Stealing From Video Game Developers Video games can teach e-commerce merchants many lessons. Video game developers can teach even more valuable lessons. This Curagami post shares five tips online merchants should steal today including:
- Create Great Products
- Develop Community and then Listen, Learn, and Change
- Give customers chances to collaborate
- Forge badges, banners, and other rewards
- Define how rewards are earned but don’t forget serendipity and surprise
With such great marketing is there any wonder why Blizzard Entertainment has more than thirty million Overwatch players? Doomfist is a new brilliantly named Overwatch character and gamers are talking about little else this summer. Doomfist is more important than Game of Thrones to gamers.
Stealing the community, gamification, and engagement tips from video game developers will help any online merchant move from "website" to "platform" and from "us" and "them" to we: http://www.curagami.com/e-commerce-lessons-doomfist/
Martin (Marty) Smith:
This Curagami post continues a conversation about appropriating video game developer's brilliant marketing ideas, strategies, and tactics to online commerce.
Oracle on Social Listening Analytics
Have you heard the wise saying, “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason: what we hear is always at least twice as important as what we say”? Listening, truly understanding what others are saying, has become such a rarity in today’s world. Consumers are constantly bombarded with hyperactive, in your face media; desperate to grab their ever-shrinking, yet coveted attention span. As a brand, rather than force the majority to hit the metaphoric mute button, wouldn’t you rather figure out how to play the perfect tune for your various audiences? If this is your company’s pursuit, then I suggest you (literally) listen up.
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Social listening analytics was a new idea for us and we like it.
5 Digital Marketing Tips To Steal Today After purchasing two pairs of Robert Rauschenberg inspired frames from WarbyParker.com we came away with admiration and five digital marketing tips other online merchants should steal. - Create Limited Editions
- Keep Content After Events
- Have and Share VALUES
- Start with WHY not HOW
- Tie Purchases To A Related Cause
Learn more about why we love our Rauschenberg frames and other ideas to steal from WarbyParker.com at Curagami: http://www.curagami.com/warby-parker-5-digital-marketing-tips-to-steal-today/
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Our summary of how much we enjoyed buying new eyeglasses frames from WarbyParker.com and ideas every online merchant should steal today.
Start with Why
Our recent Curagami post - Think Different the Gravity of Digital is an important read for e-commerce merchants. Most "new to the web" merchants we work with want to jump right into the HOW of constructing a website.
That's a mistake. HOW can only be effectively communicated once a brand's WHY is understood and shared. Knowing WHY you're doing things creates actions based on core values. WHY creates great and flexible brands like Apple, Nike, and Facebook.
Join the conversation about your WHY on Curagami: http://www.curagami.com/digital-marketing-gravity/
Global e-commerce revenues continue to grow, and brick-and-mortar retailers are feeling the heat. There’s plenty of evidence pointing to their survival, so why the anxiety? Despite all the buzz surrounding electronic and mobile commerce, 85 percent of consumers say they prefer to shop in physical stores, a 2016 study by TimeTrade (registration required) found. Even when the same product can be ordered online or purchased at a nearby store, according to TimeTrade’s data, 71 percent of us will still schlep out to the brick-and-mortar retailer to get it.
E-commerce is not for the faint hearted. Want to get natural links to your product pages? Try e-commerce content marketing!
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Going to riff a long post on these e-commerce content ideas on Curagami.
You might have heard the old sales saying, "Buyers are liars." Are buyers liars or is something else going on? Let's get to the bottom of this issue.
Martin (Marty) Smith:
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Buyers and Sellers
We agree with @Cendrine Marrouat - https://www.cendrinemedia.com. Neither buyers who have a tendency to walk differently than they talk nor sellers who talk differently than they walk are "liars".
How we see the world is contextual and instinctual. In some context I'm a buyer, at other times I sell. I think of myself as a marketer so my self-definition falls more in the "sales" category than buyer.
Cendrine's cal for "walking in the others' shoes" empathy is smart and rare. We tend to see the world filtered bubbled (see Eli Pariser's TED Talk on filter bubbles). It's no mistake our preconceived notions are confirmed over and over again.
