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Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 3)

Category: Growth Hacks

Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 3)
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 3)

How you interact with the customers during and after a sale are also tightly controlled. Even outside these marketplaces, sales is expanding into the realm of customer service. As some studies note, as many as 88% of online shoppers say they are less likely to buy from you if you’re not responding to complaints or service requests posted on social media. This customer service element extends into order fulfillment too.

Nearly every channel has its own way of handling the flow and interaction with customers. Each has its own journey and process, which means you’ll need some salespeople to put those things in place.

The nice bit is that a lot of this can be automated after the initial setup, so you’re not always trying to force a sale with a specific individual. However, the other side of the automation coin is that it’s got to be set up correctly or you push everyone down a path that’s not optimized to sell.

Order Fulfillment

E-commerce warehouses are in the news often because of conditions customers don’t want to hear about — that doesn’t happen everywhere, and we’re working to show your buyers that it’s not the norm. The reason that this unnamed behemoth gets so much attention is because of its reach and how it changed the online conversation to always be about two-day and same-day shipping.

For multichannel sales, that means having the ability to get things out the door. It’s leading more and more businesses to just outsource the warehouse part of their operations because of the complexity that comes with fulfillment. You not only need a system that can take all orders from all sources and combine them for your warehouse, but you have to keep things in stock, monitor inventory demand changes over time, hire people, fill boxes correctly, negotiate rates with carriers, and be able to handle when a product is returned or an order is canceled in the middle of it being picked and packed.

That’s a lot, and each new channel makes it more complicated. It’s often even too much for a single third-party fulfillment company to handle for everyone. Red Stag Fulfillment only works with about 12% of the e-commerce companies we speak with because of how much things like product size and weight or the number of orders you ship can dictate costs and efficiencies. We do refer that 88% to some other great fulfillment companies and they’re in this list of the best fulfillment companies for 2019.

Each carrier will charge you differently for your products based on weight, size, location, and your overall volume. At the same time, warehouses have different prices for these and other factors. It gets overwhelming quickly, and it’s why we always suggest that e-commerce companies looking at multichannel fulfillment have conversations with multiple warehouse and fulfillment companies. Some might be cheaper to ship from while others are cheaper to store at and understanding that can be the difference between having enough money to expand your marketing or going to the bank to try and secure a loan. You’ve got to ask.

3 Thoughts to Help You Decide

Research. Research. Research.

Okay, that’s one thought, but we’re having it in at least three distinct ways. To understand if the opportunity is there, you’ve got to research your customers, costs, and metrics.

In this thought process, customer research is mainly about who your audience is and where they operate. Are they shopping for goods like yours on multiple sites and channels? Do they purchase on these channels, or do you require so much research that most sales still end up happening on your website?

Typically, there’s no good reason to choose every channel. Sure, it’s tempting, but your audience isn’t everywhere (even if you want them to be). Do your homework to find out where the buyers are and seek out the channels you need to reach them.

Our second research point is about the costs you’re facing. Every new channel adds complexity, and that can be expensive. You’ll need to expand marketing budgets to grow across those channels — even if you’re not buying ads, it still takes people to post on social and respond to customer concerns quickly. Expertise is costly, so narrowing down your list of channels and then looking at related costs can help you find the best spots you can afford.

In your selection process, remember that everything costs. Your fulfillment company may charge more for adding new channels, or you might need to buy new software to integrate your store and warehouse with whatever is new. If you’re targeting a brand-new channel, you might need to pay to have a developer create custom support too. Everything costs money, but budgets aren’t unlimited.

The final research we’ll leave you thinking about touches on everything else here: data. Track everything you can think of and use it to inform all the other decisions and choices we talked about today. There’s a lot, and here are a few highlights:

  • Customer data can help you understand if your old targets are still valid.
  • Product performance can give you insight into the channels that work best for you, especially ads.
  • E-commerce platforms can help you understand search volumes and if you need to switch up your keywords.
  • Warehouse data can show if you’re getting orders out on-time and correctly. It can also highlight what gets returned.
  • Channel specific data can show you when interest on a channel — especially around search and hashtags — is growing or dwindling, marking signs for a change.
  • Competition data can help you find trends that your data hasn’t identified yet.

