Why should anyone buy from us?
That is the question all Brands need to ask themselves. Nearly all Brands are selling products online in direct competition with retailers. Very few if any brands choose to compete on price. So if it is not cheaper – why should anyone buy directly from a Brand? Here are a couple of possible ideas:
Brands are better at ecommerce than retailers. Brands are better merchandisers, order fulfillers, inventory managers, return takers, customer service providers, etc. Brands offer a wider selection of items than retailers. Reality – retailers are better at ecommerce.
Brands are better at driving traffic to their sites through search (paid, organic), ads, email, affiliates, etc. Reality – retailers have turned traffic generation into a science and are consistently the largest segment of email, search, and affiliate advertisers. In contrast, Brands have not been focused on driving profitable traffic to their sites.
Brands offer a broader selection of products than retailers. Reality – brands only offer their products which comprise a small subset of SKUs offered by retailers.
To summarize, I’m less likely to find myself on a Brand site to make a purchase, I will pay the same or more, and the selection and ecommerce experience will be worse. So why would I buy directly from a Brand? Some more realistic answers:
I know exactly that I want to purchase a specific item from a given Brand. (I know I might be able to find it for less money elsewhere but the hassle of trying to find it is more valuable to me than the potential savings).
I’m a true fan of the Brand and I want to see and potentially buy their newest products. (I assume these will appear on the Brand site first)
These two answers are a small subset of the total demand – and help to explain why total ecommerce sales for most brands is a small percentage of total sales through all channels. So what else can a Brand do to get consumers to buy directly from their website?
Traditional loyalty program – provide points for each purchase that result in discounts on future purchases. This is a way to provide a lower effective price for loyal customers and maintain price parity with retailers.
Social loyalty program – this extends the concept of a loyalty program to incent word of mouth and brand promotion. For example, encouraging customers to invite their friends and rewarding them when their invited friends make a purchase. Another example is rewarding those customers that are the most active Brand Fans – talking up the brand on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.
Membership Status – purchasing products directly from the brand qualifies consumers as Brand Members that provides certain benefits – invitations to events, sneak peeks at new products, involvement in the product direction through surveys/polls, etc. These benefits are tiered based on individual and influenced purchases and word of mouth activity.
Brand Expression – provide customers the ability to express themselves through the brand by providing space to show how they are using the products, what they are combining them with, etc. Only by buying products directly from the Brand can customers have access to this functionality and have the system automatically load all products they have purchased.
Category microsite – There is a significant opportunity in many brand categories to create helpful content that will rank highly in organic search results for consumers researching a product purchase. In general, retailers do not have the content Brands do regarding the category and product in use information. This information is extremely valuable to consumers during their active evaluation phase of a new purchase. This will drive traffic to the site and increase revenue.
These are 5 ideas and there are many more. The key is for Brands to start asking themselves the question – “Why should anyone buy from us?”
Simply mimicking retailers with an ecommerce storefront is not enough to win online.
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