This "auto-confirmation" built over time and "muscle memory" mean Martin as "seller" may appear dissonant to buyer persona X. Buyer persona X has as many auto-confirmations running as I do with one very big difference. Where my auto-confirmations are all about seeing myself as a sales / marketing person Buyer X's world is confirmed as BUYER.
Not to play the same broken record, but creating online community is the best way we know to create an "empathy bridge" between "buyer " and "seller" personas. Community features such as profiles, forums, comments, reviews and loyalty programs with social kudos make it easy to form "like me" tribes, establish "us" vs "them" identities and reinforce brand aligned and wanted behavior such a social shares.
No one is a liar. Everyone is telling their "truth" and smart web developers build in community to build "empathy bridges".
Dumping WooCommerce
The DIY don't need to know code to build a great and scaleable online store may be mostly myth. Like all bell curves there may be one or two highly profitable Shopify, Volusion or Big Commerce sites but those few "rich getting richer" sites stand on the shoulders of many little guys just scaping by.
If that sound like a rigged game we agree. We shared all the reasons we dumped WooCommerce including our own idiocy in this mythbusting Curagami post:
http://www.curagami.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/curagami-logowide.png
5 Best Ecom Stores
Next installment of our 35 Holiday Ecommerce Secrets in 7 days ( http://www.curagami.com/holiday-ecommerce-tips-magazine/?v=7516fd43adaa ) is sharing 5 "Best" Ecommerce Stores including:
* REI.com = Movement Marketing
* MomA's Store = Email Marketing
* WaNeLo = Mashup and Mobile
* Massdrop = Social Shopping
* Casetify = DIY Marketing
We didn't select these five sites because they are BEST in the normal things e-commerce sites must do (nav, pictures, products, shopping carts). We selected these five to demonstrate 5 important trends. Think of each of those trends as a tectonic plate moving even as we write this and you will know why we seledcted these great online stores.
Learn more about thse tectonic e-com trends on Curagami:
http://www.curagami.com/holiday-ecommerce-tips-magazine/?v=7516fd43adaa
Buffer's Social Failure / Watershed
Last wee Buffer wrote about losing 40% of their "social traffic". While key metrics such as conversion rates or the value of the lost traffic weren't included their panic was unmistakeable.
Never panic may be the hardest lesson my team and I learned during my 7 year tenure as Director of Ecommerce for a multimillion dollar website. We didn't start that way.
We started as frightened and panic stricken as Buffer. We learned the hard way how little panic matters. The web is MATH and GAMBLING. Sometimes the math turns FOR you and sometimes against.
@Cendrine Marrouat - https://www.cendrinemedia.com makes great points in her LInkedIn post (linked along with my comment with a jump link on Make Buffer's Social Failure Your Success (http://www.curagami.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/buffer-failure-your-success.png ). One of my favorite points, and one overlooked by the Buffer team, is LOOK TO THYSELF.
Cendrine points to a harsh new truth - the world is FASTER, LEANER and more VISUAL than before. She notes how poorly Buffer has tuned their content to our new mobile, social and gamified world. Brilliant point well made (as usual form a favorite #mustfollow curator),
My point is Buffer ISN'T asking the right questions in the right way. They assume they want their traffic back, but they don't explain what if any deeper meaning their traffic has to their WHY - the reason they exist, the reason users love them. I point out that if traffic goes down but conversions go UP life is good since Buffer would be paying less for more subscribers.
The abject terror in Buffer's post would seem to indicate conversions are off too. As I noted in my original post, conversions are a TRAILING indicator and so unlikely to be off nearly as much as their traffic. Another way of saying that is losing some of their "social traffic" is nothing but net (good).
If I were part of Buffer's team we would be exploring Cendrine's important point - has our content and so our brand lost touch with our customers? What do we stand for? Why do our customers love us? Why might a new generation of customer love us?
None of those questions seem to be on Buffer's agenda. Instead they are on a "traffic hunt", a mistake so many make since meaningless metrics such as followers, traffic and likes abound. As I point out in our Curagami post - NO METRIC MEANS ANYTHING ON IT's OWN. Every metric is TIED to some other metric.
