In a White Paper, former FDA Commissioner Dr. David A. Kessler shared how the Food Industry has developed, marketed and promoted products to the American people. One of the stories he describes is how Roger Smith who was the Vice President for Research and Development at Nabisco developed the most iconic cookie brands: Oreos and Chips Ahoy!
Kessler describes the key insight that Smith reached while working at Nabisco – was that “no single aspect of food – neither one ingredient nor one sensory property – gets us to like something. The key drivers are multisensory.”
Over my online marketing career and my focus around social and mobile, I’ve been promulgating “Surround-Sound” marketing. Surround-Sound marketing is a holistic state where the collective marketing from all online channels support an alignment with consumers and engages them wherever they are on the web or on mobile. This also includes a unified focus on all of your online channels to help monetize social channels by leveraging years of core e-commerce marketing efforts.
Surround-Sound marketing requires that all your channels work as one, especially now at a time when the current economic conditions leave your business little room for margin give-back and/or profit loss.
Facts that back up the need for Surround-Sound Marketing…
- A Radica study indicates that nearly 2.4 billion users worldwide have social networking accounts in 2010, with an anticipated growth to 3.9 billion by the end of 2015.
- In 2010 more than 107 trillion emails were sent, according to The New York Times.
- Estimates from a recent Morgan Stanley Trend Report indicate that 50% of all ecommerce transactions will be done on a Smartphone by the year 2014.
- And Gartner says, “For the customer, social marketing and marketing applications that help customers through the decision-making steps of the buying process will be fully accomplished through a mobile device.”
But unfortunately in the last few years’ customer engagement has morphed into a communication form where merchants have disrespected their universe of consumers.
Here’s how and why…have you ever asked your consumer how they would like to have a conversation with your business? Or, what merchandise offers or content they would like to see from your business?
If you would ask, what would their answers be?
Have you asked and have they told you where they would like to see your offers in their online environs including social and mobile? Do you have the pulse on their answers?
Or have you fallen back to what has always been comfortable? To play it safe and do what you have always done. To only focus your marketing that directs consumers back to your website or spray them with a fire hose of product offers that you have decided are the ones your consumers want from you.
With all your different communication channels like email, PPC, Affiliate, retail, online advertising, direct mail and other online tactics driving one to many communications conversations with you consumer, how likely are you to have one unifying voice? How likely have you included your consumer’s wants and wishes into your communication?
It has never been more important than today to take a holistic view of your marketing and dismantle the marketing silos that have been established within your organization.
Like Dolby® Digital Sound in a movie, the experience of the crystal clear sound captivates its audience and drives the user experience. The very same thing should happen with your online campaigns.
When you apply Surround-Sound marketing approaches to align communication across all your channels and speak with one brand voice, you will almost immediately become more effective at reaching and engaging the consumer. These communications are not only effective in engaging the consumer. They will lead to channel monetization too.
So following Surround-Sound marketing methodologies…
- Remove the clutter of cross-purpose channel marketing
- Rise above dumping more email volume and frequency at your consumers by enabling your consumers to self-select themselves into content/offers that are of interest to them and allow these content/offers to be delivered where and when they want them (social and through mobile)
- Rise above the fact that on average you have over 90% defection from your website visits (Yes 9/10+ visitors defect from your home page) by providing a more customized consumer home page experience driven by your consumer
- Rise above the fact that on average your business is losing 70%+ shopping cart abandons according to MarketingSherpa and stop believing that your consumer enjoys being followed once they leave your site
- Rise above the lost opportunity cost created by poorly designed PPC/Adword programs and poorly designed landing pages without any social monetization strategies
Consumers need the ability to decide and to tell you what messages they want to see and where they want to see them in any and all of your channels. Today’s consumer demands more control over what communications they receive and where they want to see them.
As Tina Stewart VP of Marketing at Lyris says… “It’s all about developing a message and making sure it is not seen as just noise. With Adblockers Instant blocks, such as spam filters, intelligent inboxes, unlikes, etc., you need to give your audience an easier and faster way to stay engaged with you or you just simply risk disengagement.”
But how do you successfully engage customers in a dialogue so they pay attention to your offers or content? It starts by knocking down and eliminating your program silos and by realizing that you must move to developing only one voice for your BRAND. You must unify your campaigns across all channels with a consistent look, feel, and one voice.
At ShoppeSimple our Surround-Sound marketing system is designed to enable you to RISE ABOVE and move your business to an alignment with your consumers. We enable your consumer to self-select what merchandise offers/content they want to see and where they want these offers to be delivered (any social or mobile platform) with one simple click. We provide an integrated Surround-Sound marketing system for your business, which unifies all of your online marketing into one voice. The results speak for themselves.
Real Results…
One client, generating $8 Million in sales (annualized) or around 10% of their online sales, has renewed with us twice. Another client just renewed after seeing great matchback results with a rebuy rate lift of 38% and an Average Order Value lift of 32%. Still another recent renewal increased their frequency from 1 order per year to 2X+ on their active customer group.
With ShoppeSimple you can achieve results like this too, by RISING ABOVE these common online challenges and engaging your consumers on their terms using Surround Sound marketing methodologies.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Just send me an email at jeff@shoppesimplenetwork.com to start our conversation!