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Archive for January, 2010

What’s Next for E-Commerce? Further growth in SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Mobile, Social Media

Friday, January 29th, 2010

MITX event 2/28/10 at Microsoft NERD Center

What Will “E-Commerce 2.0″ Look Like in the Next Few Years?

Speaker bios

Intro From MITX site“Retailers who leverage the power of online commerce,communities, personalization, and other online strategies … e-commerce is the one positive story from the2009 holiday season: According to ComScore, online retailing grew 4%(from the beginning of November through December 18) to $24.8 billion,while sales conducted in stores fell flat in comparison to 2008.”

E-commerce developments

Scott Savitz

  • Shoebuy complements not competes against stores: buy at home after shopping, look online then go to store
  • Have to listen to the customers to see what they want

Brian Eberman New developments include real-time bidding for banner ads. Can select preferences and bid only on profiles that fit the demographic. Not enough data yet, soon hold for now

Scott Important part of the internet is to leverage in multiple platforms, affiliate marketing part of that

Niraj Shah Amazon’s competitiveness has raised the bar but also made e-commerce an everyday activity

Scott

  • Need to focus on value proposition, grow and evolve, keep ear to consumer and keep adding value
  • Put more money into customer retention than new customer acquisition
  • Lowest level of marketing since 2002 but still growing
  • Convinced it’s because Shoebuy customers know Shoebuy is listening

Niraj

  • Re-targeting: After someone visits site, partner with ad networks to show ads to that prior visitor.
  • Email better ROI


Social Media

Scott

  • Shoebuy doesn’t have a social media “leader” (exec/pro) because it goes against what social media is all about
  • One of best marketing tools is usability.
  • When you listen to customers and they know you really care about them, they become advocates.

Niraj CSN continues to experiment and find interesting things to do. Contest: why living room needed a rescue, send photos, description, picked 100 finalists and then put to a vote. Finalists became ambassadors. Fantastic ROI also building who they are as a company, newsworthy, doing something interesting. Local papers did stories about finalists from their towns

Brian

  • Advertising within social media vs building community: It’s about demand-generation vs search, which is really demand satisfaction
  • Now exploring how to build community


Mobile & shifting rapidly across marketing channels

Brian

  • Make daily overall marketing decisions, based on prediction tools
  • Example: iPhone app take photo of barcoded item, do self-checkout, show rcpt on phone when walk out
  • Opt-in for geo-based offers. Allow geo-location to be exposed

Niraj Apps are just making the carrier richer, still unclear about how it will play out

Scott Amazing what you learn from the customer, read every feedback form. Help you lead the way.

Other e-commerce innovations

  • Everyone in the company takes customer service calls on a rotation
  • Everyone can access data, their close rates, etc. Empowering smart people to see how they’re doing
  • When customer svs sends response, offer the email for sr mgt and offer to consumer to contact them directly
  • Customer svs enthusiastic and supportive, gave more ideas to help stay connected
  • Have query day where people job-swap: marketing gets to train in database management

Posted in e-Commerce | 7 Comments »

Appyling appropriate Social Media strategy, stemming from a LinkedIn discussion

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Fodder from a discussion on LinkedIn that showcases appropriate application of Social Media

Original post: Physicians vs. Social Media: What’s your experience?

Talking with physician clients about adding social media into their marketing strategies … there has been more resistance than acceptance. Some of the resistance seems to be a lack of knowledge about the tools with questions like “What’s Linked-In?” Another issue is perceived value versus the time spent.

I would appreciate hearing experiences of others with professional clients (business owners) like physicians and attorneys. What are the pros and cons you have encountered with this type of client, what is deemed success or failure, or are your professional clients open to utilize these tools and if so, why? Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Designated Editor’s Take

Depending on the physician’s specialty and goal, it may be a complete waste of time. What’s the underlying motivation as business owners or professionals?

An example that is more likely to yield results:
A doc who’s trying to build a practice: Ask satisfied patients to post a review on Yelp.

I know everyone preaches goal-setting and tracking results. For my clients, that equation looks something like this:

  1. How much time/funds do you have to devote to social media/blogging?
  2. Who are you trying to reach?
  3. Where is your targeted audience already congregating?
  4. What outcome are you pursuing?


Social media isn’t a magic pill to solve underlying strategy issues, although it can be a tool to help identify stumbling blocks and to problem-solve.

It’d be great to others’ perspectives as well!

Posted in Social Media | 35 Comments »

MarketingSherpa Chart: Why Consumers Friend or Follow Companies

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
A telling snapshot ….

Why Consumers Friend or Follow Companies
By Sergio Balegno, Senior Analyst

In reporting on this consumer study of social media use by consumers, MarketingSherpa makes reference to a group it’s calling “Max Connectors” — those people with more than 500 social connections. They exemplify the new social consumer, and they’re especially valuable targets for marketing,at least in theory, because they can spread a positive brand or product experience so widely.

The motivations for consumers to track brands and companies through social media are generally predictable.However, there are exceptional aspects. Unlike our motivations for email or catalogs, getting a first or early look at features and products is at least as strong a motivation as beneficial pricing(that’s especially true of Max Connectors).

Another unique driver of social connectedness with companies is to “get to know” the company. Although other aspects of the Internet have already opened this arena up to scrutiny, social media accelerated the ability of individual consumers to monitor, communicate and comment on companies as citizens.

Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »