E-commerce Link : It’s All Social
Tapping into the promise of digital marketing is easier than you think
September 2009 By Jeff Molander
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For most of us, digital marketing and e-commerce have yet to bear fruit in times of slow consumer spending and record unemployment. But digital is providing remarkably significant value for some brands. These leaders are not gratuitously rushing into realms like Facebook or Twitter to "engage" as much as they're taking a step back, breathing deeply and ultimately finding their ways back to tried-and-true practices that can be significantly enhanced by digital. For them, staying grounded in achieving business objectives is proving to be the difference between success and failure in today's challenged economy.
The sooner brands realize all of the Web is a social media, the sooner they move toward e-business success. Think about how we've used digital media since the beginning: instant messaging, e-mail, mobile SMS/texting. We're using it socially. Yes, 10 years later Web 2.0 is much easier for people to use today, but the resulting hysteria around its "newness" often causes us to handcuff ourselves rather than integrate digital strategies in meaningful ways.
Think of it this way: Most consumers have been using the Web to shop, share photos and music, compare prices, and complain about products or services for more than a decade. This pattern is not new nor is it reserved to younger "social media" shoppers.
Free at Last
Removing the "mind shackles" and accepting that the entire Web is a social media are giving a select few organizations the ability to create increased loyalty among customers, control costs and drive acquisition in slow times. They're overcoming today's most pressing challenges from cost containment to delivering goods and services.
Most marketers claim that ownership and measurement of digital and social media are what prevents it from really shining. Namely, we can't settle on who within the organization is responsible for it or how to measure it. But if we agree that all digital media is used socially, then we likely can agree it's a conduit for everything else. Once we wrap our minds around the reality of all digital media being social, it becomes easier to see what's honestly new about our environment.
Get Past the Hype
Today's exceptional marketers are digging deep into their direct response and retailing roots— integrating digital marketing in ways that drive value within marketing and across the enterprise. They're acting on this new realization and turning it into profits.
"Too often we assume that the value we're looking to extract from digital marketing and e-commerce is a new, complex or technical one," says Keven Wilder, senior consultant at Chicago-based retail consulting firm McMillan Doolittle.
Indeed, if we're not already assuming this, we're being told so by vendors who promise a silver bullet. But according to Wilder, and others who've been in the marketing game for decades, the truth is we already have most of the answers.
"Retailing and B-to-B marketing have fundamentally changed due to profound events in 2008, but the fundamentals of success remain largely intact," says Wilder, who adds that her clients are finding digital to be less of a cure-all and more of a secret weapon in times of decreased spending.
"'Fixing things' for most struggling marketers involves less digital wizardry, Twitter tweets and Facebook pages and more of what we've always known works. This isn't to say that digital isn't helpful … It certainly is, but it's not the make-or-break strategy that many marketers believe it to be," says Wilder.
From vacation time share to insurance and health care marketers, digital also is looking a lot like traditional. Case in point: Traditional contract publishing—where marketers put content in the front seat as they "soft sell" customers—is making a big comeback. According to New Media Age and Junta42, marketing investment in digital content strategies is experiencing an uptick. No longer reserved to print publications, valuable content that's already being produced is working to pull Web searchers into the sales funnel via mainstream media like blogs and e-mail.
A New Form of Packaging
As digital grabs the headlines with hopeful stories of social networking sites like Facebook rushing to crack the code of friendships—to see how friends interact with each other online and with ads (i.e., is someone more likely to click on an ad because a friend did), so as to optimize ads and "monetize" these relationships, Wilder is helping marketers cut costs by restructuring products into "solution sets" that provide a new form of value to customers.
Sarath Samarasekera, CEO of Shopster eCommerce, has built a successful B-to-B e-commerce services company on the notion of improving existing retail infrastructure. His company claims the world's first and largest online "merchant network" allowing, among other things, sellers to rapidly remerchandise— create product "solution sets" overnight by leveraging virtual inventory of other merchants. (Disclosure: I'm a board member of Shopster eCommerce.)
Similar to popular Web affiliate programs, Shopster essentially creates a means for marketers to open new sales channels. Almost like a LinkedIn for sellers of products and services, it links sellers with other reputable sellers who are looking to diversify their product assortments just as Wilder describes.
"We are lowering cost of operations, providing a convenient 'matchmaking' service and taking advantage of trusted suppliers who reliably drop-ship goods directly from their own warehouse to customers of their merchant partners," says Samarasekera, who draws a distinction between commissioned affiliate programs and profit-focused drop-ship arrangements.
It seems ironic that companies like Shopster seem to be greasing the wheels of e-commerce and store-based selling by providing a kind of social network for merchants. Samarasekera admits that being in the B-to-B realm isn't quite as sexy as hawking consumer goods. But it sure is fun working behind the scenes to get the job done.
"Immediacy and simplicity is driving retail success today. Figure out what works, earn the business and grow from there," says Samarasekera.
Jeff Molander is a digital strategist, public speaker and author of the forthcoming book, "Ignorance Economy: The Secret Principles of Digital Marketing Success," where he challenges current digital marketing practices and helps businesses connect them to strategic goals. He can be reached at jeff@molanderassoc.com and blogs at www.jeffmolander.com.
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