In Part One of our three-part series, we outlined a number of critical elements to building the foundation of a successful ecommerce strategy – defining a thoughtful online product assortment, crafting a robust pricing policy, and selecting the right ecommerce partners.
In Part Two, we took a close look at establishing ongoing processes to allow your ecommerce partners to deliver a best in class customer experience – developing digital assets, having a smart inventory replenishment strategy, and ensuring your team is trained on the specific transactional and operational processes of each retailer.
In this third and final part, we’ll take a deep dive into crafting your marketing calendar in partnership with your ecommerce partners to maximize exposure and business across the channel:
A well-crafted marketing calendar will naturally elevate your product rankings
In the old (ecommerce) days, your buyers had quite a bit of control over where products were placed, which therefore translated into more control for you--the brand--because of your interaction with that buyer. Certainly, algorithms have always played a part in where products are placed, but there was a time when many buyers had the ability to influence product placement within their categories, which was often a negotiable business driver.
Better or worse, those days exist far less than they once did. Large internet retailers began placing more and more weight on the value of their algorithms, and less on the negotiations between buyer and brand for that placement. Algorithms take into account factors like volume, inventory availability, gross margin, page views, and conversion rates. Since many buyers have over time lost the autonomy to negotiate and override this algorithm, it’s more important than ever to find ways to naturally elevate your products to the top.
Building a robust marketing calendar is one way to do this. Event exposure is one of the smartest ways to increase your volume and over time boost your products to higher placement in their respective categories.
There are two approaches to building out an event calendar and our belief is that both are equally important to execute upon: One is to build your all-channel event calendar that internet retailers can participate in, and the second is to participate in the events that your retail partners are creating themselves.
Brand Driven All-Channel Calendar
Building an all-channel calendar is more than simply deciding to have a MAP Holiday in the Spring, Summer and Black Friday/Cyber Monday for a few weeks at a time. Some factors to consider as you plan out your all-channel calendar:
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MAP Discount: Balancing a compelling call to action, without giving everything away
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Assortment: All brand, specific product categories, or even individual products
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Frequency: How often is too often, and how often is not enough?
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Seasonality: When will your brand and products receive the smartest exposure?
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Retailer Calendars: How do you time your promotional efforts with your retail partners?
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Channel Conflict: How will your decisions impact other channels of distribution?
Ultimately, you’ll want to build out this calendar to partner with the greatest number of internet retailers (definitely your key accounts) and drive the most business as possible, while maintaining your own margin and minimizing channel conflict.
Retailer Driven Event Calendars
It doesn’t stop with merely creating your calendar and negotiating for placement with your ecommerce partners. To truly maximize the opportunity in ecommerce (and quickly elevate your product rankings), it’s critical that you develop a deep understanding of your internet retailers’ target audiences, go-to-market strategies and event calendars. Studying the cadence of their events, and their strengths and weaknesses in themes and categories are imperative to be able to properly align your calendar with theirs.
You don’t necessarily want to participate in every single opportunity because you probably don’t want to gain the reputation of being on sale all the time, but it’s important to also recognize that the U.S consumer is a very promotional consumer, regardless of income level, and these events are a primary method to gain exposure. Think about your participation in internet retailer events similar to how you approach your own calendar of events – maximize volume and awareness, while minimizing conflict and overlap both within and outside of the channel.
Supporting all Marketing Activity
If your goal is to grow your online business and do everything possible to increase exposure, you want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward with your digital packaging.
In addition to basic information like SKU, price, color/finish, dimensions and shipping information, it helps to have polished written descriptions that not only give a sense of what the product is but what sets it apart and how these differentiators will make a difference for the consumer.
Other vital assets include a robust suite of imagery that showcases the product from various angles, highlight specific and unique features and show it “in action” in lifestyle shots. Not only will best in class imagery help conversion, but it also will increase your event exposure because internet retailers crave quality imagery to use as hero shots in their events.
Bringing in the A-Team
At BrandJump, we have relationships with and a deep understanding of the strategies of many internet retailers. We know how to build out a thoughtful all-channel calendar, work within internet retailers’ promotional parameters and how to introduce our own marketing initiatives. This entails engaging buyers across category, meticulously following editorial calendars, and in some cases engaging social teams. Not only do we plan events on the brand and internet retailer side, but we also identify opportunities to submit blogs and other content that fits with the internet retailer’s marketing efforts.
This means we’re optimally positioned to help your brand achieve your online objectives and make your brand stand apart from the rest.
