Online retailers offer cheaper prices than their brick-and-mortar counterparts because they do not burden overhead costs. They also benefit from lower operational expenses, enabling them to pass savings on to the consumer. Below are some of the benefits of E-Commerce:
Convenience
E-commerce allows consumers to shop from the comfort of their own homes. There is no need to fight traffic, wait in line, or carry heavy purchases home. Furthermore, online retailers offer a much wider selection of products than traditional stores. Most products and services can be easily purchased online and delivered right to your door.
Affordability
E-commerce provides consumers with the opportunity to buy many of their favorite items at affordable prices because there are no overhead costs associated with running a physical store. Consumers also avoid paying sales tax on most purchases. You will save gas money since you do not need to drive around town visiting several stores searching for the best deals.
Product Diversity
Consumers can find virtually any product they are looking for online. This includes hard-to-find items and items not typically carried by local stores. In addition, online retailers often have a greater variety of colors and sizes available than traditional stores.
Shop Anywhere
The advent of e-commerce has allowed people to shop from anywhere in the world with just a few clicks. It made shopping accessible to anyone with an internet connection and mobile device. In fact, shoppers can now browse and purchase anything straight from their laptops without actually visiting physical stores.
Secure and Safe Transactions
E-commerce transactions are typically very secure. Online retailers use sophisticated security measures to protect their customers’ personal information. Consumers can often feel confident that they are getting a good deal because most online retailers offer a return policy on items they are not satisfied with.
Customer Service
Many online retailers provide excellent customer service. This includes answering customer questions and resolving any complaints promptly. In addition, online retailers often have staff available 24 hours a day to help with customer service issues.
Constant Availability
Products are constantly updated and restocked on e-commerce websites, so consumers can always find the latest products. In addition, online retailers often have sales and coupons which provide additional savings to customers. In contrast, brick and mortar stores typically only offer sales on certain days of the week.
Convenient Return Policies
Many e-Commerce merchants offer very convenient return policies, often with no need to provide a reason for returning an item. This makes shopping online a much less risky proposition. In contrast, traditional stores often require customers to have a receipt to return an item.
Customer Reviews
One of the great advantages of eCommerce is the ability to read customer reviews before making a purchase. This allows consumers to make informed decisions about which products to buy. In addition, many online retailers ask customers to provide feedback on the products they purchase. This has enabled CEO Patrick James to learn what customers like and dislike about their products or services.
Increased Reach
With e-Commerce, businesses can sell to customers all over the world. There is no need to open physical stores in other countries, and you can sell your products online. This increases a business’s potential customer base significantly. E-Commerce is a type of retail retailer that allows buyers to purchase products online through websites or apps. It has revolutionized the retail industry and has increased sales for online retailers.
Utilizing PPC advertising services can also boost the visibility and sales for e-commerce businesses by driving targeted traffic to their website through online advertising platforms.
Delivery Speed
In many cases, e-Commerce purchases can be delivered within a few business days. This is much faster than going to a local store where you must wait several weeks for your order to arrive. Some items may not be available for immediate delivery if they come from a third-party supplier or are customized based on personal preferences.
The convenience of e-commerce makes it attractive to shoppers because it allows people to shop from home. Consumers benefit from the cost savings, variety, and product diversity that e-commerce provides. E-commerce merchants also benefit from lower operational expenses, which enable them to pass savings onto the consumer.
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The Pros of E-Commerce
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeOnline retailers offer cheaper prices than their brick-and-mortar counterparts because they do not burden overhead costs. They also benefit from lower operational expenses, enabling them to pass savings on to the consumer. Below are some of the benefits of E-Commerce:
Convenience
E-commerce allows consumers to shop from the comfort of their own homes. There is no need to fight traffic, wait in line, or carry heavy purchases home. Furthermore, online retailers offer a much wider selection of products than traditional stores. Most products and services can be easily purchased online and delivered right to your door.
