In retail, content is a collective noun for many things. Today these many things have many names - such as images, assets, product information, SKUs, barcodes, EANs, merchandising, pricing, sales collateral, training, inventory, catalogues, user guides, warranty details etc. Yet as you become multi-channel it all becomes important content; and it is all very important to your multi-channel success.

Why is content important? There are many reasons, but I’ll highlight the top three – each one strong enough to take content seriously.

1. If you don’t have the information people are looking for, they will go elsewhere to get it. This is the case in physical stores but is even more so for your online presence. The 50% of people who research online prior to buying go to sites with the content that will satisfy their needs – whether that be images, video, product specifications, ratings and reviews, price, warranty information, user guides etc. These sites will influence why they buy and from where. Great content will help ensure you are one of the influencing sites.

2. Good, relevant and unique content will help with your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). For the search engines to consider your web pages relevant to a search, the content on that page must be relevant. The more content, the more specific, the more unique – the better the result.

3. Your web presence is as important as your physical presence and an extension of your brand. If any of the following are important to your brand or to your stores - service, advice, range, convenience, expertise, stock, quality etc - then it should be online.

Develop and manage your content as an important asset for the business.

It is important to develop your content for success in the multi-channel world. Some tips:

1. Start now. The earlier you start the greater the lead on your competitors and the greater the impact on your SEO.

2. Externalise all your content. This means making it suitable for all audiences – particularly external customers. Avoid short codes, internal language and jargon, and poor copy.

3. Describe your content well. Understand how search computers will read and understand your content, and ensure that you cater for this audience. For example. consider the way you name content (images, video etc) and the words used (consider keyword density).

4. Structure your content. Develop your taxonomy and content database to best represent your content assets. Structure the content consistently and try to separate data into unique fields wherever possible to enable good publishing, search and comparison for the user.

5. Create unique content. Author, produce, design and create content which is unique to your site. It will be favoured by the customer and the search engines.

Content is king. It will be the important differentiator moving forward. Start to tackle the challenge now and the benefits will come.

Paul Marshall

Lasoo

There are some very clear trends in retail today. There is a proliferation of new channels and new competitors, increasing the complexity of marketing. This is compounded by the significant fragmentation of media now delivering sub-optimal ROI on marketing spend. Furthermore the expectations of the customer have also increased.

On the bright side, the availability and quality of data has increased, and for retail marketers that is good news. But only if you can get it, understand it and use it… wisely.

To succeed in the multichannel world of retailing, you need to ensure you gain a single, holistic view of your customer, regardless of which channel they are engaging. This is not an easy or fast thing to do, so you need to start now. The following steps need to be considered to do this:

1. Familiarise yourself, if you haven’t already, with best practice procedures, practices, strategies and tactics around using customer data in retail. Ensure you understand the privacy legislation and how that applies to your business.

2. Map out and agree, as a whole business (not a single channel or division), what information you will collect, how you will collect it and, most importantly, how you will use this customer information this in your business. It is better to map out the complete picture now, even if you don’t plan to take advantage of this until a point in the future. Include how you will measure customer value - by channel, segment and in total.

4. Lay the right technology foundations for a single customer view. This means ensure you design and build your customer database accordingly. It needs to be owned by the business and not by a channel. It needs to be designed to interface with all inputs and outputs. The technology and design must cater for tomorrow’s channels and programs and not just today’s. A heuristic view of a customer across your organisation and channels is the goal.

5. Map out how you will collect. You will always need to consider the customer value and why they will give you information. A mix of activities will need to be planned to collect information and it will be an ongoing activity to continue to refine and manage this information. This may include competitions, loyalty value, features, functionality and content. And it must be across your different channels.

6. Start collecting - the earlier, the better. The permission of a customer to communicate with you is a valuable asset now and in the future. It is also an asset that will be more difficult and more competitive to build in the future. Good luck.

Paul Marshall

Lasoo.com.au

If you have added, or are about to add, online shopping to your business, your multichannel journey has only just begun. You need to now move to cross-channel retailing. What is the difference?

Multi-channel is simply that; running more than one channel to sell, market, service or deliver. Cross-channel however is “the coordinated use of multiple channels to gain market share, grow revenue and profits, create a differentiated experience and increase customer loyalty.” It is where the real business benefits are delivered.

The evolution from Multichannel to cross-channel can be broken into three phases:

Phase one – Multi-channel development.

This is really about having a portfolio of channels in which to sell, service, market or distribute. For example you may have an eCommerce website, or you may have a call centre to take orders over the phone. In this phase however there is no synchronisation between the channels. The channels operate in silos, the business is product focussed and channel focussed and the marketing is campaign focussed.