That’s the tip of the data iceberg, and there’s definitely a whole lot more lurking beneath the surface. Multichannel selling represents a significant opportunity for many, and it’ll come back to your audience and the data you have around them to see when it’s worthwhile to expand.

Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 3)

About the author

Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

5 years ago
Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 2)
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 2)

The Trifecta of Trouble and Growth

The tumultuous nature of multichannel marketing is going to keep you on your toes to accomplish your core business functions. In e-commerce, that’s marketing to help people find you, actually capturing the sale, and then getting the product to customers on-time and in a way that they enjoy.

By needing to be available across each channel, you’re going to always have more work to do. Customers are everywhere, and there’s a feeling that you should be everywhere too. We’re going to touch on that briefly at the end, but let’s look at the big picture for what it takes to be everywhere.

Marketing

Studies vary, but somewhere between roughly 80% and 90% of your audience are going to do significant research into your product before they buy. They’re looking for you everywhere, whether that’s to see what influencer is wearing your shorts on Instagram to Amazon’s “Choice” and “Best Seller” designations, and what podcast you’re sponsoring this week.

Marketing also needs to think about mobiles because this technology accounts for 92% of e-commerce order growth. So, your ads and site and other efforts need to not only work on mobile, but they have to be +optimized for this low-impact space. Minimalism isn’t just a fancy trend for luxury offices and site designer websites; it’s also a focus for your team to make the most out of the limited screen size by prioritizing what’s important.

Today, you’ll be stretching that same old budget to meet new people on more channels and give them information to support research instead of just selling. Look for opportunities to grow your impact with content that works across multiple channels, partnerships with people who your audience turns to for education and keeping everything easy to scan to determine its value to the audience.

Sales

Here’s an area even more complicated. Sales is specific to every channel, and you’re going to have to do your own research to understand what and where you can sell. Amazon has a drastically separate set of rules and requirements (especially if you’re Prime) than most other channels, and you’re building an independent reputation on many of these sites.

The channels you “own” tend to be restricted to those where your products aren’t always next to others. So, that’s your website and social channels where you’re controlling the message and some of the discovery. These follow traditional e-commerce and online store rules, where you can build your sales funnel to move people through and capture the sale.

Online marketplaces have their own audiences (with different preferences), rules, and requirements for success. There are excellent guides on the different audience desires, but what is essential at the outset is that your profiles and product descriptions will need to be different for each. In general, eBay will be a little more free-from, while Amazon is much more SEO-minded.

How you interact with the customers during and after a sale are also tightly controlled. Even outside these marketplaces, sales is expanding into the realm of customer service. As some studies note, as many as 88% of online shoppers say they are less likely to buy from you if you’re not responding to complaints or service requests posted on social media. This customer service element extends into order fulfillment too.

Nearly every channel has its own way of handling the flow and interaction with customers. Each has its own journey and process, which means you’ll need some salespeople to put those things in place.

The nice bit is that a lot of this can be automated after the initial setup, so you’re not always trying to force a sale with a specific individual. However, the other side of the automation coin is that it’s got to be set up correctly or you push everyone down a path that’s not optimized to sell.

To read part 1 click here

*to be continued

Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 2)

About the author

Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

5 years ago
Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 1)
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Multichannel Selling: The Right Move Forward or Too Many Things at the Same Time?(Part 1)

The more places your company and products exist online, the easier it is for someone to find you and buy from you. That sounds amazing, but it camouflages the sheer amount of work it takes to keep your channels running and profitable.

There’s a whole lot to discover for e-commerce and multichannel retail, and we want to look at where it can all go right or terribly wrong. So, we’ll review the triforce of multichannel efforts, some core concerns, and a few specific areas you must get right to understand if it’s all worth it for your specific company.

