– Channel diversification does not address underlying issues with the customer journey.
– Data collection that does not occur at the point of intent is difficult to work with at scale and limited in its usefulness.
– Customer reviews are a small fraction of purchasers and can be challenging to categorize and effectively utilize.Allocate resources to creating a media arm within your ecommerce company’s lifestyle and cross pollinate it with your own community.E-commerce observations that I believe most won’t:
1. Channel diversification will not solve underlying issues with the customer journey.
2. Data collection that doesn’t happen at the point of intent is really hard to work with at scale and too limited.
3. Customer reviews account for either your fans or people who hate you, and it’s a small fraction of those who purchased. It’s good to know, but hard to categorize and use effectively.
4. Your ads will do better if you stop copying everyone else.
5. People who love businesses don’t want to be sold to; they want to feel like they are part of the journey. Entertain, don’t sell.
6. SMS is NOT a required channel. Plenty of businesses do fine without it. See screenshot for Supreme.
7. Stop using email as a sales channel. No one signs up to be sold to; they sign up to be reminded of your brand and be notified when you have cool stuff to share.
8. Discounting to force a sale via retargeting is just trying to recoup money already spent. Understand your unit economics here. It’s often a losing battle because you already paid for people to come in, and the costs are doubled. So your ROAs have to rise accordingly.
9. Retention really doesn’t exist. It’s predefined by how someone experiences your product, their buying cycles, and their own preferences and experiences with other brands in the space. You can try to influence this in certain categories, but too much focus on sales and repeat purchasing will crush you here.
10. Brand perception is more powerful than brand profit. You can create a lot of profit by leveraging data and brand perception to the point of profitability via partnerships and an audience.
11. Nothing matters more than getting the product into the hands of people as long as they have a reason to purchase from you a second time. 75% of people will not have a reason. Identify the right people early on.
12. Automate your plans of action, use playbooks that matter, and look at ways that all of your organic content can promote other people in your space, not just your company.
13. E-commerce companies should start media arms within their lifestyle on day one, allocate resources to it, and cross-pollinate it with your own community.
14. All businesses should look to employ an organic social team that not only creates but also curates content.
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