Affordability
E-commerce provides consumers with the opportunity to buy many of their favorite items at affordable prices because there are no overhead costs associated with running a physical store. Consumers also avoid paying sales tax on most purchases. You will save gas money since you do not need to drive around town visiting several stores searching for the best deals.
Product Diversity
Consumers can find virtually any product they are looking for online. This includes hard-to-find items and items not typically carried by local stores. In addition, online retailers often have a greater variety of colors and sizes available than traditional stores.
Shop Anywhere
The advent of e-commerce has allowed people to shop from anywhere in the world with just a few clicks. It made shopping accessible to anyone with an internet connection and mobile device. In fact, shoppers can now browse and purchase anything straight from their laptops without actually visiting physical stores.
Secure and Safe Transactions
E-commerce transactions are typically very secure. Online retailers use sophisticated security measures to protect their customers’ personal information. Consumers can often feel confident that they are getting a good deal because most online retailers offer a return policy on items they are not satisfied with.
Customer Service
Many online retailers provide excellent customer service. This includes answering customer questions and resolving any complaints promptly. In addition, online retailers often have staff available 24 hours a day to help with customer service issues.
Constant Availability
Products are constantly updated and restocked on e-commerce websites, so consumers can always find the latest products. In addition, online retailers often have sales and coupons which provide additional savings to customers. In contrast, brick and mortar stores typically only offer sales on certain days of the week.
Convenient Return Policies
Many e-Commerce merchants offer very convenient return policies, often with no need to provide a reason for returning an item. This makes shopping online a much less risky proposition. In contrast, traditional stores often require customers to have a receipt to return an item.
Customer Reviews
One of the great advantages of eCommerce is the ability to read customer reviews before making a purchase. This allows consumers to make informed decisions about which products to buy. In addition, many online retailers ask customers to provide feedback on the products they purchase. This has enabled CEO Patrick James to learn what customers like and dislike about their products or services.
Increased Reach
With e-Commerce, businesses can sell to customers all over the world. There is no need to open physical stores in other countries, and you can sell your products online. This increases a business’s potential customer base significantly. E-Commerce is a type of retail retailer that allows buyers to purchase products online through websites or apps. It has revolutionized the retail industry and has increased sales for online retailers.
Utilizing PPC advertising services can also boost the visibility and sales for e-commerce businesses by driving targeted traffic to their website through online advertising platforms.
Delivery Speed
In many cases, e-Commerce purchases can be delivered within a few business days. This is much faster than going to a local store where you must wait several weeks for your order to arrive. Some items may not be available for immediate delivery if they come from a third-party supplier or are customized based on personal preferences.
The convenience of e-commerce makes it attractive to shoppers because it allows people to shop from home. Consumers benefit from the cost savings, variety, and product diversity that e-commerce provides. E-commerce merchants also benefit from lower operational expenses, which enable them to pass savings onto the consumer.
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Direct Marketing Best Practice Guidelines
/0 Comments/in Data /by Rebecca CaroePublished by the Marketing Association (New Zealand). Download the full Direct Marketing Best Practice Guidelines.
Good advice here for:
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Copywriting sales follow up emails
/0 Comments/in B2B, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Email, Pitching /by Rebecca CaroeFor a B2B sales team it’s really important to judge correctly the mind of the recipient when sending follow up sales emails.
The path to a sales contract is tortuous and certainly not linear. There are many places where a poorly written sales email can foul your pitch. Marketing and sales need to collaborate with strong Account Based Marketing and Customer Relationship Management strategies to overcome this. Here’s an example from today.
Well written direct sales copy
If you have a clear understanding of the prospect’s stage in the sales funnel, your emails can be written to align with the precise needs of the prospect at that exact time. Otherwise you are guessing – like throwing darts in the dark…. all misses.
I went to a conference recently and the sponsor has been hounding me ever since about his software.
Yes I did give them permission to contact me.
Yes I did take a look at the lead magnet they offered.
BUT I’m not taking their sales call. Because I’m not going to be buying…. and they could have found that out earlier in the day and so saved their sales team a lot of effort.
