My wife and I are in the process of moving to a new house that just so happens to have the perfect place for a new TV. I don’t generally need any convincing to buy new technology, so as soon as my wife got out, “I think we need a new T…” I already had my phone out to start searching.
As we all know, using a mobile device to shop is catching serious tailwinds. In any case, I came across a few interesting learnings going through the process of finding a new TV, so I’d like to walk through my customer experience.
Searching for success.
It’s been a couple years since we last bought a TV. We have a Vizio that we like, and it didn’t break the bank, so I was hoping to duplicate that feat in some fashion.
My quest started where many do, with a mobile search on Google. (Mobile stat to be mindful of: in 2011, nearly 80 percent of smartphone users visited search sites; mobile paid search budgets grew 220+ percent during Q1 2012, accounting for 12.3 percent of total search advertising spend). One of the first results that popped up was a 47-inch LED Smart TV. Nice TV, and since I’ve always associated Wal-Mart with saving money, I clicked the link to check it out.
A frown quickly ensued, as I hit a brick wall and wasn’t able to find the product I was looking for. At this point, I could have done a search on the Wal-Mart mobile site, but this small hurdle had me second guessing the Wal-Mart route, so I moved on.
Going big box.
I typically end up buying all my large electronics from a big box retailer, so I decided to go straight to Best Buy’s mobile site. In the back of my mind was something I’d heard about in-store pick up, so I started salivating over picking up a new TV that night. Surprise, surprise; the site was unavailable on a Sunday afternoon. Go figure.
With that option out of the question, I decided to go straight to Vizio site to see what I could find out. Unfortunately, the site wasn’t optimized for mobile and I lacked the patience to zoom in and out searching for information. It’s about this time that I started thinking the stars were not aligned for me to buy a TV right then and there.
As a last-ditch effort, I decided to go to the source that typically provides the best mobile shopping experience: Amazon. After a quick search, I found the TVs that fit my criteria. I compared a couple that interested me but ultimately made my decision based on customer ratings. Amazon already had all my payment information, so after I logged in, I quickly made the purchase and begin waiting for its arrival. Success!
Unrealized potential.
As a marketer specifically interested in mobile, here’s what I find interesting about my mobile TV-buying experience, which I can only assume was very typical. Wal-Mart and Best Buy had a chance for my business before I went to Amazon. In many ways, I would have preferred to purchase from them so I could pick up the TV that day (Have I mentioned I can be very impatient when it comes to electronics?). However, I hit small mobile shopping snags that nevertheless were big enough to send me searching elsewhere. Fickle? You bet.
It seems to me that this current landscape should motivate retailers rather than frustrate them. It’s important for marketers to understand where mobile fits in the typical customer’s purchase path. There is an immediacy to mobile search. The customer is either following a spur-of-the-moment impulse to know something now, or is actually ready to visit or buy on the spot. Two retailers had that chance with me and missed. The third let me take the next step with one-click simplicity that took me from consideration to purchase in minutes. All from my mobile device.
I think we can all appreciate the growing threat brick-and-mortar retailers are facing from the rise in online and mobile shopping. Competition is tougher than ever. With people price shopping in store via mobile, it presents an unbalanced situation with regard to online retailers who don’t have to carry the same overhead.
If as a retailer you’re committed to providing the best experience so you can capture every precious sale, no matter the channel, success will follow. To ensure that success, retailers should be considering how to line up their mobile experience to support their physical location so both become strong selling points for impatient shoppers like me in this new mobile-oriented world.
The Pinterest visual bookmarking tidal wave is revealing a new stage in the consumer decision journey. Gone are the days of marketers focused solely on the purchase/decision stage. Pinterest adds anticipation to the mix, allowing marketers to follow individuals as they’re actively evaluating in the initial consideration phase.
