Consumer Engagement, Word-of-Mouth Advocacy & Increasing Brand Loyalty: Study Reveals the Social Media Objectives Trinity

Posted on October 8, 2009 in Ecommerce, Online Branding, Social Media Marketing

While it should come as no surprise to anyone by now that many companies are embracing the use of social media as part of their overall marketing plan, a recent study reveals that brands are more likely to implement the use of social media now than ever before. The use of Facebook and Twitter by brands and merchants is at an all-time high, and customer reviews rank as the number one driving force for both consumer engagement and sales.

Community and Social Media Study

This survey of US web retailers was conducted by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews in August and September of 2009 for their “Community and Social Media Study.” Those surveyed were asked to answer questions about how they have adopted social media, and what they were trying to accomplish or what problems they were trying to solve using social media tools. The study surveyed 117 companies in total, a group which included multi-channel retailers (44%), brands & manufacturers (26%), pure-play retailers (12%), catalogers (9%), and suppliers/agencies (9%).

Social Media Tools

According to the survey, Facebook holds the top position for the most users, with 86% of online retailers currently using Facebook Fan Pages, and 10% planning to begin sometime in the 12 months. Twitter came in second, with 65% currently using and 19% planning to over the next year. Other social media tools and current usage are Customer Reviews (55%), Blogs (55%) and Viral Videos (50%).

Brand and Merchant Objectives for Using Social Media

Brands and merchants listed their objectives in order of priority (apart from increasing sales). The following three, the “social media trinity”, came in at the top:

greater customer engagement (39%)
mobilizing advocates to drive “word of mouth” (30%)
increasing brand loyalty (21%)

Social Media Concerns

The top three concerns the survey respondents had in relation to social media were:

brand degradation fear – “people can trash my products in front of a large audience” (49%)
competence fear – “I am using outdated marketing/merchandising techniques” (34%)
competitive fear – “customer might leave my site to find a more socially-engaging site” (26%)

Implications & What’s Next

Lauren Freedman, President of the e-tailing group, states, “The integration of community and social networking within e-commerce has reached critical mass and as such is now a benchmark that we will be tracking annually. Customer engagement has become a metric to be reckoned with, where failing to engage consumers via community and social media will have brand and bottom-line implications. All merchants must test and understand how to effectively deploy it for their brands to retain customers, encourage sales, and avoid abandonment to competitors who’ve better embraced its marketing potential.”

In summary, these days, consumer engagement should be considered a marketing objective rather then simply a strategy, right along with sales. It will become increasingly important as more companies continue to engage their customers via social media in the future.

Top 10 Ways to Boost User Confidence in Your Website

Posted on September 9, 2009 in Ecommerce, Website Design & Usability

top10 User confidence can be defined as a trust that is established the first time a visitor arrives at your website from any source in order to browse for information, shop for products, or find out who you are as a brand.

There are hundreds of factors in play when someone is visiting your website for the first time. There is no possible way that you can satisfy everyone. But there are some things that you can do to gain the trust of most visitors.

These are the top 10 things I think you must do to build website confidence.

1. Redesign Often

A website should not be treated like a vintage car.* I strongly believe in redesigning your website every two years. There are two main reasons for doing this. First, the technology, browsers and operating systems are evolving pretty much every two years. It’s always healthy to stay with the latest trends in website technology. Second, a newer-looking website shows that you are a healthy business that is investing in your website. If you expect your website to keep making money, then you must keep it looking healthy.

*Some smarties of the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it club” counter this point by bringing up Craigslist and the fact that they haven’t redesigned since 1999. I just have one thing to say to them: “You, Sir, are NOT Craigslist.”

2. Make Your Site Easy to Navigate

If your website navigation was approved in an internal meeting between the business owner and marketing folks, you probably need a new nav. Come to think of it, that “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” ballad by U2 might be a fitting soundtrack for a lot of sites out there.

Ensure that your navigation is user-based and not company management based. Find out what searchers and visitors are looking for (this requires keyword research and website analytics review) and make it easy for them to find those things. There’s no point in guessing, or doing whatever makes the marketing dept happy. The answers are there if you look for them. Good navigation increases user time on sight and removes frustration.

3. Use Photos

Like I always say, “Great photos make a great website.” It’s a lot harder to dazzle people with content alone. When in doubt, insert a great photo that is relevant to your business and matches the tone of the website.

4. Hire a Proofreader

Nothing will make you lose your credibility faster than website copy with bad grammar or typos. Your website viewers can be forgiving of minor errors, but it’s hard not to doubt your sincerity when you haven’t even taken the time to look it over. Skimping on quality when it comes to content often results in poor conversion, even for a visually stunning website.

