SmartMarketer, July 2001
In this, my first SmartMarketer column, I want to begin at the beginning – the beginning of marketing that is – retail. Let’s face it, retail has not been the flavour of the marketing month for some time now, and jokes about the difficulties that retail marketing presents to advertising creatives are not unheard of. For those not in the thick of it, retail simply lacks the cachet of marketing’s sexier, more recent alternatives – e-commerce, affiliate marketing, electronic CRM, email marketing and so on. But retailers have a lot to teach us, and one of the great ironies of modern e-marketing is that some of the fundamental basics of successful retailing are now more measurable and manageable than ever before – and yet ignored or given part a passing glimpse by too many marketers.
Ask any good retailers about their customers’ in-store habits, and they will tell you, at the very least:
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How and from where customers enter and exit the shop;
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Where customers go within the shop and in what order;
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What is the relative popularity of the various zones or departments within the shop;
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What are the most and least popular items;
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How long people stay, and in which areas;
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How to attract more customers;
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Daily / weekly / monthly and yearly patterns and trends.
All of this is used to manage optimum product placement, store layout, advertising, point-of-sale promotions, price-points and so on. Rich, valuable information gained from time on the shop floor and good management and observation. There are hundreds of publications on this subject, and even the most high-level retailing executive, far removed from the till at the coal face, will be able to tell you the basics of sound in-store management.
So think about it. As a SmartMarketer reader, you’ve probably got some form of marketing going on, and in some way measuring its ROI. How many emails were sent out? How many replied? Which worked best, html or text? What are the price-benefits of snail-mail versus e-mail? Which call to action had the best results? Stop me if you heard this before!
But what of your website? That’s not a weekly electronic newsletter or a TV2 flight during Drew Carey. It’s potentially your most interactive, information-rich, 24/7 salesforce. RedSheriff research consistently shows that one of the most common online activities of both business and personal surfers is checking out companies, services and products. People are looking at your site RIGHT NOW. What do you know about them? What are they looking at? And no, looking at the inaccurate logfile page impressions reports dumped on your desk at month’s end by your IT dept doesn’t count – that’s like using a dipstick to check your transmission – it can be an early-warning system, but not a diagnostic tool.
Now go do your homework. Hassle those propeller heads and call your site hosters. In the next SmartMarketer, we’ll compare notes on using your website traffic stats to manage, not just measure (click here for that column).