Facebook and Retailers

At the core of the question lies the purpose and motivation for consumers participating in a Facebook experience. Or is it? One school of thought would argue that in order for a retailer to maximize the potential for engaging an audience on Facebook, the communication/marketing used needs to align with the critical elements of the Facebook community: who, why, and what. Who is there? Why are they there? What do they do while they are there?

Following this approach, a retailer must first seek to understand the community, which in and of itself is as useless a statement as "seek to understand their consumer". Yes, it's a good idea. But a retailer doesn't have "a" consumer, and Facebook isn't "a" community. It's a very large portal with what are rapidly becoming as many splinter communities are there are in the general population. So talking about a monolithic "community" is silly, and self defeating. That helps, because it limits the retailer to "why" and "what". The "who" is now the same sets of "whom" the retailer tries to reach with any and all of it's normal marketing messages.

The critical component of retailer activity on Facebook revolves around content. Content is driven by "why" and "what", made specific and appropriate for the platform in question. And make no mistake. Facebook is a platform (at least for retailers). So it comes down to content. Retail Facebook pages are going to attract fans, be sticky, and act in accordance with marketing strategic efforts to the extent that the content supports those things. So understanding the "what" and "why" become very relevant. Approaching Facebook from any other point of view is almost arrogant. Given the vast numbers of people on Facebook, if someone creates something, creates awareness that it exists, then some appreciable level of exposure will occur.

Next post will take a look at what some retailers are doing in the content arena, and analyze how Facebook-appropriate those efforts appear to be.

Facebook and eCommerce

The sheer size and reach of Facebook, as a portal or opportunity to influence consumers, is almost overwhelmingly compelling to brands and retailers. In addition to the number of visitors, Facebook streams the second most amount of video content on the net, behind only YouTube. Time spent on the site, number of visits per unique individual.....these are all enticing stats. So, as would be expected, brands and retailers are flocking to Facebook. With the usual wide spectrum of results.

One of the most common metrics used in number of fans. Here are a few interesting numbers for leading retailers:
Walmart has over 850,000 fans. Target has over a million. Macy's slightly more than 400,000. J. C. Penney has 800,000. Victoria's Secret almost 3.2 million (might be something else at work there!). Yet the dominant demo is young adults and teens. PacSun has 260,000 fans, Hot Topic 260,000. Aeropostale has almost 600,000, while one of the hottest brick and mortar plays, Buckle has only 54,000.

Putting these numbers into perspective, Walmart averages over 50 million monthly unique visitors to it's ecommerce site, and Target isn't too far behind. Most of the other retailers mentioned are in the millions or tens of millions of monthly unique visitors. So the "fan penetration" rate against online visitors is relatively low.

Why? Are retailers doing Facebook right? What's missing? What's working?

More to come.

The Web's Influence on Brick and Mortar

An article todaly in eMarketer Daily, which quotes a survey from e-commerce solutions provider ATG and conducted by MarketTools, ads some additional emphasis to the behavior of online consumers with respect to shopping.

Put simply, no matter which channel the end purchase occurs in, an enormous percentage of consumers research the purchase first online. Other studies have shown that shopping research activity often starts on retail sites. Put these two facts together. Now step back and look at how, what and whom makes decisions regarding the retail ecommerce site with your organization. Is it a group of people who understand marketing? Communications? Influencing the purchase cycle? Or is it a group primarily focused on transactional analysis and incremental improvements within the mechanics of the site itself?

If consumers research products prior to buying (and they clearly do in very large numbers) and if they often start that search on retail websites (and they clearly do in very large numbers) THEN the very low net conversion rates for these sites indicate that amongst other variables, large number of consumers are not getting the information they need to feel comfortable completing a purchase.

Which calls into question what type of information is being provided, and the format the information is presented in. At the top of the hierarchy is video. This is the Internet. Outside of email, the number one activity online is video consumption. Period. Yet retail sites insist on communicating with their visitors through pictures and text. Video on retail sites can and should be used to actively influence the researching consumer, engaging and informing, while simultaneously giving them the opportunity to act on the impulse being created.

Think about it. Millions of visitors engaged in research. Most of them leave without buying. Some of that is inevitable. Very little of it, anymore, is because of security concerns. Most of it, now, is because there simply isn't the information they need presented in a way they want to consume it.

Enable video commerce.