What Is E-commerce Multichannel Retail?

Multichannel sales have changed significantly since the term was first brought into the popular domain. It now covers more than just making products available to customers generally online and in-store. That early focus was often for brick-and-mortar stores expanding into the growing world of digital, which came with its own set of unique challenges as stores turned from large-scale shipping to locations to fulfillment direct to the consumer when a product is sold online.

The E-commerce space introduces further complexity — which, thankfully, software can now manage for most brands — of understanding demand and orders across a variety of online locations. Now, your multichannel efforts tend to consist of providing products on your website, through marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, on social channels such as Facebook and Twitter, and whatever comes next.

That next is often a result of search, such as how you can now order some products through virtual assistants. While they’re locked in closed gardens (buying only from Amazon, iTunes or the soon-to-be TV App, etc.), every such digital revolution we’ve seen has eventually opened up to include a variety of third-party sources.

So, your new multichannel e-commerce selling efforts are designed to distribute your products across as many apps, marketplaces, shopping and search engines, social, and other digital channels focused on letting customers browse and buy how they prefer.

Good news: Software can do much of this heavy lifting thanks to data standards, APIs, and integrations, so you’re not coding things yourself or having to update product availability for each channel manually. Payment is one area where you’ve got some genuinely savvy options.

Bad news: New channels are always emerging, and consumer trends often flow to new channels, so you’re always going to have a mix of staples and an ever-changing roster of newbies that require effort and thought to do well. For instance, Facebook’s own study shows young people are paying less attention to it now, especially when it comes to videos and video ads.

Tough news: The challenge is never going to go away, and channels will likely continue to grow. So, to capture your audience and then build loyalty, you’re going to need to be visible and buyable on the channels they use.

About the author

Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

5 years ago
Top Tips to Burst Payment Myths
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Top Tips to Burst Payment Myths

Online payments are the mainstay of e-commerce. Without an efficient online payment system, the growth of any e-commerce business would be greatly compromised. While designing an online payment system for a business, it is important to not only offer a wide range of platforms, but also to ensure that such platforms are robust and secure. Since most of the e-commerce businesses operate across borders, it is also important that such transactions are legally allowed as per the rules and regulations of the concerned countries. Following are the top tips which let you design an optimal payment system for your e-business.

  • Low Upfront Costs: While online payment platforms are essential for any online business, these are also expensive to operate. While deciding upon the platforms and methods to be used, proper attention should be paid to the associated costs.

Generally, these costs are upfront costs and running costs. Apart from the one-time setup fee, these platforms charge a certain percentage of transaction amount as their operating fee. Therefore, it is important that both these costs are taken into cognizance while deciding upon the platforms to be used. Don’t fall into the trap where some online payment service providers offer low upfront costs. It is highly likely that the associated operating costs will be on the higher side.

  • Supporting Features: Another myth associated with online payment systems is that they are only required to have the ability to accept payments. However, in an ecommerce business, the online payment system is expected to perform many more activities such as accounting for refunds and cashbacks. Such transactions are commonplace in an online business and therefore, the payment platform should be equipped to undertake such operations. While deciding about a service provider, it should be thoroughly checked that they are ready to provide such supporting functions.

 

  • Scalability: While most of the service providers offer the ability to scale up the payment system as and when your business grows, it is imperative that you fully check the extent of the scalability provided. Generally, such offers are saddled with fine prints and hidden clauses which come with additional contracts, higher fees, and other costs. You need to ensure that such elevated costs come with corresponding benefits in terms of scalability. Further, it should also be verified that the scaled operations will provide the same level of efficiency and robustness as the original plan.

 

  • Security: Online payment systems are still considered to be unsafe, which negatively affects their acceptance by the customers. In order to ensure that your customers feel safe while carrying out transactions, it is vital that you fully understand the safety features provided by your online payment platform. Apart from vetting the existing safety measures, you should also look at the service provider’s ability to offer safeguards against potential threats. Online businesses face new security threats on a daily business, making it imperative that the online payments service providers are ready to face not only existing threats but also the future ones. Installing a robust payment system will help in alleviating customers’ concerns about the safety of their money and personal information.

