I hope the holiday season is proving to be good for your business. Before we know it we will be in a new year - and a new decade. The start of the 10s. So what will happen next year in the Australian retail landscape? I’ll take a stab:

1. Sex please

2010 will see the vying for customer information increase in intensity. Email continues to be a very cost-effective marketing channel and mobile will play an important role in the future. Furthermore, we are aware of the benefits of making our one-to-one customer communication relevant and therefore the importance of capturing profiling information will be a large focus. So Australian shoppers can expect to be dazzled, coerced and bribed to “opt-in” to your database.

2. What are they doing here?

We understand the strong share Amazon has of online book purchases in Australia. In 2010 we will continue to welcome new, large, experienced and aggressive competitors from offshore who will take advantage of the strong Australian dollar and underserviced appetite for Australians to buy online. Apparel, electronics, books and cosmetics are categories that will continue to lose market share to overseas retailers in 2010.

3. Dah Dahhhhhh!

We will see some significant movements in the ecommerce industry with some major brands upping their presence online, or in some cases launching their ecommerce play. This will fuel multi-channel marketing even more, which will see more marketing budgets and campaigns including digital media in a serious way.

4. Backyard blitz

Success in the multi-channel world will mean a more efficient, effective and synchronised back-end to your business. From customer data to product information, from inventory to reporting, analytics and marketing production; 2010 will see retailers invest in cleaning up their systems and content, gaining efficiencies and improvements across the business.

5. Who can you trust?

As multi-channel marketing gains momentum and the retail community continues to embrace it (IAB predicts one billion will come from retail and FMCG into online in the next four years), there will be greater demand for your online marketing dollar and endless ways to spend it. 2010 will see more clarity on channels and businesses that deliver real value for retailers. It will also be the time to ensure you have digital media expertise in-house and important future investment.

6. Multi-channel arrives

2010 will be the first year when the majority of retailers will market, sell and service across multiple channels in a synchronised way. Consistent marketing campaigns will be accessible through different media, in different ways, to targeted audiences. Customer data will start to recognise channel contact points and behaviours and respond accordingly. It should be your New Year’s resolution.

Of course, I could be wrong on all the above, but I don’t think so. What do you think? Please comment below.

Have a great holiday season, a restful and safe break, and, like me, look forward to a great 2010.

Paul Marshall

www.lasoo.com.au

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 interesting technology applications which link traditional campaign media, such as catalogues, to mobile phones and the internet. Two worth keeping a watching brief on are Augmented Reality and QR codes. Both are in the early stages of both business trial and consumer take-up, but the benefits for marketers may not be too far away.

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is where information from a physical item (such as a catalogue or even a street view) is merged with (or augmented by) computer-generated information. The best way to understand this is with a few examples.

Best Buy and Wal-Mart have both used Augmented Reality to provide additional information experiences to their catalogue readers. The reader can take a special section of the printed catalogue and after going online to a certain URL, they are able to hold up the catalogue to their webcam and see additional information unfold. It’s quite cool, and the possibilities are ex(t, p)ensive.

To try it yourself print this out and then go here.

Australian company Insqribe is using the camera on a smart phone to look around a shopping strip and have information “tags” come up. These could include current offers or specials etc. See a video here to get an understanding of how this might look.

Augmented Reality is still new and there is plenty happening overseas. It would be wise to keep a lookout for strong examples in retail and possibly look to incorporate in your future plans.

QR Codes

QR codes are 2D barcodes which can we read by most phone cameras (after the reader application is installed). They can contain information such as addresses and URLs. The codes can appear in catalogues, magazines, newspapers, on outdoor advertisements, business cards or almost anything that users might need information about.

Users can then use their camera phone (with reader software) to scan the QR code. This will then typically launch the phone’s internet browser and go straight to the programmed URL for that code to give the information back to the user.

For example, QR codes may sit in your printed catalogue to bring the reader to additional offers or information. Starbucks is using the QR codes to enable payment via the phone; Marks & Spencer is using them to provide product information; JCPenney uses them for coupons; and Kidrobot for promotional campaigns.

QR codes are not mainstream and there are some arguing they will not make it into mainstream marketing. But like Augmented Reality, it is important to be aware of what is available and ensure you remain on top of the applications, uses and results. They may be cool technology that goes away or they may turn into serious marketing tools. Either way - bets to keep an eye on them.

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

The importance of location for physical stores is replaced by the importance of search ranking in the online world. There are two ways to get onto the first page – a paid listing and natural or organic listing. Today let’s talk about natural listings, but don’t assume they don’t come without cost. 

The art/science (yes that old debate is applicable here also) of ranking naturally high in search engines like Google and Bing is called SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. I’ve asked our in-house search specialist, Maurice Peigna, to put together a few pointers about SEO for your retail site.

SEO is an ongoing process

The first thing you should understand is that SEO is not a one-off tactic; it is an ongoing process. Your website is (or should be) continually changing with pages being deleted and updated on an ongoing basis. SEO should therefore be seen as a long-term ongoing process, with constant evaluation and updates where necessary. Behind it must be a well thought-out strategy and plan. For example, the question “what are you optimising for?” is a surprisingly difficult one to answer, but one you must answer upfront. These keywords will become the “anchor text” for the hyperlinks that will later be used for link building.