We tied traffic to money. Our $ by visitor was a great way to VALUE traffic in a meaningful way. When traffic went up or down money per visitor usually trailed. If traffic was down 40% money per visitor was probably down 15% or 20%. Eventually those lines cross or reach zero and you don't want that (lol).
Best way to avoid having your metrics reach zero is to avoid PANIC (it doesn't help and can distract), test, create a new plan, seek input and ask for help. Buffer is doing some of those, but they are using community tactics in a pedantic way - telling instead of showing, asking for help but not curating responses, not handing their keys over to the kids (their community).
So they started GREAT but have slipped back into the solipsism virus that effects so many web marketers. Cendrine's brilliant point about the TYPE of content being created is getting more of an airing on my blogs and social than Buffers (not good).
What about you? Are you experiencing "social traffic decline"? Have you stopped using tools like Buffer recently? Why? What do you think Buffer can do to recover?
Share your answers here, in comments on the Curagami post or email martin(at)Curagami.com and we will curate your thoughts in with a link back. Thanks, Marty
5 Super Secret Marketing Trends: nowists, share keys to your digital kingdoms, appify and gamify your content and developing blue oceans to win in 2016.
Crossing Ecommerce Rubicon
We are making progress on adding Woocommerce to Curagami. The goal is to cross the content / commerce rubicon. The gulf between effective content and commerce is large. The promise of Woocommerce, an ecommerce shopping cart and database appended to Wordpress, is elimination of the artificial and rapidly useless separation between content and commerce.
The Social / Mobile / Connected times we inhibit require a new approach to online commerce. We plan to relaunch Curagami.com next week. Stay tuned, join us for coffee (subscribe http://www.curagami.com/signup/?v=7516fd43adaa ) and we will journey across the rubicon together :). Marty & team Curagami
5 TIps To Cross Ecom's Rubicon
Smart merchants are beginning to cross the ecommerce rubicon between content and commerce. Discover 5 Tips to cross your online store's ecommerce rubicon.
5 TIps
* “Magazine” your content
* Curate from brands
* Curate from customers
* Lean & Visual Win
* Tie In Email, Social & Mobile
Going to incorporate @Guillaume Decugis and Scoop.it's ideas on Lean Content on this not very lean post too. I set aside some content to keep the post pinging with fresh content.
Evergreen means our team will refresh the content (or ask for help from our Ambassadors to do so) regularly. Not all content is equal. Places in our "evergreen" regularly scheduled updates category must be earned (lol).
So help 5 Tips to Cross the Ecom Rubicon earn evergreen status, or better yet contribute your thoughts and we will curate in.
Crossing the Rubicon between content and commerce is the BIG ISSUE in online retailing today. Discover our tips to cross and add yorus.
Ecommerc's future is going to be a symphony of feeds. Use SellWare.com to help manage the sell anytime, anywhere future that is coming fast.
Ecommerce For Everyone
There are some web marketing lessons learned best by creating an online store such as:
- Words Matter as they lead (or don’t) to conversion.
- Design Matter as it leads (or doesn’t) to conversion.
- Money Is The Best Metric.
- Money Helps Create The Best Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
- Money helps create a testing culture.
Creating a store is so easy, we developed Curagmai's Bookstore with Amazon's Associates tool in about half a day, everyone should have an ecommerce store these days.
As Rodney said in Back To School - Shakespeare for Everyone!
Read our Ecommerce For Everyone post:
http://www.curagami.com/magical-thinking/news/shakespeare-for-everyone-ecommerce-lessons/
& Visit the new Curagmai Bookstore
http://www.Curagami.com/books.html
Do you have an affiliate store you want to share? Email martin(at)Curagmai.com and we will create a gallery of cool stores for personal brands, companies and B2B marketing teams.
Learning Ecom
There are some Internet marketing lessons you can only learn if you sell something. Amazon makes it so easy to add a bookstore to your site every site should have one...if only because there are some things about web marketing you can only learn by selling online.
Curagami's New Amazon Power Bookstore: http://www.curagami.com/books.html
Disrupt Or Die
Sorry you are too late. You won't be able to win the tactical warfare my team and I did. Your ability to create meaningful differentiation with tactics is over. So BURN YOUR WEBSITE DOWN.
