
So sometimes it goes awry, but there are usually good reasons for it and part of that comes from old methods conflicting with what online consumers have come to expect.
Just banging up a profile on Facebook and forgetting about is just not good enough. And on hearing a bad response to something, doesn't mean you should ignore it. If you want to know what not do to by example here's A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk'd by Social Media.