Phase two – Multichannel coordination – cross-channel retailing

Here the links start being made. Marketing campaigns are beginning to be synchronised across channels. Testing and measuring multi-touch media and communication strategies are a regular occurrence and you start to build up a picture of your customer across channels. You may be coordinating across channels in areas of delivery and customer service. For example buying online, picking up in store. Channels evolve to start collaborating at a technology level and a job/responsibility level.

Phase three – Cross-channel optimisation

This is where you will truly have one business, one view of your customer, one overarching strategy; played out through a well synchronised set of strategies and tactics using the many channels (and their unique advantages) available to you. This phase is all about customer focus; a single, holistic and heuristic customer view, regardless of the communication channel. You will be creating unique customer experiences through the cross-channel value proposition and providing unique benefits through the use of integrated channels.

While this is definitely a journey and will take time and resources, you should be planning for it today. In your technology, your internal communications, your staff roles, responsibilities and performance measures. It will pay big dividends and there is a bigger prize for those that get to the end faster. Where are you today?

Paul Marshall - CEO

Lasoo.com.au

Following on from ensuring your retail marketing messages are both Accessible and Available (where and when people are looking), this article deals with the Applicability of that message to the recipient. Applicability, or relevance, is a key ingredient to effective digital marketing.

We all know that our messages are not applicable to everyone who gets them. The blunt instrument of mass media has meant that in order to get to those who we are targeting, we need to get to a lot more. Therefore there are many people out there getting irrelevant messages. It is all part of the famous advertising waste.

In the digital world, to be a successful marketer, you cannot have a mass audience message. It needs to be targeted. And more importantly, behind the veneer of a well-targeted message must be the substance (hereafter called content) to back it up - content that is relevant to each targeted consumer. Starting with search as an example, you can only appear high in search results if your messages and content are relevant to that search. It is even difficult (and more expensive) to pay to get into the search results if you do not have relevant information to take (link) the searcher to. If your advertising is completely relevant, then it magically transforms into information – rather than advertising.

So how do you build relevance into your message and your content for each target customer? It’s not easy, but there are tools and disciplines available today to achieve this. The key to these tools is scalability. If you need an individual message targeted for each consumer, then all of your costs will be eroded creating each of those uniquely crafted messages, unless you crate them dynamically.

Google allows for Dynamic Keyword insertion, which helps with the relevance of your creative, but not so much with your content. Some enterprise email targeting solutions allow for dynamic content insertion into specific email segments. There are advanced site tools to dynamically personalise the pages on your website as a user journeys through; based on what you know about them and how they are behaving.

Once you have a method of automatically generating messages you then need to match that up with how you target them. At your disposal are the current methods of keyword targeting, demographic targeting (network behavioural targeting), onsite behavioural targeting, day-parting (time targeting), technology targeting (eg – ads just for iPhones or Firefox) and geographic targeting. The important thing to understand is that this is now a well understood and mature business practice for online marketers. And it should be for your business also.

Now that I’ve finished with the three As, I’ve thought of a fourth. It’s one that should be close to your heart – Accountability. Next week I shall look at this new (and final) ‘A’ – Accountable marketing. This is something that the digital space makes easier. Until then, happy selling.

Paul Marshall
Executive Director
Salmat Digital
www.lasoo.com.au

I have been looking into the vast number of options available for retailers to move into the ecommerce space. It is a daunting task to understand your businesses requirements, let alone who will best meet them. even choosing between a licensed, hosted or SaaS model requires some significant forsignt into the future of your eCommerce business.

From the chair of the marketer, the key things to evaluate are:

1. Content management capability - content is still king
2. Site tools - you must have to tools (or at least be able to integrate them in) to engage the customer in order to convert
3. Site optimisation - your site must have a platofrm that works for optimisation and not against
4. Customer understanding & relevance -
5. Conversion - ensure you can improve the end game
6. Social media integration - it’s not going away so plan for it
7. Performance marketing tools - search, email etc need to be fully integrated into the platform
8. Cross channel -  synchronicity and integration with your other channels
9. Flexibility & integration - the key to longevity and performance and true multi-channel integration

Thoughs?

Paul

Following on from ensuring your marketing messages are Accessible where people are looking, as addressed in the previous accessible marketing article; these messages must also be Available at the time people are looking.

In the traditional offline retail store, people are looking during your opening hours and therefore you are “available”. However online researchers and shoppers do not restrict their research behaviour to store hours, instead they are looking 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So, unless your marketing messages are accessible at a product level (remembering that this is predominantly how people research) and can be discovered every minute of every day, you are missing out on prospective customers.