5. Include a Detailed “About Us” Page

Who are you, and why should someone be buying your product or service?

There is no substitute for an informative About Us section on your website. People always want to know with whom they’re doing business. If you are not a household brand, be prepared to share information about the business’s owner/management with website visitors. This is an important step people often leave out, either because they think nobody cares, or because they are going through a Jason Bourne phase and are not sure of their true identity.

6. Make It Easy to Contact You

Do you have your phone number and address listed on your homepage above the fold? If the answer is no, you have a big usability problem. If someone feels like calling you up, you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity. Make sure the number is always at their fingertips.

Likewise, if you’re using contact forms, test them periodically to make sure they are working properly. There is nothing worse than losing an enthusiastic website visitor due to the contact info runaround. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” never works.

7. Provide Testimonials

In this age of social media, people are extremely interested in what real-life customers have to say.

Honesty is the best policy when it comes to adding testimonials. Have a new website or service? Be patient, your time will come. Nobody can start with testimonials the day they start a business. But in time there will be at least one guy who thinks you have done a decent job: ask him for some genuine kind words. Getting a testimonial is like asking for a date. If you don’t ask, you will never get one!

Pet peeve alert! Please use the customer’s full first and last name. Nothing sounds more spammy to me than a comment saying that “Anita J” from Fresno had a great experience doing business with you.

8. Make Visitors Feel Safe

This is extremely important for ecommerce sites, as well as for lead generation websites. You can never convince me or anyone else to put their credit card information into a website that does not appear “safe.” Any security certificates that you have must be prominently displayed.

While playing Sherlock Holmes on one of my recent ecommerce website reviews, I was able to spot something elementary that was driving the bounce rate through the roof. The shopping cart URL linked into a page with the redirect message “Are you sure you want to proceed?” on all Internet Explorer visits. Once this was fixed, the client saw a 50% decrease in bounce rates right away. More Safety = More Sales.

9. Load Quickly and Quietly

Please make sure your website is not taking several seconds to load on a high-speed connection. You will annoy and alienate your visitors, who weren’t planning to give you that much time in the first place.

And, by the way, that website music thing is a really bad idea. Why? It increases load time (see above). It makes you look like you designed your website in the early years of the WWW. It embarrasses/outs your visitors who are browsing from work. (90% of them are at work, remember?)

iTunes does not have music on their website, and they have sold millions of songs! I rest my case.

10. Be Phone-Friendly

Please consider the growing army of not-so-poor website visitors who use Smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, etc). Their numbers are in the millions and forever growing. Making sure a simpler version of your website is served to mobile visitors will help you gain credibility and loyalty with these ubiquitous users.

More details on mobile-friendly websites are coming soon.

This completes my list. Just doing these basics steps will keep you ahead of the game. I’ll close with an original quote from me: “Life and websites work best when they are kept simple.”

Marketing Lessons From the Late Billy Mays

Posted on June 28, 2009 in Ecommerce, Website Design & Usability

How to Be Your Own Pitchman

The man who perfected the art of speaking in ALL CAPS as he shouted his way into America’s homes via late night TV infomercials, the one who’s voice haunted our nightmares but compelled us to open our wallets and start dialing that 1-800 number, died unexpectedly at the age of 50. Billy Mays turned products like OxiClean, Kaboom, Mighty Mendit and Orange Glo into household names. He was the master of selling small ticket items with mass appeal, and, whether you loved him, hated him, were amused or annoyed by him, his ability to sell cannot be denied. Let’s take a look at some marketing lessons we can all learn from the late, great TV pitchman, Billy Mays.

Have Passion for Your Product

Whatever Billy Mays had in his hand in any given infomercial, his enthusiasm for the product was obvious (to everyone within shouting distance). But there was, as he has said, more to his selling than just his yelling. Billy Mays really believed in his products, and if you don’t believe in what you are selling, then who will? He would get hundreds of offers for products to pitch, but only chose a select few, and here were some of his criteria:

1) Does the product solve a problem / Does it make one’s life easier?

The first thing that Billy Mays looked for in a potential product to pitch was whether or not it actually worked. Seems obvious, but how many of us have bought products that ended up not working the way that we had expected? If longevity in business is one of your goals, your product (or service) absolutely has to work the way that you say it will work. You also should have something special that is unlike anything else that is currently available, and one that addresses a common need. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention, and Billy Mays knew how to turn a good idea into a must-have product. He would say he could “turn a design into a goldmine”.

2) Is the product demonstrable?

