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Keeping Retail Social, Fresh and Real: Situational E-Commerce

November 3, 2011 By 5 Comments

Just as we saw with the music and the publishing industry, retailing has had to evolve. This is not an easy task to acomplish within a multi billion-dollar industry because the supporting infrastructure around retail, alone, has its’ own eco-system.

We are all familiar with the arguments surrounding the publishing industry that reading needs to be tangible. To hold something, actually turn pages, smell the paper and ink and browsing bookshops offer compelling reasons against change. Ultimately, efficiencies, convenience and price have prevailed.

The difference with retail is that ‘shopping’ is social and personal in ways that books and music aren’t. Fashion, for example is tied to our ego and our individual shape. We need to both gain our peers’ approval as well as ensure it flatters and fits. When we do buy online we consider it more of a purchase or transaction instead of really shopping.

Even with the many ‘social apps and tools’ that accompany our ecommerce, we fail to capture the essence of shopping as a social activity. However, just as with music and books, more and more of us are transacting in unexpected and new ways; and as a result our high streets are at risk of dying if they fail to adapt. Ecommerce is fast becoming a necessary element of a retailer’s integrated sales strategy.

But looking at this as purely “brick and mortar versus online” risks missing a trick and discounting the social or situational context. We are not people who live in either a physical world or a digital world, but rather social beings that traverse the two. The proliferation of smart phones and the affordability of data brings new possibilities to truly marry social shopping, situational or impulse shopping, and ecommerce. We cannot look at this as either commerce, or ecommerce or m-commerce but rather as retail. What needs to be done to ensure our products are made available to our customers in a way that induces profitable sales?

Experience, mood and association are always going to be an important attribute of branding. Putting your product in front of people where they are most likely to feel the compulsion, or impulse, to buy will provide a competitive advantage. This may be physically, or virtually. The ability to tell a story and bring a product to life through social tools within a physical, social context and then provide a way for our audience to act on their impulses allows us to reinvent the way we consume.

Retail is evolving. Elements of brick & mortar, ecommerce, affiliate style curation, social and situational ecommerce will all play a part in the next generation. You cannot take the social out of shopping.

What are your thoughts on where retail is heading?

 

Photo by David Blackwell

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Two Clients, One Company and Managing All Three

October 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

The following is a guest post written by Katherine Payne, one of tcg: agency’s best Social Media Specialists and Account Managers.

Working with a client as an agency, and within the department of another company, is always educational, but they are always looking for one thing above all else: respect. Whether that means having an agency that respects their wishes, their time, or their product, they want to make sure you value them before they return the favor. That should be self-explanatory even if your only experience in business has been working a lemonade stand.

But what do you do when the client  you’ve been working with turns into two – with two different sets of client goals and two different ways they demand respect?

That happened to me once. I had been working with the public relations department of a company when the marketing department had begun to get involved. We ended up working with both. Normally, you would expect that the rhythm of this sort of relationship would have been established long before we showed up: the public relations people and the marketing people would understand what boundaries ought not to be crossed.

Instead, we found ourselves suddenly working in conjunction with a group with similar if not conflicting goals, and with a department who was not entirely pleased to have another set of digital marketing initiatives to approve. We had to establish an entirely new set of relationships and an entirely new understanding of what was now within our boundaries of control. After all, we now had two clients to please…one of which we hadn’t even met before!

Ultimately, the relationship has worked out in the best interest of all three of us because we remembered a few simple rules:

  1. Treat every party with respect.
  2. Know that no one is an enemy. It’s important not to take sides.
  3. Err on the side of humbleness i.e. ask for the right to post on a blog rather than assuming you can. This will make the whole process a lot smoother.
  4. Understand the history of the relationships you’re walking into. If there is tension between two decision makers, take this into account as you mediate between them.

Rest assured that if you are liked by both parties, you are just that much more valuable to each. And how can that ever be a bad thing?

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Managing a Digital Footprint

June 28, 2011 By 2 Comments

This is a guest post written by Alex Shippee, and reproduced from the website for #SMchat.

A “digital footprint” is what your presence on the Internet communicates to those who find it. Google is the usual starting point, but more and more people are using monitoring services or going straight to the big social platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, your blog, etc. All of this is becoming a necessity because of one inescapable truth about the Internet Age:

You will be Googled. In fact, you most likely already have been. Family members, co-workers, friends, and employers will all be interested in how you show up on a search engine. And if you are a brand, or have a client who is, then you can add “customers” to that list as well.

© Clare Munn 2008-2011

This isn’t a bad thing. Instead of seeing it as “work,” try to think of it as an “opportunity.” It is common for our clients, some of whom are new to social media, to be concerned about “opening themselves up.” They fear negative comments, or being the victim of a smear campaign by their competitors. The truth is, people are already talking online and it’s not possible to curb it. Choosing not to participate hands all the power to the consumers, or competitors. Instead, you want to fan those flames in the right direction.

One of the most valuable and rewarding elements of the work tcg does is provide their clients with real-time, contextual intelligence by monitoring and analyzing their digital footprint before we start our work. We take it a step further than wanting to know what people are saying about you and reputation management; we turn a digital footprint into a valuable asset.

Managing a digital footprint means taking responsibility and ownership of your brand. You start with the simple steps first and sign up for Twitter or start a blog. Then, you go one step further and decide you want to attach your name, or brand, to good content. From there begins the hustle of growing an audience now that you’re easy for them to find.

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It is still Marketing

August 3, 2009 By 3 Comments

Author : Alasdair Munn

tcg: The Communication Group

Paul Likes Pics

For the past few months I have been writing about a vision of social media where social networks are not the only playing fields and where social media’s place within the marketing mix does not exist entirely within “online promotion”.

Understanding that people have different learning styles and different starting points, I used pen, paper and elementary venn diagrams in a meeting with “traditional” marketers to illustrate where the “online” and “social media” elements fit into their marketing world.

Although simplistic and elementary, they helped them get over their initial block as to the “why, where and how” of social media.

Writing down the “five P’s of marketing” I asked them to circle where they saw social media having a role to play within the marketing mix. Below is a tidied up representation of what they produced.

5_ps_mkting_trad1

Taking the same “five P’s” I added my interpretation of where social media tools and thinking apply to the marketing mix.

5_ps_mkting_new

This opened up the discussion as to how an integrated marketing plan, using “traditional” and “new” tools adds value to an organisation. It was able to break down the resistance to social media. After further discussion, they could see how having access to real-time information and knowledge adds value when used in conjunction with retrospective measurement and information gathering tools. It also allowed the penny to drop that opening up and fostering collaboration and engagement can actually help grow an organisations IP, not loose it.

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