|
|
|
|||||
|
specialists in enhancement and management of human performance |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
You've all heard the statistics. More than 157 million Americans will regularly use the Internet by 2003, with total usage worldwide exceeding half a billion. Internet enabled devices worldwide will jump from 10.5 million in '98 to 150.8 million by 2002. The dollar figures seem more impressive. Online spending will increase from about $20 billion in 1999 to $184 billion by 2004. Any American manager who hasn't been in a coma for the last five years knows that the World Wide Web has taken center stage in the great theatre of business. The above figures dazzle us. Business media air time and column space kneels fervently to the emerging digital technology. But if you look closely, there's a statistic missing from all those stratospheric dollar numbers. The missing statistic is percentages. Fact: The projected $184 billion spending in 2004 represents only 7% of estimated total retail buying for that year. Fact: While 74% of Internet users research products and services online, less than 20% actually make online purchases. Look around your household and scrutinize your monthly activities. You will discover another fact: The vast majority of goods and services you consume or use cannot be effectively delivered to you via the web. Even FedEx Overnight can't handle our Starbucks cappuccino, and when you're in Boston next week, you can't sleep on modem-delivered bytes. Your understanding of the above can have a profound impact on your business decisions over the next year. It might give you an edge in how you leverage the promise of the Internet. First, I'm not suggesting you turn Luddite. Any business that thinks it can ignore www-dot-something is doomed to failure. But any well-established retail business that views its new website as a replacement for all those costly store-footages is also doomed. No matter what your business, the worst fantasy is to view your dotcom as the perfect advertising venue. (Al and Laura Ries point out in their latest book, "The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding," the reason for the TV handheld control's vast popularity is that "remotes" allow viewers to skip over the commercials. And the Internet is the ultimate remote control for a viewer!) So what exactly are you to do with this juggernaut, the Internet? Chances are your company already has a website and is about to invest even more worker time and annual budget into it. Here are two steps you should take before moving any further in the Internet game. First, look at your
company's products. What are you actually delivering and to
whom? Key questions to ask Second, look at your Website and discover exactly what the page views are doing to your audience. Are they trying to create product research and invite online orders only, or are they enabling customers to easily locate and drive to physical locations? I suggest that if you have tangible, fashionable, consumable, high delivery-cost products, the primary goal of your online presence should be to move your customers quickly from page-views to real footsteps in your physical stores. In other words, move eyeballs to entrances. Also, note your online advertising. If it merely apes your TV and print media, it ignores the critical value of the Internet--viewer interactivity. The web gives a user control. Control to locate the cheapest online vendor or perhaps to find the best and faster route to your store locations. Dealer locators with superior maps and clear driving instructions are not simply enhancements to your online marketing, but the critical factors in bringing your customers to your doors. And customers in stores buy more product than customers online. And, all the posturing of Internet pundits notwithstanding, banner ads simply don't cut it! If all an ad invites me to do is look at more advertising, then it is incredibly easy to ignore it, or jump to another site that allows more interaction. (I've been doing it with my television for years.) However, if I'm invited to save time by finding the Starbucks that's closest to my first client appointment in the morning, I might just study that map and show up at the store! The big branders have realized this. Check out Levi's website and you'll discover that a consumer can view the latest jean styles, and in two clicks simply enter an address or zip code to locate the closest three stores stocking the preferred style. Scrolling down, the shopper can view a street map clearly plotting their address and the store locations. More detail? One mouse click zooms the map. At the Hilton site (and Marriott's), travelers can quickly find the closest hotels to their business destinations, along with driving instructions from airports, train depots and freeways. All Ford sites lead potential buyers to the closest dealer locations, and you can even set up demo-drive appointments. Starbucks web page will even let you download store locators to your Palm Pilot. But some of the newer online maps can go one step more. They show key points of interest, such as restaurants, shopping, museums, and even traffic patterns along driving routes. And every page of these precise locator impressions can contain a button to immediately jump the viewer to online reservations or a particular store coupon. Thus these well-known brands demonstrate a higher commitment to their customer base than other websites that merely list 6-10 dealer locations and phone numbers. Also, what you can't see on the innovative marketing website is all of the information that business locator and mapping providers (like "Mapblast!") deliver to their client subscribers. And the cost of this precise day-by-day, page-impression-by-impression consumer data is a pittance compared to dubious investments in traditional advertising consultant's "focus groups". Why don't more product companies follow the lead of successful brands such as Levi's, Ford, Hilton and Starbucks? They are being penny wise and dollar stupid by separating their website development from their overall advertising department. In many companies, the web development and marketing departments are just too far apart from each other. So these enterprises drag their feet on critical decisions that would create more folk using the Internet to be motivated to cross real store thresholds. An annual investment of $50-85K for outsourcing geo-coded maps and driving instructions to brick-and-mortar facilities is seen by programming/engineer webmasters as too much money to spend, when in-house coding has already set up a simplistic store list. However, an annual investment for such online pages (complete with monthly hit reports) is ludicrously obvious when contrasted with a one-time million dollar TV ad campaign expenditure that tells viewers "See it at your local dealers." Before another quarter goes by, make sure your brand is being developed on the Web in ways that actually increase your customer purchases and service commitment--that actually increases your bottom line! So, find the web infrastructure companies (Vicinity is one leader) that can provide the most sophisticated pages and data reports to assist you in leveraging your brand through the new digital medium. Check out the leading sites in "eyeballs to entrances": Hilton, Marriott, Levi's, Ford, GM, Harley-Davidson, McDonalds, Starbucks, GAP, FedEx, Nordstrom and Nike, to name a few. See how these sites are making it easy for consumers to find brick-and-motor locations where three-quarters of them will actually purchase goods and services. Purchases that will account for 93% of that $184 billion total retail future. Furthermore, if you want to get ahead of the curve, investigate and invest advertising budget in the emerging brand-finder applications that will be used with special Internet portals designed specifically for WAP phones, PDA's such as Palm Pilots and onboard driver assistant devices. Go global immediately. Don't limit your Website marketing commitment to the US alone. The largest future market potential lies beyond our borders. (American citizenry accounts for less than 5% of earth's total population.) Driving directions, clear maps, dealer and product availability are even more important as we push goods to the rest of the planet. And don't leave the task solely to your MIS division, who might believe that none of your existing or potential customers should ever leave their keyboards to go to a mall again. Pull in outside experts or vendors who can bring your traditional media advertising and website developers into alignment about how consumers (Net savvy or not) really act in fulfilling their wants and needs. It just might be your executive edge. P.S.: For quick starters, log onto www.vicinity.com or check out the following recent book: "The Eleven Immutable Laws of Internet Branding." Yes, you could order it from Amazon.com, but it's probably just as easy to get it at Barnes and Noble on your way home. Besides you just might pick up a café latte' at the in-store coffee bar for the commute. P.P.S.: You might also wish to learn more about Integrated Marketing Communications. A place to begin is the article "Integrated Marketing Increases Sales and Customer Affinity." (NOTE: Allies Consulting offers a menu of programs that can help you become masterful at your performance skills, or your staff to do so. They will meet or exceed your expectations: they are designed to deliver real results. They also leverage our other programs, magnifying your ROI!)
|
Is the product or service tangible? (Hotel room, garden
tool, hamburger, rental property, tank full of gas?)