When a consumer doesn’t have an item right in front of them to see, touch and hold, it’s not easy to create that sense of ownership that often makes people take the next step and buy. This is a major issue when you’re selling products or services on the Internet (or on TV). Billy was able to get around this hurdle by generating excitement through his enthusiasm, and eliciting that “wow” factor with his outrageous and memorable product demonstrations. Whatever your product or service might be, you have to be able to SHOW potential buyers what it can do for them and how it will make their lives easier. Whatever you need to add to your website that will allow people to visualize your capabilities (photos, testimonials, links to previous work, etc.) will also help you to get past this hurdle.

3) Does the product have mass appeal?

Again, this one seems pretty obvious. People have to like your product in order to want to buy it.

But what if someone is on the fence? When it came to marketing calls to action, Billy Mays pulled out all of the bad clichés:

But Wait – There’s More!
Call Now!
Triple Offer, Buy One, Get Two Free!

These make us laugh, sure. But calls to action can include incentives to buy. People love special offers, and there will be an emotional response and a sense of urgency, especially when there is a time limit or expiration date attached to your incentive. Strategies like these are proven to turn the indecisive into buyers. Does your website have a special offer, an incentive to buy/book? If not, perhaps you should consider adding one.

A final bit of simple but powerful advice from Billy Mays: sell good products that people really love. Regardless of the jokes and kidding about Billy’s in-your-face style, I don’t doubt that is what he felt that he did in his short time here on earth. Here is a good interview filmed by Fortune Magazine earlier this year, and may Billy Mays rest in peace:

Connecting with Moms Online: Shopping, Blogging and Networking

Posted on May 28, 2009 in Ecommerce, Online Branding, Social Media Marketing

Meet the Power Moms

Nielsen Online published a study this month on the online surfing and shopping habits of today’s moms. Defined as women between the ages of 25 and 54 with at least one child, these so-called Power Moms represent 19.2% of the online population. Why does Nielsen call this group the Power Moms? Because, due to their participation in social networking sites and the hundreds of blogs that cater to them, these women are proving to be increasingly influential in the world of online retail.

Nielsen divides their Power Moms into two categories: the Established Moms and the Newbie Moms. Between these two groups, there is significant difference in how they spend their time online. Established Moms, or those between the ages of 40 and 50 with three or more children at home, tend to be heavy online shoppers. Their number one destination of choice on the web is Shopzilla, and they are 92% more likely to visit this site than the average user. Target and Wal-Mart come in at number two and number three.

“Established Moms gravitate to online shopping destinations where they are likely to be receptive to
highly relevant promotions to allow her to indulge herself while saving on her family’s needs,” said
Jessica Hogue, research director, Nielsen Online. “However, marketers shouldn’t rule out the rising
prominence of social networking sites among this cohort, which is one of the fastest growing
demographics on Facebook.”

Newbie Moms, or moms between the ages of 25 and 34 with one or two children at home, include social networking sites among their most visited. Newbie Moms are 85% more likely to visit Facebook, and are more than twice as likely to visit Blogger than the average user.

“For Newbie Moms social networking is literally woven into their day-to-day existence,” said Ms. Hogue. “Newbie Moms use the Internet to gather information about everything from nursery décor to choosing the right pediatrician. As they navigate caring for a newborn, returning to work or managing a growing household, the Internet acts as a lifeline to answer worrisome middle-of-the-night questions and to build community. Many Newbie Moms today blog about their experiences and use social networks as an efficient way to quickly broadcast their latest pictures and family updates.”

Although Power Moms aged 39 to 54 are currently only 23% more likely than the average web user to participate in social networks, according to Facebook Insight, women between 40 and 50 years of age are their fastest growing demographic. So, the social network participation gap between the Established Moms and the Newbie Moms is getting narrower.

Nielsen Online has its own Power Mom blogger segment, which consists of over 10,000 mom-oriented blogs. Conversations about the economy and saving money make up over 12% of the total messages posted in March and April of 2009, up from eight percent in 2008. The online coupon revolution can probably be credited to the Power Mom bloggers and social networkers. Reviews and recommendations also make up a big part of online conversations.

“Mom bloggers review everything from beauty products to cars to inkjets, enabling marketers
unparalleled reach to their target consumers. In an increasingly connected world, moms seek the
wisdom of their online counterparts as trusted advisors,” said Ms. Hogue.

Here is a short video montage of what some of the moms in the Nielsen study had to say about the role that the Internet plays in their daily lives: Power Moms Video.

