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E-MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT ARE MORE BRICKS THAN CLICKS
by John Graham
 Although every business should be taking full advantage of e-commerce opportunities, not all businesses are e-commerce companies. Even so, those that don't currently fit an e-commerce model can take advantage of Internet strategies and techniques. Over the long term, it might be just as important to learn the lessons of the Internet as it is to use it.
Here is a series of e-commerce-inspired concepts that can benefit any company:
BECOME A MULTINICHE MARKETER
At one time, it was location, location, location. Now, thanks to the Internet, it's niche, niche, niche. Customers using the Internet gravitate to Web sites providing the products and services that most closely meet their needs.
From a marketing perspective, the task is to take this insight and apply it to a company's overall marketing strategy. For example, most businesses sell to a variety of market niches, but they fail to market to them as niches.
A good example is a material handling equipment distributor. The management team reviewed the company's customer base and identified five industries in which they were doing substantial business. Over the years the company had developed expertise in each of these fields, and both their sales and support staff were highly competent to deal with the industry-specific issues in each one. The distributor changed its marketing to focus on the needs of each niche. Instead of seeing itself as a monolithic material handling equipment distributor, it came to view itself as a company with five business units.
SAVE CUSTOMERS TIME
Don't just say it; do it. A dry cleaning company tells customers its home pick-up and delivery service saves time. Yet to check on an order, the customer must go online. If the customer wants to pick up an order at a store location after hours, arrangements must be made in advance for a 'locker' and, of course, to pre-pay the bill. Is this convenience? Does this save time? Isn't it more complicated and time-consuming than stopping by the dry cleaner on the way home from work? This is a case in which saying it doesn't make it so. Also, the demise of more than one highly touted e-commerce home delivery company seems to verify the need to deliver on promises as well as deliver the groceries and dry cleaning.
Although competitive pricing is crucial, to many customers time might be equally important, and in some instances, even more so. This is another effect of the Internet. Do people really shop for price when they're surfing? Those who use priceline.com seem to be. Yet it's been pointed out that customers purchasing annuities via the Internet fail to search for lower-priced products, even though they're readily available.
When time is the valued commodity, cost is far less of a deciding factor. Those who place a high value on time aren't willing to spend so much of it to find the lowest price. They're willing to pay more to have their needs satisfied quickly.
GIVE THE BUYER PERMISSION TO TAKE CONTROL
The Internet is all about surrendering control: Taking it out of the hands of the seller and placing it in the hands of the buyer. This is a revolution of unequalled proportions. Nothing else comes close. Although this seems obvious, it's difficult -- and in some cases impossible -- for companies to grasp.
For the last 100 years, the funeral business understood that control of the casket meant control of the funeral, and the funeral home was the only place to buy a casket. This seeming immutable law has vanished, thanks to the intervention of the Internet. One dot-com casket maker advertises 'their price' and 'our price' for the same casket. One is $595 and the other is $1,995. Now funeral homes must accept caskets purchased by customers elsewhere.
Priceline.com is built on giving the customer control. How many shoppers want to spend time telling a seller what they're willing to pay for a box of cereal? More than we might imagine. For a hotel room? Many more. Round-trip air fare to London? Lots of customers. Sites like this are virtual classrooms where the customer learns how to take charge.
What's happening on priceline.com and in the nation's funeral homes is anything but idiosyncratic. It's pervasive. The customer's in charge. Progressive businesses will re-create themselves to meet the challenge.
PORTAL YOUR BUSINESS
Whether you're excite.com or amazon.com, you've positioned yourself as a portal, the magnet that's designed to pull the Web surfer to one place instead of another. One aspect of the Internet's value is in making a variety of vendors available in one place with ease of access.
Amazon.com 'tiles' are everywhere on the Web. The company gladly pays a commission for sales from anyone's Web site. Even though it has become the largest book dealer in the world, it never saw itself as being in the book business. It was a portal from the start, pulling millions of online customers to virtual venues. The customer looks for easy, quick, and reliable ways to do business and that's what amazon.com provides.
Some browser portals let the customer build a 'virtual home,' a place to live. It's not the browser's homepage, it's yours. You can customize it to fit your interests. You can do everything from sending e-mail to ordering flowers from this one 'address.' This is home.
Whether you're into e-commerce or not, the concept computes.
GIVE CUSTOMERS WHAT THEY WANT: INFORMATION
The venerable Encyclopedia Britannica is a classic case of both the instant decline in a traditional business and the rise of a new one on the Internet. The company thought it could charge customers for access to the encyclopedia via their Web site. To their surprise, few people subscribed. The company failed to take one fact into consideration: information is free in an e-commerce environment. What makes the Internet different? The answer is simple: The Internet knocks down all walls of access.