With traditional stores, there was no availability conundrum. Stores were 100% available (open) during the time people would look in the store (shopping hours). However, it is impossible to get the same 100% availability through traditional media; due to logistics, cost and the nature of offline media.

So the paradigm of ‘Availability’ under traditional media and with traditional channels, was based around two key instruments

- opening hours; and

- promotional campaigns.

Opening Hours – online must be always open

The online behaviour of prospective customers changes this paradigm. Opening hours for a retailer online (whether a customer is buying or just researching) should be 24/7. This 100% availability is a significant change from the 33% availability (9-5, 7 days a week) current stores have. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to achieve online.

Promotional campaigns – re-think your marketing messages for online

The difficult thing for retailers to achieve is producing the information the consumer is seeking in order to make a decision and making it available 24/7. This is where the traditional marketing behaviour of promotional campaigns, with defined start and stop dates, must be modified or supplemented to be successful online.

What happens to the millions of searches that occur when you don’t have a catalogue campaign or a sale event on? Are you closed? Do you not sell products during these “down” times? Of course the answer is you do sell and you do want people to find you. So you must have content, applicable to helping people decide to buy from you, available at all times. In sales times and in non-sales times, every day of the year.

This content doesn’t have to be discount- or event-driven. It could be your key inventory lines with images and product information and your every day pricing. But it must all be easily accessible on your site and through other channels and be available whenever and wherever somebody chooses to look for it.

Filling the gaps between marketing campaign pushes with consistent information to cater for the person seeking for “thongs” in June and “woolly jumpers” in December is crucial to optimising the online experience. There might not be many of these searchers, but they exist in numbers greater than you expect; so you might as well be prepared for that opportunity.

The beauty of the online channel is that for the first time you can reach all the people searching for the products you sell at the time they are searching, something no other media can do. This could be late at night, or at work during the lunch hour, or in the car via the mobile phone. If you have nothing available for people to find you are putting up a “closed” sign – when in reality, for most products retailers are open for business.

Having covered marketing that must be accessible and available; next week we shall look at the final “A” – Applicable marketing. Until then, happy selling.

Paul Marshall

Executive Director

Salmat Digital

www.lasoo.com.au

I know of an Australian retailer whose online manager is measured by the volume of traffic to the website, rather than the quality of that traffic, or most importantly, the influence the online channel has on in-store sales. It’s disappointing that in 2009 a retailer can have staff working on a marketing channel with no performance tied to sales. In other words, they really have a website manager and not an online channel manager. Sadly there are more.

This is a strategic mistake many large retailers have already made in more advanced online retail markets, such and the States and UK. However, these mistakes have been reversed, the lessons have been learnt. The USA and UK markets are great windows into the future for how retailers and consumers are interacting online. We can learn from this and not make these mistakes in Australia.

An online marketing strategy should of course include a website and various KPIs around that. However it should be much bigger than your web site. Why? Because your website is not where the majority of your potential customers are making decisions about what to buy and from where. If your messages are not found in the places consumers are online, and are confined to your site, you are missing out on the majority of the active market at any one time.

Your key focus should be to have your message online, when and where the consumer is looking for it. And we know from Google search insights and website trends that most of them are not looking on your site. The most obvious example is being discoverable among the product terms they are researching and not just your retail brand.

As a quick test, look at the search terms (you should be looking at these regularly) that are bringing people to your site. How many of these search terms are for the products or brands that you sell? How many are for products that you advertise heavily in other media? I would guess most of them will simply be your brand terms. So you are not being found by people who are looking for the products and brands you sell and advertise so heavily in other media. If you take that back into traditional media and did not advertise any offers, products, brands, sales, benefits etc, and instead only advertised your brand name, what would happen to your store traffic and sales?

To achieve this you need to do two things. Firstly, make sure your marketing messages about what you sell are discoverable online in a style that can be directly linked to. Secondly, make sure you advertise these messages actively off your site. Consumers are searching across multiple channels including manufacturer sites, consumer review and networking sites. Universal search engines (such as Google) and vertical search engines (such as Lasoo) are important places to be because this is where many customers start their research online.

The bottom line is that reducing all the barriers to finding your product offers for a consumer is the name of the game, and these barriers consist of time, money and effort. By leaving your home turf and playing “away” you can reduce the time and effort for consumers. From there, many will go straight into your stores, without ever having visited your web site. This should be a celebrated achievement and a measure of success, not a failure because they did not make it into your monthly visitor numbers for your site.

Of course, once you have found them on their home turf you can try to bring them to your site, which is an opportunity to focus on engagement and conversion. A good number will do this, but this should not be the only number you focus on for online success.