Who is this prospect?
Just because I attended their talk and said they could contact me…. does not mean I’ll become a customer.
A cheeky sales email
I replied to his third message (repeating a link to the landing page and asking to do a demo) to explain my reasons.
And so I sent him this reply.
4 Reasons your sales email failed
Here are the reasons I am not an appropriate prospect
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Website copy testing for SEO
/0 Comments/in B2B, SEO /by Rebecca CaroeGreat question – I got this from a customer who did not hire me… but had the savvy to ask the right question. It looks nice but is the website home page copy doing its job? Bringing inbound traffic, showing up in SEO, right keywords and key phrases.
Testing web copy
Natural Search Copywriting
What next?
Your copywriters job is complete if the keywords match your business products and services – the type of search phrases you would expect someone to use when looking for a business like yours.
Now hand over to the marketing team – they will work out how to get website visitor numbers UP, how to start conversations with prospective customers and how to get customers to return and buy from you over and over again. [Inbound marketing; outbound marketing; loyalty repeat customer marketing; testimonials.]
Website traffic and Key word count
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B2B email spam laws
/0 Comments/in B2B, Email /by Rebecca CaroeA refresher for on the rules around sending email (and SMS) to prospects.
New Zealand privacy and email marketing
With regard to the NZ Privacy Act 2017 and updated 2020.
Top level obligations
Deemed consent is what most B2B marketing would be using for email marketing.
[Quote from article linked above]
BUT you first need a strong privacy policy on your business website.
Here’s a sample NZ privacy policy (and one from Australia).
USA and Canada and GDPR (Europe)
These jurisdictions have different rules – but many of the underlying principles are similar.
Hope that’s useful for everyone.
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Marketing and Midlife
/0 Comments/in Advertising /by Rebecca CaroeI am a woman on a mission. To raise the visibility of midlife women in the media.
Why?
We are a sizeable population, we make around 50% of buying decisions and we are IGNORED by mainstream media.
This has to stop
Midlife is the age from 45 to 70 where women are in their prime. We have life experience, we have worked, had relationships, lived life (a bit or a lot) and we still have about half our life to live. And if you just looked at the adverts on TV and print media you’d think we didn’t exist.
Women of this age group are invisible.
Why is this?
Well the media tells a story about women through the advertising produced and presented to the buying public. It runs something like this:
This ageism is hard wired into our society – young kids understand it – and it gets ugly when you realise the amount of airbrushing and photo editing that goes into published advertising and media. It’s dishonest. And although we may crave youthfulness, any decent marketing person will tell you that the advert has to be targeted to the right buyer. Who’s making the decisions?
Midlife women are.
Let’s reverse this trend
If you have any media budget, if you select images for sharing on social media, if you are a product manager, a buyer or a journalist – try to find images that represent us.
Let’s make midlife women “Uninvisible”.
Hyundai is leading the way
When I first became aware of this trend, I started watching adverts to see how old the women were – and I found two with midlife women who are front and centre characters.
The perennial Briscoes lady (now 59) and still wearing the wig….
And Hyundai.
In May 2021 they released this advert for their new Kona Series II electric car.
How refreshing.
Hooray for Michelle Langdon Marketing Manager at Hyundai NZ. Go tell her how wonderful her work is.
What can you do?
Advocate, challenge when images for media do not line up with the age of your consumer – make it real, New Zealand.
We can make this change happen.
Tell us your story in the comments – we need more examples of brands leading the way to #uninvisible.
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Marketing personas lack one big thing
/0 Comments/in B2B, Content Marketing, Strategy /by Rebecca CaroeWorking with a client who needs to develop customer personas, I did some research and found a load of good articles on how to write a customer persona [links all at the bottom of this page].
So far so good.
but on closer reading it’s clear they are all copying each other.
Content Marketing needs quality control
As I read the articles – many by reputable brands like Buffer, Hubspot, Sprout Social – it was clear that when searching for illustrations they had all culled the same images off Google. Over and over.