Pinterest represents a simple equation: Engaged users + cultural insights + potential purchase intent = anticipatory marketing. Here’s how it breaks down:
Engaged users
Pinterest is a place of diversion that begets visualizing oneself doing, being, or wearing something else. It’s where aspirations lie. Think of it as displaying the glimmering lights of purchase intent. As individuals pin and surf others’ Pinterest boards, they are engaging in material that is visually, mentally, and emotionally stimulating. It’s the perfect place for marketers to feel the individual and cultural beat.
Cultural insights
Unlike Facebook, which thrives on the interconnectivity of friends, Pinterest is a place where individuals explore the realm outside their social connections. The reach, then, of Pinterest is great — networking strangers and their interests across the world. As Fast Company author Nathaniel Perez notes, Pinterest is creating a storybook of folksonomies — a mapping of collaborative and relevant social interests and information. Through these mappings, marketers can assess and discover the next purchase, trend, and influencer.
Behind each influencer is a web of relations, weaving individual likes, hopes, and dreams into a network of associations. This web is where marketers can listen and harvest information that can then be rolled out into other platforms. To marketers, and especially to strategists, storytelling is huge; it breathes life into an idea, it captures the rhythm of the time. It moves. It feels.
At a recent SXSW panel, Edward Boches presented that not only can we, as marketers, listen to our customers, we can also be a part of the storytelling by encouraging creation and generating inspiration through our own stories, pins, and boards.
Purchase intent
While demographic data is important (e.g., 68% of Pinterest users are women), analyzing who the trendsetters, innovators, and influencers are within Pinterest is even more powerful for marketers. Knowing the trend leaders, whether it’s an individual or a large group, allows marketers to create conversations while simultaneously keeping track of potential purchase intentions — a huge opportunity in itself.
The basis of Pinterest is that it allows individuals to dream, plan, and track their wants and needs. Through their pins and boards, individuals are in effect communicating their hopes, their first flickers of purchase intentions. If marketers listen closely, they can be there to support and drive those aspirations.
Anticipatory marketing
Welcome to anticipatory marketing. At the hub of all these stories, connections, and intentions is where we can begin to explore how interests are integrated; forming what is called an interest graph. In a follow-up post, we will discuss this topic and assess the opportunity behind understanding interest graphs. For now, we should be listening to the stories on Pinterest and anticipating next moves.
Look, I don’t know why I have Groupon in my crosshairs (see my T3 blog post from a while back). I kept my mouth shut when they had a pretty successful IPO, despite red flags in the period leading up to it. Then I read that Groupon shares were free falling. Then they rebounded a bit. Then recently, I read that CBS Marketwatch had dubbed them the “pets.com” of the current boom. PaidContent also weighed in with an article about Groupon’s first shareholder suit over accounting shenanigans.
Enough is enough. I’m not going to stand around while Groupon sullies the very notion of what advertising is.
Here’s what the headline will read come July: “Groupon victimized by own model as people scramble to gobble up the company’s shares at half their IPO value”. But you better redeem those shares fast, because they will continue to shrink in value.
It reminds me of a trip to the Soviet Union I took in the early 90s. Coming back, I struck up a conversation with this guy who was smuggling two half-inch tall stacks of rubles out in his socks. Back then, you had to by law convert your rubles back into your native currency. It was easily more than a thousand dollars in Soviet script.
The conversation went something like this:
“Why didn’t you exchange those out?!”
“It’s an investment,” he said smugly.
“In what?” I nearly screamed. “I’ve only been here for about a month and that currency has lost probably 20% of its value!”
“These will be valuable someday,” he said.
Sure, if you found a couple hundred picture frames for free you could sell these worthless notes for five bucks apiece as relics of the Soviet Union.
But wait, if you could get free picture frames, you could just sell the frames without taking the hit on defunct currency that happens to smell like a pauper’s dirty feet.
Or you could sit on your stock of framed currency for two decades and then issue coupons that allow customers to buy these relics at half of their original price of $5. Two hundred units at $2.50, which is $500 free and clear. Oh, minus Groupon’s cut, so make that $250. Oh, and minus your initial investment in the rubles, so…uh oh.
That’s right, you just took a 75% hit. Great model, Groupon.
