Retail-Centric Programming - The Voice of Retail

Last week I raised the question of whether retailers have a valid "voice" with the consumer and what that might be. Of course, a valid "voice" is simply an appropriate brand positioning and aligned brand message. Today I'm thinking about how retailers can communicate that "voice".

Clearly there is no one single way to do it, and many are already well established. First and foremost, the execution of the customer facing store experience, from the training of the sales staff to the layout of the floor, and encompassing the pricing, merchandise mix and visual presentation are by FAR the most important. Also, the weekly circulars, television, radio and online advertising....all the elements of the traditional (now!) marketing mix are part of that. Corporate efforts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs also contribute and count. Each of these, to some degree, are relatively well understood and utilized. If the medium does not consistently support a coherent "voice", well, that's probably an executional issue, not a lack of understanding.

However, the concept of creating retail-centric appropriate video programming delivered via the ecommerce site may not be so well understood, or strategically embraced. And the tragic aspect of this possible lack of understanding is that no other single strand in the marketing web has as much potential or strength in delivering that "voice" than retail-centric programming delivered via the ecommerce site. Here are the reasons, briefly.

1. The website attacts millions of unique visitors, all of whom are self targeted, opt-in consumers already in some stage of a buying cycle. No other medium delivers this quality of audience. Not even close.
2. Online content consumption habits have changed, and almost all demographics show rising use of online video for entertainment, information, and engagement. People like watching videos online, and they do it often. From home, work, and on their smartphones.
3. Consumers have demonstrated a consistent and sustained shift toward empowering themselves in order to stretch their dollar and get higher satisfaction from their purchases. Lacking that direction and empowerment from retailers, they seek 3rd party sites. The unique visitor growth and time-on-site for these sources is worthy of admiration.
4. Technology has advanced to the allow non-intrusive methods of displaying and making video programming accessible. All the arguments about interfering with navigation, impacting site abandonment.....no longer need to be valid.
5. The cost of producing high quality video programming has plummeted. While it's not free, it's well within the realm of the affordable.....particularly when evaluated on a cross-channel ROI basis.
6. Consumers start their research in large numbers ON the retail websites. They just don't complete it there.