Shaping the Ecommerce, Digital Marketing, Social Media Landscape
In advance of Etail Canada, where I am speaking about how to surprise and delight your Ecommerce customers, Tema Frank, a customer experience expert and pioneer, reached out to me. She wanted to talk about past, current, and future challenges and opportunities in winning back customers.
Here is my interview with Team Frank in full (audio version).
You can also check out the online, written-out version of the interview: Winning Advice To Win Back Customers
Like many digital marketers, I like to network, be it at tradeshows, meet-ups, or through LinkedIn. And one of the questions I get asked most is “What books do you recommend I should read?” That is often followed by “Which authors or bloggers do you follow?” So I thought it would be helpful to mention the 3 most powerful digital marketing books that will definitely boost your career, or help you get started.
Think of it this way: if you’re not motivated, driven, or salivating to transform your marketing/marketing career after reading these books, you may want to change careers. In no particular order:
No book or author has shaped my career more than Six Pixels of Separation and Mitch Joel. Mitch was one of the first authors to write a book that integrated the following core concepts: digital marketing, social media, personal branding, and entrepreneurship. In fact, you may not be reading this blog if it weren’t for his inspiration on branding yourself and Alaa Hassan’s equally important Passion Tribe community.
Not only is Mitch Montreal-born and a journalist by trade – just like me – he is a mastermind at forecasting what concepts and strategies are coming. And if you’re like me, you have a passion for all things digital, but you may at times wonder – how can I keep up with all this change? A phrase Mitch wrote in the book helped me put things into perspective, and should help you do the same: “Be curious about everything, but ruthless in what you get involved with.” If you have a passion and drive to be great, that is a good first step to being a digital rockstar like Mitch is.
He maintains that online channels should not be built simply to push more sales. They need to build loyalty, community, and conversation. If those are done well, the sales will come (for any Ecommerce leaders out there, be sure to focus on the holistic view when building your business plan, and not just on sales, even though the CFO might be twisting your arm).
If you work daily in Ecommerce, maybe you can relate. And wine or scotch could mean an inordinate amount of coffee, tea, chocolate or other snacks. But working in Ecommerce, as fun and exciting as it usually is, presents numerous challenges.
Whether it’s the potential of your site going down during heavy traffic periods (hello Black Friday), a promo code not working as it should, a glitch that merchandises the site with sold out products that appear available to be bought, or the constant stress of knowing a misspelled or poorly timed email can harm conversions, and you have some pretty stressful events.
This all adds up to an elevated amount of probable stress. And you know what? Any Ecommerce professional will likely tell you they wouldn’t have it any other way. You see, there is an athlete-type mindset that passionate Ecommerce experts possess. Every big sales spree, every new launch, every new test, and every new optimization requires planning, practice (hello dev. environments) and precision. Not so much different than the athletes we admire.
There is a great article on stress written by Alan Goldberg called Peak Performance Under Stress: 11 Guidelines for Winning Coaching. The 11 guidelines are listed below, but notice some of the parallels between sports and Ecommerce, which I describe in italics below each of the 11 guidelines:
Have you ever visited a website and were primed to do some online shopping when something, somewhere went amiss? We’ve all been there. Maybe the page takes too long to load, the navigation of the site is hurtful and not helpful, and the search bar is nowhere to be seen. Whatever the reason, you’ve already bolted off the site and sworn never to return (unless there’s a huge promo, then maybe you’ll tolerate it).
Newsflash: your site may never be perfect. I know that’s a scary thing. But if you delay the launch until your site is 100% perfect, you may never launch. Take solace in the fact that most sites launch at 80% or 90% of what they would deem “perfect.” Now, there are some obvious things you want upon launch: Ensure you can capture payments; make sure your site is secure; make sure your site is optimized for SEO. But what we’re talking about here is nice-to-haves. Never delay a site launch for a nice-to-have, like the ability to purchase gift cards. Gift cards are a great characteristic for any site (that at least sells products), but it should not prevent a site launch.
The solution: create a list of must-haves, the items that you won’t launch until they are completely coded and tested and work fine. Now, create a list of nice-to-haves. These are features you ideally would love to launch with, but they can wait for phase 2 if need be.
When you search for “Ecommerce Job Descriptions” on Google, you get more than 467,000 results. That’s not surprising for a growing sector that is relatively still new in some countries. But what is surprising is the different nature of many of those descriptions.
When you hire a Finance Manager or Systems Analyst, typically many companies have a similar description for each of those roles. They are clearly defined for the most part. The only exception may be for some particular systems or technologies you are required to have used or learn. Same goes for the position of Director of Digital Marketing.
The description will be filled with buzz words like “must have proven expertise in SEO, SEM, B2C, B2B, Email marketing optimization, and affiliate marketing.” There may be some industry or company specifics that are different, but for the most part, hiring managers, human resources (HR) teams, and recruiters can fill these descriptions with the help of the department head.
But evolving and relatively nascent roles like Ecommerce are a bit more complex. And here’s where the fun starts for Ecommerce.
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