Using tools such as on-site web analytics as well as the range of tools made available to you (such as Google’s insights for search) will reveal changing search behaviour and opportunities for SEO improvement over time. This won’t stop. You will need to plan and allocate resources to this ongoing.

Search engines care about relevance

Your challenge is to make the search engines understand that you are relevant. Your web pages must use the users’ language and contain the words and phrases that their target audience types into search queries. These pages will have a relevant unique keyword focus. Building relevant content on the site will contribute towards ranking higher on search engines results pages; allowing it to get crawled earlier, faster and deeper by the search bots. In addition, ensure your website internal linking structure makes sense and has a clear hierarchy that is visible throughout the site. For example, breadcrumb navigation: Home > Electronics > TV > Plasma TVs.

Search engines care about popularity

Links to your site indicate that other sites find your site relevant, for something. The higher the quality of the sites linking in, the better it is for your site. It contributes to what is called Page Rank by Google. Think of a link like a recommendation; and the more trusted the recommender, the higher value placed on the recommendation.

Be wise with your link building. When selecting third-party sites to obtain links from (to build your page rank), focus on the quality of the links you are building (ie from a trusted page using the anchor text your want to rank for), rather than the quantity. On the other hand, linking from too many sites in a short period of time could be interpreted as link-spamming. “Spamming” (or “Black Hat SEO”) may get you blacklisted by the search engines and throttled to the nether regions of the Web. Other spamming techniques include: creating fake pages not related to the website’s real content; hiding key words on the page by having their colour the same as the background colours; creating duplicate pages; and reciprocal linking to commercial “Link Farms”. Read more here.

Look the part; and keep your house tidy

It is important to optimise your URLs. Search engines are not fans of dynamic URLs or complex URLs with multiple parameters and session IDs. The URL should describe the content and hierarchy of the page and be readable to humans. Ensure that your URL structure is clear and relevant to page content. In addition, when a page has been permanently removed from one URL to another, use a server side redirect (known as a 301-redirect), which will tell search engines to go to the new page and drop the old one.

Be an individual

Search engines do not like unoriginal content. Ensure your content is unique and refreshed on a regular basis to provide maximum exposure for your SEO endeavours. Use social media to help with your content generation and SEO. Creating a Facebook, Twitter and blogging presence all increase SEO visibility.

SEO should be part of your business review, every month. If you do manage to get to the top of a search result naturally, pat yourself on the back; then get back to work on SEO to stay there.

Paul Marshall, CEO

Lasoo.com.au

If you have any expertise in the products you sell; you should blog. If your retail brand represents anything to do with trust, advice, or experience; you should blog. If you wish to push forward into online, any authority and authenticity you have developed in store to advise and influence people; you should blog.

The reason is blogging will bring you new customers, will reinforce and strengthen your brand, and will bring you more sales. But you must do it well.

So to help you do it well, our expert blogger on Lasoo Caroline Warnes has kindly put together the following tips. You can view Caroline’s savvy shopping blog here.

Blogging tips

1. Have a blogging presence: It’s the age of social media and it’s important to have a presence in as many arenas as possible. Blogging gives your brand a human face and can establish you as an opinion-maker in your field.

2. Blog only about what you know: Credibility is very important online. Decide what you know, and blog about that. Don’t get distracted in something off-message.

3. Blog regularly: Decide from the start how often you can afford the time to blog, then stick to this schedule – whether it be daily, weekly, monthly (or multiple times daily, if you’ve got the luxury of lots of time). Readers are more likely to return when they know when to expect new content – and if it isn’t there when they visit the site, they will get frustrated.

4. Have a point of difference: You won’t attract a lot of visitors if you’re offering nothing new. Rather than rehashing what’s already out there, you should decide what will set you apart from the rest. This might be devoting the blog entirely to an aspect of your field that is rarely covered in-depth, it might be having strong opinions (and not being afraid to share them), it might be having a unique sense of humour – in fact, the best thing you can do is to let your personality shine through, rather than making it dry commentary.

5. Understand the community: Identify the other blogs that are relevant to your area and make a point of visiting them regularly (and leaving comments on them). It’s also a good idea to link back to entries on other blogs and offer your opinion on them. This exchange of links with other relevant blogs is a great way of building your own traffic and credibility in the blogging community.

6. Use social media: Using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to promote new entries on your blog is another great way to enter the community and grow your traffic.

7. Clean up your writing: Blog entries don’t necessarily need to be Shakespeare, but they should at least be readable. Run a spellchecker over your entries before you post them if you don’t trust yourself, or get someone who is good with spelling and grammar to read over them. Nothing is more of a turn-off than a poorly written blog.

Blogging is an investment. It won’t pay dividends to your retail business overnight – but it will deliver a very strong payback in the medium term when done well.

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

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

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.