The authority of the article was not in doubt. They write clearly and the instruction was good quality for beginner marketers who have never created a customer persona before.
More and more blogs and experts are recommending writing fewer articles and making them longer as well as more niche.
The medium evolves [as I shared this week about Instagram videos] and staying alert to new trends is important for B2B Marketers.
But surely brands could actually show some content images which they had created?
The articles looked “bitty” as a result as the templated personas were all laid out differently and were of varying image quality, never mind what the persona description actually was. I thought they were light in quality.
templated personas copied and reproduced
How to Create B2B Customer Personas
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Real Estate and Instagram
/0 Comments/in B2C, Social Media /by Rebecca CaroeDo real estate agents get good marketing returns (listings and sales) from Instagram?
Great question – and one worth answering before you decide to go all in on social media marketing.
You first have to find out
I’m dubious about Instagram as a way to sell real estate or get listing instructions.
Second stage research
Find out if other real estate agents are just growing a following or are actually getting listings from their social media.
Below are articles about how to get followers…. but before you invest a lot of time and effort into this work, figure out whether people who will hire you to sell their homes are using Instagram as a way to find a real estate agent. Do this by asking the people who DON’T list with you, do this by asking your friends and neighbours, do this by asking other agents in your business and competitors. Form a rounded view from all their information. Remember some will lie to you or exaggerate. Who you pick in your sample will affect the answers – if you only speak to cynics you’ll get answers slanted towards the negative.
And it could be that your type of clients are very different from other agents’ clients – this could be geography or age or ethnicity driven. So assess your answers carefully.
Get social media followers
Here’s how to get followers on Instagram for yourself by copying successful practitioners
Above all, beware of buying followers. Just don’t do it.
But you should consider buying social sharing software e.g. Buffer or Hootsuite because they can save you a lot of time especially with scheduling posts (which isn’t allowed on the native Instagram site).
Learn how to do Instagram right
For these links. Read them. Then subscribe to their newsletter, follow them on social (Neil Patel has a great youtube channel too).
And you should research AdFenix – they specialise in guiding your marketing practice for real estate professionals.
Expensive but probably worthwhile. They are a whole-marketing service not just social media.
Now it’s down to persistence and regular hard work. Give yourself 3 months before you decide to quit.
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2021 Marketing Trends
/0 Comments/in B2B, Data, Marketing, Strategy /by Rebecca CaroeYes I hate that headline too… but I can’t work out the best way of listing three helpful things which I’m working on without it becoming a silly list headline. Live with it.
The year data became grown up
If you aren’t working with competent amounts of data insights and analytics yet, this is your year to get going and to go deep-dive.
For the beginners – the new Google Analytics GA 4 is a level above earlier versions. Get it installed (new header code on your website) and find a competent expert to guide you though its features. Well worth while.
After that, update dashboards, check the CRM integrations and get a whole lot smarter in your tracking.
Single customer view got easier
Nobody has got this wholly right, easy or fully connected (if you have you are probably a micro-organisation or a startup). Enter the Customer Data Platform. This is the software you need to bridge above (think umbrella) over all your data silos so that you can move towards customer nirvana.
I’m not being totally rose-tinted-glasses on this – there are serious players who can help build the plumbing which will help you understand and integrate customer data. Go learn about CDP.
Behavioural economics for marketers
If you haven’t heard about “nudges” you need to get on board fast. The new-ish science of behavioural economics is all about how we can get people to do things. A nudge is a way of changing behaviour – like leaving your gym kit by the bed at night as a way to encourage you to do a workout in the morning. Marketers love this.
And the smart folks at Ogilvy UK hosted a whole day event – Nudgestock – to talk about and showcase a lot of real case studies of effective marketing action based on behavioural economics. They called it
Watch it on YouTube. I particularly liked Abigail Dalton’s talk about Nudging to end world poverty.
That’s enough for now. Each of these is worthy of a deep dive research and learning day. Plan it for yourself.
I write and coach B2B marketing – each of these could be used by your business – get in touch.
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