Turning Customers into Broadcasters
In SEO and SEM we spend a lot of time filling the funnel. The more people we get to your website, the more chance we’ve got of creating a customer. If we’ve done our job properly, 10% of these visitors will turn into paying customers, so the more you fill, the more you make?
Well yes, but if you spend all your time focussing on the funnel, you will forget to make a business so spectacular, that your customers forget to flip the funnel, and shout down it to all their friends. Here’s some reasons why customers might flip the funnel when they use your e-commerce store:
1. Spectacular Fulfillment
Amazon has got this so right. When you get an Amazon delivery, you know it’s Amazon, even without the package branding. You know how to open it, you know that the book, cd, etc., will be perfectly presented. You’re content. It’s almost perfect, but its ubiquity gives smaller players something to aim at. Consider Seth Godin’s experience when he ordered from CD Baby:
Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make
sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the
crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can
buy.We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland
waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in our private
CD Baby jet on this day, Tuesday, June 18th.I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year”. We’re all
exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
2. Coupons
Coupons are a great way to reward your customers for re-ordering, or for flipping the funnel. Why not give your customers £10 to give away to their best friends? If your product and service is great, your customers should feel great about recommending you to their friends, and even better if their friends get cash benefit.
3. Email Marketing
I do not mean spamming your customers with useless crap. Do not send your customers context-less advertising. This is a serious misuse of email. Email is so overrun with useless communications (even internal business communications have now tipped into meaningless CC drivel that we don’t need), that your emails should be carefully crafted to be extremely useful and targeted. I really don’t mind receiving Amazon emails that have book selections that reflect previous purchases, and I really don’t mind receiving holiday offers from Expedia that reflect when and where I’m likely to go.
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