The Power Mom 50

Out of the 10,000 blogs monitored by Nielsen, they have identified what they call the Power Mom 50. These are blogs that Nielsen has recognized as the most influential in the mom-oriented blogosphere. The Power Mom 50 is determined by the number of blog posts, comments and incoming links, as tracked by Nielsen Buzzmetrics. Other metrics include the number of Twitter followers and ratings. The Power Mom 50 is further sub-divided into groups that include:

Savvy Spenders (sharing coupons and savings tips)
Mom Approved (ratings and review sites)
Queen Bee (tips on parenting, decor, etc.)
Mamastes (green living, yoga, etc.)
Tech Moms (technology news and information)
CEO Moms (working women)

The final group is called the Power Pack, or, what Nielsen refers to as the “Momfluentials”. These moms don’t fit into just one of the above-mentioned groups. Momfluentials have a huge following and a powerful online voice. The complete list of blogs and social networking sites included in the Power Mom 50 can be found here: Nielsen’s Power Mom 50.

Why all the fuss about the Power Moms? According to the Marketing to Moms Coalition, moms control 85% of household spending, and are worth more than $2 trillion to U.S. brands. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that 78% of mothers work, and the coalition study has determined that full-time working mothers use technology at the highest rates. Furthermore, moms are spending an average of three hours per day online, as opposed to their children’s average of two hours per day.

“Mothers, now more than ever, are using technology like video, blogs and wireless devices to multi-task through their busy days,” says Maria Bailey of BSM Media, industry expert and author of the book, Mom 3.0: Marketing with Today’s Mothers by Leveraging New Media & Technology. “2009 stands to produce a record number of tech-savvy mothers bridging devices together to create everyday solutions.”

Ecommerce for beauty products, household goods and food is projected to grow to $12 billion by 2011. Effectively connecting with Power Moms is essential for any company interested in endearing their products to this very vocal, brand-conscious and brand-loyal group of online shoppers.

Mother's Day Shopping Online in '09

Posted on April 28, 2009 in Ecommerce

Mother's Day Cookie According to a study commissioned by the National Retail Federation, a retail trade association, with data provided by BIGresearch, 18.2% of Mother’s Day Shoppers plan to buy their gifts online this year. While down somewhat from 2008, the average online shopper expects to spend a combined net average of $181.88 for Mother’s Day. This is 47% more than the combined net average for consumers across all retail channels. Overall, 14.6% of internet shoppers plan to spend more than they did in 2008, while two-thirds expect to spend the same as they did in last year. This compares to 7.2% of consumers across all channels planning to spend more this year.

A total of 42.4% of online shoppers anticipate buying jewelry (up slightly from 2008), compared with 27.8% of consumers in all channels combined. Furthermore, the average online jewelry shopper expects to spend a net average of $34.33, compared with $20.07 of consumers across all channels. Electronics and computer-related products, books, CDs, gift certificates, and spa services such as facials and massages are other categories that attract online shoppers.

“No one will forgo celebrating Mother’s Day because of the bad economy, but they will put careful thought into what they buy and how much they spend,” said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch. “Moms will understand that kids may be spending on a budget, so inexpensive, personal gifts will go a long way.”

Figures and charts from this study can be found here: BIGresearch, Consumer Intentions & Actions, APR-09.

And exactly who are these Mother’s Day internet shoppers? An online bank, EBillme, has demographic info from their quarterly Online Billing Index (with data collected by Javelin Strategy):

Gender: 24% of Males reported that they will spend more online for Mom this year compared to 17% of Females. 12% of Males will buy more for Mom this year, compared to 6% Females.

Income: Respondents from all income groups responded favorably to spending online for Mom this year.

Ethnicity: Those respondents who identified themselves as ethnic reported a higher likelyhood of shopping online for Mother’s Day this year. African Americans 32%, Asians 31%, followed by Hispanics at 24% and Caucasians at 17%.

Marital Status: If you are single, it’s more likely that you will buy Mom a gift online this year. 27% of respondents who indicated that they are single stated that they will shop online for a Mother’s Day gift this year. This is compared to 24% who “Live with a Partner” and 19% who are Married.

Region: If you live in the Western USA, you are likely to buy online for Mom this year. 25% of those who live in the west indicated that online is where they plan to buy their gifts, compared to 22% in the North East, 20% in the South and 14% in the Mid-West. That those who live in the South indicated that they will increase their spending on Mother’s Day the most this year.

The study also found that about 20% of all Mother’s Day shoppers will be buying online (very close to the NRF’s 18.2% figure). Further, 8% of consumers plan to spend more on the internet this quarter (as opposed to last quarter).

“The slight uptick in online spending this quarter is further evidence that the online retail sector is better withstanding the economic conditions,” says Bruce Cundiff, Director of Payments Research and Consulting for Javelin Strategy & Research. “Overall, consumers are still spending more responsibly and with caution.”

In summary, Moms and Stepmothers of online shoppers will fare best this year. Of all regular internet shoppers, 80% that plan to celebrate Mother’s Day will buy a gift compared with just 62.4% of consumers across all channels.