Salesdoctors.com, for example, pulls visitors because it offers helpful information. Most of the early online stockbrokers offered low fees and little or no information. That's changed. Just check schwab.com. The site is advice-rich because this is what customers want today.
The key, whether a company engages in e-commerce or not, is to be an information resource for the customer.
NEVER STOP RECREATING THE COMPANY
The post-World War II business model continues to linger. Essentially, the concept was to get the company up and running smoothly and then it would, in effect, run itself. By implication, of course, this meant that the owner or owners could move into a virtual retirement mode at about age 45. Following such a model today is to take a bankruptcy path.
A primary e-commerce lesson suggests that re-creation must be constant. Companies are downsizing and hiring at the same time because required skill sets are continually changing.
When conducting interviews for a middle management position, a service company discovered that the applicants fell into two groups: those with 20 or more years in the work force and those with minimal experience. One group had outdated skills, while the other lacked experience to handle responsibility. It was easy to see what was happening: Those with 20 years of employment had been downsized, and the second group would soon take their places.
Companies recognize the need to quickly and constantly re-create themselves. The cycles get shorter and shorter as customer expectations and competition drive the process.
GET SERIOUS ABOUT CHANGE
As the haze clears, it becomes obvious that many businesses are in trouble as a result of the e-economy. Even with lots of fast footwork, the survival hurdles are high, too high for those who fail to respond properly.
Banks as we know them today will all but disappear from our street corners. Few, if any, of today's teenagers will ever step inside a bricks-and-mortar bank. If this trend is even remotely accurate, why are some banks continuing to build branches?
Bankers aren't alone, however. Real estate will also become an online industry. When this happens, the real estate agent's tight grip on properties will be broken, and the ranks of agents will thin. Fueling this demise is customer resentment about having to pay a commission for minimal services.
Insurance agents aren't exempt, either. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts 50% shrinkage over the next 10 years as the business moves online.
Car dealerships will undoubtedly undergo change as rapidly as any industry. A combination of product inventory inefficiency (Why keep so many cars in so many places?), high-valued and underutilized real estate, and salespeople who are distrusted by the public spells a quick demise for many dealers. All sales will be made on the Internet, and cars will merely be picked up or delivered. Dealerships will become service centers.
Travel agencies and personnel recruiters will likewise fall victim to the Internet. Only those who are savvy enough to see new opportunities and seize them will stay in business.
ALL OF LIFE IS LIFESTYLE
With people working longer hours and experiencing more stress both before and after they get to the job, it's not surprising that the Internet thrives as entertainment. It's fun to surf the Net, particularly in the middle of the afternoon. A dry cleaning company notes that its contest page gets a lot of hits at 2:00 p.m. (also at 2:00 a.m.). Isn't Starbucks' success at least partially due to our treating ourselves to a bit of low-cost luxury? Having a little fun. The rich aroma is the Starbucks experience.
And then there are our SUVs. What makes them so popular with both men and women? Built to take us into the wildest reaches of civilization, they rarely leave the freeways. For those of us who feel tied to our jobs, our vehicles break the bonds and give us the feeling of freedom. Nothing can hold us back. It's the experience that satisfies.
All of life is lifestyle. The Web is wonderful because it can transport us to so many places so quickly. We get lost on the Web. We escape the clutches of the job and home. We can be free even when we're hobbled to our cubicles.
Amazon.com has perhaps the best grasp on the lifestyle issue. Along with offering regular customers 'recommended' products based on their purchasing patterns, the site has product reviews and the opportunity to write your own appraisal. In a sense, amazon.com is community or even family - perhaps more interactive than many families are today.
To be sure, the customer is looking for a satisfying experience that includes a simple, quick, fun transaction. But it's the appeal of feeling understood that attracts. For an e-commerce or a traditional business, the issue is the same. Give the customers the right experience, and they'll reciprocate with their endorsement: Making purchases.
The business world isn't divided into two distinct groups of 'bricks' and 'clicks.' That's an artificial distinction. The 'clicks' are discovering that virtual businesses require 'bricks.' This is why many retailing e-commerce companies are building their own distribution networks. At the same time, the 'bricks' can learn from the 'clicks,' particularly when it comes to understanding and serving customers.
John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm. He is the author of The New Magnet Marketing and 203 Ways to Be Supremely Successful in the New World of Selling. Mr. Graham writes for a variety of publications and speaks on business, marketing, and sales topics. He can be contacted at 40 Oval Road, Quincy, MA 02170 (617) 328-0069; fax (617) 471-1504; e-mail [email protected], or Web site www.grahamcomm.com.
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