Paul Marshall

CEO

There are three important digital marketing principles, which will become more important over time. They are Marketing Accessibility, Availability and Applicability. In my regular piece in Inside Retailing, I will be exploring each in some detail over the coming month. However, briefly, they are as follows.

Accessibility. This refers to having your product and marketing information easily available; at the place (and time, which falls into Availability) where someone is looking. Accessibility well beyond your own website’s search and navigation. More important is the need to be discovered and available where people are looking, including search engines, industry portals, social sites, RSS readers, desktop tools, mobile phones etc.

Availability. People are not making buying decisions only when you have your marketing campaign running or your stores open. Digital media changes the paradigm of retail marking in that people are now seeking information and purchasing from anywhere in the world, at any time of the day or night. How do you respond to that? How can you ensure the availability of your information when people are looking for it?

Applicability. Digital media is by its very nature interactive, selective and user-controlled. It is a media-optimised and individual experience and therefore difficult to use as a marketer. Replicating mass media marketing (untargeted display advertising) does not work. Relevance is the key to marketing in the digital media; ensuring your brand and your messages are applicable to each recipient is essential for both the health of your brand and the success of your campaigns. Applicability all starts with understanding each customer. If your advertising is relevant, it is indistinguishable from information.

Each of these will be explored in further detail in Inside Retailing and also in this blog over April/May.

In 2009, eCommerce in Australia is expected to generate around $18 billion in sales. That’s a lot! But it’s still only a fraction of what is sold in more traditional channels such as retail stores. Still, I know what you’re thinking…it would be good to get a bit of that action, yes? The decision whether to sell online, and to what scale, is a difficult one. While many elements and variables in the decision are unique to each retailer, there are a number of common factors in the decision. I have explored five of the compelling ones below.

1. Your shopper has, for all time, changed
Just like those in many similar countries, the Australian shopper has evolved quickly in three fundamental areas that every retail marketer should be aware of.

Firstly, the nature of the media they consume and style in which they consume it has changed dramatically. Online has quickly moved up to challenge TV as the most-consumed media in the Australian household. A report released by Nielsen earlier this month claims that online has already taken over TV, with an average of 13.7 hours a spent week online compared to 13.4 hours watching TV. While there is some question over the methodology, covered briefly here, the can be no denying the trend: all major media is down, except online. This rise in online amidst the decline and fragmentation of the major media means a more challenging landscape for marketers, and one that must include online media.

Secondly, online has quickly become the key media to influence what people buy and from where. The Australian Centre for Retail Studies and Google combined to research Australian shoppers in early 2008. The results showed that half of Australian consumers use online to research what to buy and from where, in other words to pre-shop, prior to going into store to buy. Covering consumer electronics, entertainment and computers, a quarter of the shoppers nominated online as their most crucial research tool, well ahead of other media.

Finally, there are many shoppers (and many more coming) who want to buy online. Why? The key reasons, according to Forrester Research, are firstly convenience, then selection and then price. I remember my very first marketing lecture in 1986 (yes, it was called Marketing 101) where the opening subject was “give the customer what they want”. If they want to buy online; then this is a good argument for you to start selling online. Otherwise…

2. You will lose sales and market share if you don’t sell online
Moving online opens you up to an entirely new set of competitors. Leading retailers like Deals Direct did not exist five years ago and today have more online customers than any of our traditional retail brands. Competition has also come from offshore, something the US eTailers are determined to increase, with 53% (Forsee Research) of them able to deliver to Australia. We know that Amazon is the number one online bookseller in Australia and Apple is the dominant music retailer. However there are also large players in areas such as cosmetics, apparel, jewellery and accessories. There is also a growing move to manufacturers selling direct online.

3. Your customer base will be more loyal if you sell online and will buy more in-store
To turn point two above into a positive, selling online will mean you will increase your sales. Online will reach further than your store can; will appeal to those who want to buy online; and will give you more visibility to those researching online. However, it is important to remember (though this is less understood) that selling through multiple channels will have a positive impact on your customers, their loyalty and their spend. Much of this influence online will have will have a positive effect on your in-store sales as well.

There is a significant amount of real data from research and retailers showing that a customer who interacts with a retailer through multiple channels will buy more frequently and will have a larger basket size. The major impact will be on your store sales. JC Penney published figures on the average spend of its customers, showing store sales to be twice as great for customers using two channels instead of one and up to four times higher for customers who interact across their three main channels (online, in store and catalogue). This is supported by research from Dieringer conducted online, which found that shoppers spend +60% more ($400 vs. $250) and buy two more items (five vs. three) at local stores than they purchased directly online.