Not literally, but we need to SHOCK Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) into an important realization - it's BLUE OCEANS or ELSE. Why bother putting up a 4 page site no one will care about, share, link, like love or think about ever again after they've visited once.
Instead of wasting your TIMEM and TREASURE why not BLOW UP what you think you should be doing, discover blue oceans and create lasting competitive advantage. Costs are the SAME, but one has the shelf life of a May Fly why the other may just provide the ROI needed to do the next cool thing.
You know were we would VOTE and if you are going to miss Exinent's Ecommerce Meetup in the Triangle of North Carolina tonight you can play catch up with our Haiku Deck.
http://www.curagami.com/magical-thinking/marketing/the-new-ecommerce-meetup/ ;
Magento is a great system for building e-commerce websites; it’s not bad for marketing them either. Out of the box there are no truly bad default settings for SEO and it offers handy functions to m…
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Great "set up" tips here. We agree. Magento has no "default" bad SEO / SEM settings as some "shopping carts" do. Some of these tips were new to us and they are easy to implement / understand.
Web Migration Trauma
Website migration creates seo, traffic and money trauma. We share 5 website migration tips so your next web heart / lung transplant helps you gain not lose:
- Up Your PPC Spend.
- Tighten Your Site Maps & create SILO based maps (advanced).
- 301 never 302 and Watch Webmaster Tools like a hawk for 494 Page Not Found.
- Create highly social & shareable content like contests and games.
- Know your 80:20 Rule and creating supporting content BEFORE the migration.
Included ADVANCED tips too in case you are a high risk player OR more advanced in your SEO knowledge.
Deep Dive Moon-Audio Web Analytics
Spending the day (and probably most of the weekend) deep diving #googleanlaytics listening for the music of http://www.Moon-Audio.com. Here are a few of the questions I like to ask every quarter:
* YTD vs. LYTD sales by product & brand.
* Site heuristics (time on, pages viewed, bounce YTD vs. LYTD.
* Top 10 Internal searches (compared to last time we looked).
* Top content.
* Referring sources.
* New vs. Returning YTD vs. LYTD.
* Growth in social.
* Most linked, shared & reviewed content (will be their Dragon Audio Cable so check against last bench marks).
* Review the funnel (top entry / exit, Recency, Frequency, Monetary RFM values).
* 80:20 rule in product sales, brands and content.
Read more about analytics deep dives on G+: https://plus.google.com/+MartinWSmith/posts/EHq6vvSJhxf
Ecommerce is changing fast. This Scenttrail Marketing post shares and explains 30 "must master" to win ecommerce strategies and tatics.
30 Ecom Strategies & Tactics To Master
No wonder most ecommerce teams feel overwhelmed. Off the top of our heads we came up with 30 complex "mini-systems" that must be mastered to create greatness in online commerce.
Gone are the days when a little of this and that could win the day in online retail. Today all 30 of these tactics and strategies dance together requiring sophisticated understanding of individual trends, tools and ideas to win.
Things change too fast to really KNOW anything. Instead teams must surf waves, learn and fail fast and then wax up their boards for another wild ride.
Did we miss any BIG IDEAS your ecommerce team is managing. Soon we will support this infographic with a http://www.Curagami.com post to further explain each strategy and tactic. In the meantime let us know what we missed in comments or email martin(at)Curagami.com.
Thanks and remember DEEP SLOW BREATHES and if you aren't having FUN your visitors will know. They will feel it.
Ecommerce Strategy vs. Tactics
Which comes first ecommerce strategy or tactics? Trick question. Doesn't matter as long as you end up swimming in a blue ocean.
FedEx Ecommerce Summit
Will be presenting the New Ecommerce to about 100 Small to Medium Sized Businesses in Atlanta at Georgia Tech on 4.16. Here is the agenda:
* Know Thyself (video notes done). * Ask the right ?s.
* Share Thyself.
* Ask for Help.
* Favorite Tools.
We are working on video notes for each section.
Find the Ask For Help: The New Collaborative, Curated, Community Ecommerce Haiku Deck Here: http://shar.es/1gJbLS
Find Know Thyself Marketing Master Class video notes here:
https://youtu.be/OvJ92tZ2dtA
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