Where you are and how you present yourself can have a lot of dictation on the success of a brand. Last week, Rave Retailer discussed the importance of m-commerce, mobile e-commerce. Amidst our talk, we dove into reasons to upgrade your mobile responsiveness from how it can be useful no matter where you are all the way to it making or breaking the impression of a consumer. To operate your business in a way that caters to the mobile is extremely important, and although responsiveness is primary in consideration of mobile capabilities, this is only the mere starting block.
What comes next however? Well, what do people do when they have the mobile capabilities that they have been privileged with over recent years? They move around, they go! That being the case, location becomes the next crucial factor in the equation. How you market your brand to these now-mobile potential buyers comes into play. That being said, proper geomarketing is in order, and with that comes integrated customer review capabilities. This is the seam binding e-commerce and brick-and-mortar, and with 94 percent of all retail sales still being in brick and mortar stores (RealNext), to not neglect this intersection will bring success to your brand. Let’s investigate how, exactly.
Buyer Habits
As connectivity via the internet continues to pose the potential for quicker satisfaction, or even instant gratification, it has grown people to the expectation that if they want to access something, they should be able to do so in the most swift way possible. In studies done by Retail Dive, it was found that among brick-and-mortar shoppers, 62 percent liked this form of shopping so as to instantly try out, touch or feel products, and 49 percent opted for physical shopping because, upon trying these products, they could leave with it in hand, instead of having to deal with the wait that e-commerce requires with shipment and the like. What this means is that, instead of purchasing online, consumers will instead look online for places that they can physically visit and buy something, outlining the importance of a brand’s geomarketing within an area to ensure that it is seen as a contender.
While the instance of someone needing something right away for sake of, well, the urgency of needing it happen all the time, quick purchases do not always take place in the midst of necessity. As a matter of fact, snap-decisions happen all the time as mere impulse buys. Due to the the increased smartphone and mobile device use that we see, we imagine that most instances of impulse purchasing would be done online, however that is not the case. Only 6 percent of impulse purchases were made on a smartphone, versus the 79 percent of that people did their spontaneous purchases in a store (Credit Cards). Considering the desires of people to get what they need or want right away, the ability to pinpoint brick-and-mortar stores to get the job done and done right is key.
Buyer Reassurance of Geography
Let’s start this portion of our discussion with the information we now know about brick-and-mortar buying habits, aforementioned, and add to the mix one other potential factor. As also mentioned earlier, people are more mobile, meaning they may be in a place that is foreign and unfamiliar to them, a condition that we’ll incorporate in this next section. So someone has a desire to buy, but they are in a new place, what is the first step they will take in finding what they need or want? They will do a quick search to find places that fit the bill. The first priority is finding a place that they can actually go. If they are unable to do that, their search would be pointless.So the first criteria is having information listed. Look at it from the scenario of a dating website. If you want sometime to find you on a dating website so you can fall in love and live happily ever after, you have to first…be on that dating website! Sounds simple, but it’s crucial.
Next, we continue with the allegory of the suave dating service user, now with the an actual profile to visit, but with all incorrect information regarding himself. People are going to be seriously let down when what they thought would be a chiseled, skydiving, professional lion tamer is actually a bum with no ambition whose only prospect is to be firmly told by his parents that he is 36-years-old and it is time to leave home. You would feel very led astray, figuratively speaking. The same, in the business world, pertains to being physically and literally led astray. It has been found that 37 percent of people will not buy from a business if it has incorrect basic information such as location or contact information, and furthermore, 37 percent of people will take their business elsewhere (Review Trackers). So it goes without saying, being as accurate with your geomarketing information makes a world of a difference.
Buyer Reassurance of Seller Character
Having the capacity to find a business using the information provided to you is important. However, location is not the one and only instance where brand representation will make the difference. The metaphor of the the online dating service patron spills into this consideration as well, but with a slightly different application. You want to know that the businesses you are now considering doing your purchasing through are worth receiving your business or just worth the time of day, and this comes by means of customer review integrations. Look at this way, while a brand can let you down by giving your the wrong address, the sum of all previous customers and their combined experienced, all averaged out to come to a final score as to how a business performs will not let you down.
One thing for business owners to bear in mind is that it is not simply a nice luxury to customers for them to be able to see what prior customers have said regarding their experiences. It is actually imperative to one’s decision to shop at a certain place. This takes shape in a couple of ways. The first way is the trust that comes with the customer reviews that are present. People take word of mouth or instances of praise or dissatisfaction to heart in a very strong way through the reflections that people post in the customer review sections of a geomarketing approach. As a matter of fact, 88 percent of people claim that they trust and hold the reviews of others about a business to the same regard as a personal recommendations from friends or close ones (Search Engine Land). Good reviews make for good business progress.
And one other thing for business owners to bear in mind, on top of the first thing to bear in mind, is that you must give your customers the ability to leave reviews, period. Liked the dating service patron scenario? Well here is another (not as fun) example! You get done waiting in the long line for your turn to peruse the redbox selection at your local grocery store and then you begin to dig in. There are some movies that you see on the list that you have heard, either for good or for bad, and there are many other movies about which you have heard little to no feedback. Which one are you going to pick? In most cases, you are going to trust the one that has given you reason to trust it, instead of the one with no backing or support. Unless you are letting the experiences of your customers speak to the quality of your brand, you are not doing enough to sell your brand.
In Conclusion
Looking at the hypothetical situation of having new, mobile prospective customers, having a plan to effectively reel them in will be the difference between you maintaining your customer base and expanding into new, unchartered clientele territories. E-commerce and the use of digital marketing have become more popular tactics over the years, while concurrently, brick-and-mortar shopping still generates the most sales. Geomarketing and integrated customer reviews work together to give new, mobile customers all the insight they need to pull the trigger on buying through you. So what are you waiting for? Contact Rave Retailer today, learn more about these great services and all they can do for your customer outreach and expansion.