Christmas is here and businesses across the World are gearing up to make the most of the festival and gifting season. New products are getting launched, special offers and discounts being announced and retail spaces both offline and online being decked up to be in sync with the festival spirit.
The only dampener seems to be various predictions coming our way, which suggest the holiday season will see less sales when compared to 2007 or before the recession hit our economy towards the end of 2008.
According to a Gallup poll, a record-high 35% of Americans spent less on Christmas gifts in 2008 than what they spent a year before. This year National Retail Federation chief economist Rosalind Wells predicts “As the global economy continues to recover from the worst economic crisis most retailers have ever seen, Americans will focus primarily on practical gifts and shop on a budget this holiday season.”
Now correlate these predictions to a survey report by Nielsen Wire and you will probably have the answer on how to focus your marketing budgets and efforts to get the most out of this holiday season.
In a recent Nielsen Global consumer survey of 25,000 internet consumers from across 50 countries it was found that 90 per cent of the consumers surveyed said they trust recommendations by people they know, while 70 per cent trusted consumer opinions posted online. Jonathan Carson, President of Online, International, for the Nielsen Company observes, “The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last couple of years means consumers’ reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don’t, has increased significantly.”
The Nielsen survey clearly showcases the power social media yields in our times.
Social media sharing over channels like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc. have today become a way of life for most of us. These social networking sites have become a medium for people to share information with their family, friends, acquaintances and even like minded strangers. It’s also become a place where people discuss politics, products, issues and causes, garnering support and voicing their views all at the same time. It is this powerful medium which needs to be tapped in a way that it helps retailers spread the word and increase their sales.
So how can ecommerce sites or e-retailers use this information to boost their sales?
Simple, device methods and provide means to a happy customer – ‘To spread the good word’ and in turn bring in more business for you.
Given below are three simple and easily implementable methods -
Provide the means
If you have an ecommerce site, ensure you provide the right tool for your customer to share his find with others in his network. There are plenty of options available, you can have individual tabs/buttons for different social networking sites like – facebook.com, twitter.com, delicious.com etc. or you can have social media sharing widgets which give multiple channel options like AddThis, ShareThis or Tell-a-Friend . You can also find drop down tool bars which offer similar services. These referral tools give a visitor the option to share a content he sees on a page with his network of friends through various channels. Having these social media elements on your website will ensure that if any of your happy customers want to spread the word, they have the means to do it in an easy and systematic way.
Provide the motivation
The objective here is to give your customer an incentive or motivation to spread the word. While in the previous method, you leave him with the choice of spreading the word about your great offering amongst his network of friends, here you reward him for this extra effort.
The method is simple – you link your referral and rewards program – so every time a customer refers you to his friend he gets a discount or some reward points which he can claim for his current or future purchases.
The person to whom the customer does send the recommendation is not aware the product was referred to him in lure of the discount. In fact, he sees it as a genuine recommendation from a friend, who bought the product, enjoyed the experience and decided to share the information. Hence, it becomes a win-win situation for all involved. Your offering gets a third party personal and reliable endorsement and hence another more convinced customer. Your referrer customer gets a discount on his purchases and the person receiving the recommendation gets a first hand opinion or reference on something he is planning to buy.
Recently John Lawson an eBay Platinum PowerSeller and eBay Certified Education Specialist who owns an ecommerce site and authors an ecommerce blog –ColderIce posted a video on his personal experience of using one such widget which combines both the referral and rewards program and which helped in boosting his ecommerce sales. You can watch his video to know more about this ecommerce tool from SocialTwist.
Nurture you customer relationships
It is very important for any retailer to build his customer base and also to retain them. Social media can be a great tool in building and nurturing these relationships. As a retailer, it would help you to be present on social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc. where you can create a profile or fan page for your store. Devise a way to find out where your customers are present (use feedback forms) and be there – it could be any of these social networking sites. Invite your customers to be a part of these groups and profiles and interact with them on a regular basis. Update them about the new stock in your store, steal buys, discounts, collections etc. Invite their feedback, listen to their queries and resolve their complaints and just by keeping in touch you will win their loyalty. If they really value you and your products, it is a given that they will share information on you within their network.
Social media is here to stay and the best way to use it – is to be a part of it. It is a humungous marketing force available out their – all you need to do is to win them over and help them market your offerings. The returns of this little investment is manifold and beyond ones apprehension.