4. Online sales is the fastest growing retail channel, and continues to grow in the current climate
According to eMarketer, 49% of Christmas 2008 gift spending among US Internet users occurred online, compared with 44% in stores. This is significant because it is the first time that the web has surpassed the store as the preferred channel for Internet users to purchase holiday gifts. Along the same lines, results from both the US and UK over the recent months show that while online sales are slowing in growth, they are still growing month-by-month. This is in stark contrast with store sales. According to Euromonitor Intl, since 2001 the combined annual growth rate of Internet retailing has outstripped every other retail category by close to three times. The channel is healthy moving forward.

5. The online channel can be more profitable
Because of the nature of selling online, the fixed costs remain relatively stable as revenue grows. What is less understood is the efficiency of marketing and the ability to eliminate any wastage in this area and the impact this can have on increasing your profitability. In a future column I will focus on this topic in some detail, however quite simply the equation is this: if you know your conversion rate (percentage of people who buy), your average basket size and your margin, you can engineer your marketing to achieve a certain return. This allows you to eliminate marketing wastage and retain a strong profit margin on your sales.

So there are some good reasons to sell online. In a future column I will explore some of the potential hurdles of starting e-commerce in Australia, and hope to suggest a few ways to overcome these.

If there is a topic you are interested in me exploring further or have any feedback, please email me.

Surviving and Thriving in Today’s Retail Climate was the theme for eTail 2009, the largest and longest-running online marketing and commerce conference for retailers. Held in Phoenix, Arizona and in its 10^th year, eTail 2009 delivered three and a half days of key learnings, case studies, research and technology. I was lucky to attend.

Amidst the difficulties facing retailers in the US, online marketing and online commerce have emerged as two channels that continue to perform strongly. Online commerce remains a strong growing sales channel for retailers, providing an exception to other channels. Online marketing offers retailers the opportunity to better understand their customers and in turn provides a cost effective tool to communicate with these customers.

So why do we care about retail technologies and trends from the US? Well, because they are in many ways a prediction of the future for Australian retailers. Certainly the American shopper is very similar to the Australian shopper in regard to their online behaviour. The difference is that Australian retailers are many years behind the US in their marketing and commerce strategies to meet this evolved consumer. And this is where the opportunity lies. Over the past ten years US retailers have made many mistakes in their digital marketing and commerce strategies and technologies have since matured. Learning what works and what does not, and adopting mature technologies and proven strategies with real ROIs is an enormous opportunity for Australian retailers.

eTail 2009 covered the following key themes:

· The power of cross-channel (marketing and commerce). The conference was more about cross-channel retailing than multi-channel retailing. The difference is that a customer should have a unified view of your brand and not a channel specific version of it. The benefits of a unified strategy leveraging the benefits of all channels were well illustrated by many success stories and real returns.

· Understanding your customer. Smart retailers have moved well beyond segmentation and profiling data, even beyond behavioural data, to gain a better understanding of their customers. Understanding intent and context are now a reality with a new third contributor to the customer uber data set.

· ROI. There was an intense focus on continuing to deliver real and attractive returns through the digital channel. There was a great deal of information offered around strategies, technology, programs and processes that had proven to further increase ROI across both marketing and sales.

· Marketing tools. The conference had good coverage of all possible digital tools and strategies. This included search, email, display, affiliates, mobile and more.

· Commerce strategies. There was a big focus on how to better cater for a customer who is on your site rather than focusing on attracting a new customer. Traffic to a site is easy; engagement and conversion were the key topics.

· User generated content (UGC) and social media. There is no denying the increasing power and influence the social consumer has online, not only over their own decision- making and purchasing, but also over others, thousands of others. This was explored from all angles in the context of how can retailers utilise this reality to make more sales.

· Technology. The conference had an associated exhibition, which showcased a large number of technology vendors and service organisations. Here we found the people, companies and technologies that can help provide all of the above.

The presentations, case studies and key learnings at the conference came from some of the world’s leading retailers and suppliers, including eBay, JCPenney, Home Depot, Coca Cola, Sears, Borders and Lego (did you know they are the world’s largest manufacturer of tyres…itty bitty ones though).

Overall the mood was upbeat, with an understanding that digital media as both a marketing and commerce channel presents all retailers with a real opportunity for positive returns, despite the economic climate.

The content and context of the conference was applicable for retailers from around the world. While I found some New Zealand retailers in attendance, I don’t believe there were any Australian retailers in attendance, which is a sign of the times, or a sign of the times to come.

Salmat will be running a series of Webinars over the next six-months focussing on many of the trends and case studies from eTail but bringing a very Australian flavour to it. Look out for information at www.salmatdigitalforce.com.au