 

  • Flexibility: Another myth related to online payment systems is their rigidity. In order to keep the systems secure, it is generally believed that such systems are difficult to change and customize. However, this is not true as most of the top online payment service providers offer customizations to meet different requirements. Some of the top customizations are related to the acceptance of different currencies and diverse credit cards and debit cards. It is also a good idea to see whether your service provider is future ready to deal with upcoming technologies such as cryptocurrencies, which have the potential to become a major part of payment systems.

While deciding on an online payment system for your e-business, it is important that you take time to separate facts from fiction. There are several myths related to online payment systems and these misconceptions can negatively impact your decision-making process. In order to ensure that you set up the most optimal payment system for your business, you should keep the above-mentioned points in mind.

5 years ago
The Rise of the Subscription Business Model
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

The Rise of the Subscription Business Model

Subscription business model is one of the most promising emerging models and involves charging the customers a recurring price at regular intervals. This model eliminates the need to make a large upfront payment for buying a product or service. While earlier this model was popular with print media and other specialized domains such as service providers, now more and more business segments are experimenting with subscription business model.

Subscription model is quite resilient and may be customized to meet the specific requirements of a business. While some models provide a fixed menu of products or services, others may offer unlimited use of their offerings for a fixed period of time. The flexibility of the model is one of the biggest reasons behind the success of this phenomenon. However, this is not the only advantage of this model. With a subscription business model, you can reap the following benefits:

  • Predictable Revenue Stream: The subscription model allows a business to make educated prediction about its future revenue and therefore is immensely helpful in planning and budgeting.
  • Customization: The subscription model is also conducive to customization of plans. You can design different types of subscription payment schemes to meet diverse demands of your customer base. Such customization also enables the business to attract new customers as they can get payment terms and conditions to suit their requirements.
  • Optimizing Costs: Since the subscription model allows businesses to predict their demand pattern, it becomes easier to design purchase plans in an efficient manner. Such planning enables the business to optimize their costs and processes.

Once you have decided that you want to turn your business into subscription-based enterprise, there are certain pointers you need to keep in mind. These points will help you in smooth transition and efficient execution.

  • The Right Pricing: Just like conventional revenue models, even subscription model requires the business to determine the right price point. Since your subscription plan will not only impact your current customer base but also the size of your potential market and future subscriptions, it is important that you pay proper attention to different factors such as the income level of your market and the likely demand to determine the price to be charged.
  • Simplify Billing: While it is important to have simple yet clear billing in any business model, the need for simple billing is all the more important in subscription-based models since the invoices are sent more frequently. The businesses should ensure that the bills provide all the details in a concise and clear manner. Reliable invoices help in creating transparent and strong processes, inculcating confidence in customers.
  • Develop Deeper Customer Relationships: Robust customer relationships form the base of the subscription model. As the customers grow, it is important that the quality of customer relationship processes is maintained and improved over a period of time. As the subscription model entails more frequent interactions with the clients, it is important that the business is sufficiently strong to take on the additional burden.
  • Measure and Iterate: The success of the subscription model largely depends on a business’s ability to measure the results and take swift actions to remedy the situation. As the model is still in the evolution phase, it allows for customization and quick changes. It is equally essential that the processes are scaled in response to the introduction of the model. Such a model may also require frequent changes as you may have to introduce more innovative plans to meet customers’ requirements.

The subscription model is here to stay as more and more verticals pick it up for boosting their customer base. While the model offers many advantages, it also has certain shortcomings such as customer fatigue, wherein, clients may grow weary of the same products and services. The model also requires the business to stick to scheduled deliveries with minimal deviation. If the supply side is unpredictable, it may not be possible for the business to maintain such delivery schedule for its customers. Overall, it is important to ensure that the subscription model is suitable for the business in question and that adequate attention is paid to different factors while designing this model for implementation.

5 years ago