Last month Think With Google published a great article to tell us that about 80% of smartphone users use their devices to help them make everyday non-online purchasing decisions. While we’ve known that phones are generally used for online purchases, the scale at which we’re using them for in-store shopping is new and actually very exciting.
Some vendors might consider it to be threatening that people can instantly compare their products to those of other merchants, but it actually represents an really enormous opportunity for businesses. With great products and some solid digital marketing you can be the business that benefits from that exposure rather than the one that loses business to it.
Encouraging customers to do their research helps to ensure that the people who buy from you will love what they buy, and won’t regret their purchase later. That’s something your business can leverage to build a great reputation and to build up customer loyalty and advocacy.
So, what can you do to make sure you're one of the winners in the new and digitally connected world?
Focus on Quality
The first step to standing out in a larger and more transparent market like this is to legitimately have the best product available. While customers previously would have gone to the nearest store and bought whatever was there, they can now just do a search to find the best product for their purposes. They can also use apps to instantly check product reviews and compare prices with other vendors in the area.
Since those product reviews are so easily available, potential customers have more factors to consider when making a purchasing decision beyond just price, meaning that you don’t just have to be the most convenient and inexpensive choice anymore. Of course, you can’t win a race that you’re not in, people need to be able to find your product online, and be able to access reliable reviews that they can trust.
Make Sure People Can Find You
Luckily you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to figure out how to make yourself visible on the internet. E-commerce businesses have been doing it for years. First off, you’ll need to build an online inventory of your products. Each product should have its own page with a product description that includes relevant identifying keywords. This isn’t meant to be a sales pitch, it’s more of a “here it is” result for specific internet searches that are specifically for that item.
To really ensure that it’s going to work, you’ll want to make sure that the internet knows where your business is. To ensure that this happens you’ll want to verify your business’ location through Google+. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be listed locally when someone searches Google for your products in your area. Once you've got that done, you can push it further with search engine marketing.
Encourage Quality Product Reviews
Most of us are willing to pay a little bit extra to ensure that we’re getting the right product. One of the most important tools that we use to decide what the best product is is user reviews. To capitalize on this, you should enable customers to leave product reviews on your site, and encourage them to do so. An easy way to do this is to ask customers to give you an email address at the time of purchase, and to send them a message asking them to leave feedback a few days later.
It’s important to mention that you should avoid producing and leaving fake reviews on your products, because it’s important for potential customers to have accurate and reliable information regarding their intended purchase. If they find that the reviews they read weren’t accurate then they won’t be satisfied with their purchase, which could directly harm our objective of growing consumer advocacy.
New technology is constantly changing how we do business, and if we want to be successful it's important to learn how to use it to our advantage, rather than hoping that it won't have an impact on us.