Caro Consulting

Avenue A | Razorfish Releases 2006 Digital Media Outlook Report

Last week Avenue A | Razorfish launched its 2006 Digital Media Outlook Report. You can download the report at Avenue A | Razorfish Points of View.

There are several interesting articles highlighting different aspects, although there are some interesting tidbits I plan to share over the next few weeks.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/interactive/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002074916

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3587661

http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/tech/internet/10270388.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=40279

Shop.org - Marketing for Pure-Plays: How to Drive Cost-Effective Traffic

My blog report on the Shop.org event would not be complete without a post on the session I moderated. Marketing for Pure-Plays: How to Drive Cost Effective Traffic. I was joined by two fabulous panelists: Gary Lindsey from eToys and Scott Savitz from Shoebuy.com.

By now, everyone knows the basics to driving cost effective traffic, so we wanted to mix in some not so commonly thought of ideas. We also challenged the attendees to add some of their own. Please feel free to submit your comments as well.

I kicked off the session by describing the Customer Experience Journey: Attract, Convert, Service, and Extend. In other words, to be successful the focus can't only be spent on driving traffic to the website. All companies, pure-play or multi-channel, B2B or B2C, must address the needs of their prospects and customers as they make the journey to an actual purchase.

In one of the other sessions, Travelocity spoke about how they follow their customers from the beginning to the end of their journey (this time literally). They attract someone to the Travelocity site through an ad about a great deal to Las Vegas. The conversion is not only a purchase of airline tickets, the customer rents a car, and reserves a hotel room as well. When she arrives to her destination she receives fabulous service. When she returns, Snapfish (a marketing partner) brings her back to the Travelocity site with an offer to post all of her photos and receive the first 10 prints free. At that time, she opts-in to the travel alert email and extends her relationship with Travelocity.

So what did we recommend?

Attract

You know about...

• Search Engine Optimization
• Pay Per Click
• Shopping Channels
• Affiliate Marketing

Have you thought about?

• Press Releases - Position your company as the industry pundit. Communicate frequently and be relevant. Results: a BIG interview (and your SEO guy will be happy with all the links).

• Marketing Partners - Visa, American Express, Bill Me Later. Potential marketing partners may be sitting next to you right now. Results: Increased traffic and sales.

Convert

You know about...

• Promotions
• Free Shipping

Have you thought about?

• Website Optimization - Low hanging fruit flourishes on your website. Use a good analytics tool for landing page and shopping cart testing and tuning, and internal search optimization. Results: Increase conversion rates overnight.

• Print Catalog - Drive offline consumers online to purchase. Segment the database and track by segment. Results: Order rates and order value increase.

Service

You know about...

• FAQs
• Contact Us Forms
• 800#s

Have you thought about?

• Survey Your Customer - Let your customers tell you how to market. Send our end of transaction surveys; create an area for product reviews. Results: Increased loyalty and repeat purchases.

• Research and Testing - Recruit from your own purchasers – give them a discount for their efforts. Communicate with them directly on an ongoing basis. Results: More cost-effective campaigns and less costly mistakes.

Extend

You know about...

• Email
• Direct Mail
• Cross Sell

Have you thought about?

• Personalization / Segmentation - Birthday specials, private sales, product alerts. Make customers feel special – surprise and delight them. Results: Increased open rate, increased conversion rate.

• Product Alerts - Out of stock items, seasonal items, collectibles. Encourage the visitor to opt-in to receive an email when the product comes available. Results: Target audience ready to buy when the product launches or is back in stock.

The audience mentioned several other ideas, one of which was sweepstakes. The panelists felt it was a good method to drive traffic, but unless it was an extremely relevant giveaway, the traffic did not stick.

What would you add to this list?

Norcross Business Association - Small Business Marketing Strategy

This week I had the pleasure of meeting with the Norcross Business Association. They asked me to speak for about an hour about Internet Marketing Strategy from a small business perspective. An hour? Where do I start?

I decided to stick to the basics:

• Create a marketing plan - never start any project without a strong foundation.
• Make sure your website works - you can spend all the money in the world on marketing, if your website does not convert the traffic into sales, you might as well throw the money in the trash.
• Start with demand driven advertising - there are lots of ways to drive traffic to your website. Many of which I like to refer to as "spray and pray" advertising. For this meeting, I decided to stick to a more demand driven approach, search engine optimization - which also gave me an excuse to mention next week's AiMA Search Marketing event.
• Capture the visitors - industry standard statistics say a good site converts 2-4% into sales. This means 96-98% of your visitors are leaving the website without identifying themselves. If they are not ready to buy, give them a reason to leave their information - offer a newsletter sign up.

Oh, and did I mention the fabulous location for this event? Blue Moon Cycle. The motorcycle aficionados are probably green with envy right now. For the rest of you, it's definitely worth a visit.