Recently I gave a webinar to about 30 companies who are getting into e-commerce. They have a large, established customer base but more and more are seeing value from offering many of their products online, as opposed from buying from a Sales Rep.
The real goal is to get the reps more efficient by putting lower margin items online, and have reps spend their time on the larger, more consultative, opportunities.
Here’s a few of the tips I gave them during my presentation on how to properly market their webstores.
Channels
Your Website – This is an obvious one but a few had started with completely separate URLs for their store. Integrate the store with your regular website, and link product/item descriptions to the appropriate item over in the store.
Sales Force – With large, and strong, sales teams, these companies need to ensure that their customer facing folks are on board. But, aside from doing the legwork convincing reps that this is in their own interest, they should also:
- Move low margin items to be “Store Only”
- Include a link to the store in email footers
- Include items in the store that don’t have pricing, but are items that must be quoted by a rep
Email Marketing
These companies send a lot of blast type email, so they know how to craft a message, but some are simply including a link to their main storefront in emails to customers.
- “We have a store” doesn’t work
- Be Focused with the message
- Highlight products in Newsletters/Tech Tips
- Drive to a “Landing Page” (including an store item)
- Should be integrated with current email program
- Allows for more “news” as product line expands
- Add rules based drip marketing
Segmentation
Segmentation when thinking about your webstore may be different than normal. Breaking down by industry, or region, no longer matters.
- Large Existing Customers
- Can get value from a store if it allows information on ordering history, cases, etc
- Need to be able to purchase at pre-negotiated rates
- Small Existing Customers
- Store is focused on these customers
- Want detailed information, Quick Purchase
- Set expectations on process following purchase
- Recent Customers
- Use Store Promotions at time of Initial Sale
- Drive to store for additional training and other items
- Leads and Prospects
- Initial Training, Stand Alone Software
- Store is primarily a research tool
- New Avenue for lead generation via:
- Shopping Networks
- Natural Search
SEO and Inbound Marketing
We can all do a better job and getting our site found.
- Extended Natural Language Descriptions
- Feature Lists
- Images should click through to products
- Blog Articles/Tech Tips on store products
- Proper Use of Meta Tags, Alt Image Text etc
- Limit Flash Animations
- Subscribe to Online Product Catalogs
- Froogle
- NexTag
- Shopping.com
- Shopzilla
Paid Advertising
- Works better for Training and Software (in this industry)
- What works changes over time
- Focus on Geography
- Ensure you use an analytics service (Google)
- PPC vs Pay for Conversion
- Ads lead to landing pages to convert immediately
- Ads and Landing pages are very focused
Focus on Conversion
- Focus on your Site Conversion Rate
- # Buyers/# Visitors
- Every section of your site should lead to:
- Product in Store
- Contact me Form
- Download Information Form
Drip Marketing
- Use it to segment your customers by interest
- Use it to test messaging
- Use it to time offers to your customers
- 3 months after purchase – Product A
- 6 months after purchase – Product B
- 12 months after purchase – Service A
- Cart Abandonment Emails
Who Owns the Store
Treat your store as a Sales Rep
- It needs to be productive
- It needs to be fed traffic
- It needs to be informative
- It needs to be easy
- It needs a quota
It’s not “Just Marketing”
There’s a few bullets to think about. There’s a lot behind those simple lines of text. If you’d like to have a conversation about your e-commerce desires, send us a message.
