Richard van Hooijdonk

Develop and activate your distribution channels

Many products are sold through dealerships or networks of interim sales elements tied to the brand name. An important advantage here lies in spreading sales efforts over a larger amount of stores.

A disadvantage lies in controlling the marketing and sales processes. Afterall, these dealerships can choose between multiple products, brands and suppliers. The biggest challenge is gaining and keeping their loyalty. If they're satisfied with the dealer proposition, that may lead to a strong growth of sales across the whole network. A powerful dealer strategy contains at least these elements: the right selection of products, the right margins, training and service, intelligent marketing communication tools, pull marketing and prospect / lead rewards. Time, money and resources are often scarce and profits are the most important target, so segmenting and managing your dealer channels is crucial.

Internet and new distribution insights influence commercial results. Customers don't always stick to one supplier anymore. For instance, they can now buy their health insurance through the local football club, as it's made arrangements with the insurance agency. Their DELL computer is bought at the local supermarket, not the computer store. The grocery store allows credit, national organisations offer cheap law insurances for businesses. Business-to-business markets are showing changes in distribution as well: companies have to pay attention to possible partnerships for certain target segments. It's expected the partner market will be divided over the coming years and considering partnerships are always aimed at the long term, it's of great importance to design a strong distribution strategy. The organisation has to be suited to the distribution strategy. Good distribution partners can allow for larger volumes, new target groups and lower costs.

Pay attention to individual customer profiles

Eisting clients are five times as profitable as new clients. This means we have to pay extra attention to our eisting group of clients. I already noted I believe mass media will disappear eventually. This means something else will take its place. The existing customer and prospect database plays a big role here. They're your ambassadors, your clients, your network. They chose to become your client or at least show interest in becoming your client. It's not about how large your database is though, it's about the information stored within and the connection between you and your client. A big list of names is useless, but when we combine the list with profiles and preferable attitudes toward our company, we're in business.

A customer profile is a dynamic entity and will have to be kept up-to-date continuously. Using intelligent '2.0' techniques, our relationships set their own preferences and intelligently, we design new questions for clients to answer each month, wrapping them up in games, virals and online interviews. This means we can playfully extend our individual client knowledge base. We extrapolate and enrichen our databases with external information and browsing behavior.

A large group of loyal, 'profiled' relationships is an important source of power for any company. These clients create revenue, new clients, feedback, cost control (cheaper revenue), positive buzz and social branding. If we can build a profile and store behavioral information as well, we can use this information for a personalized approach. Based on browsing behavior, purchases and client- induced buzz, we can create personalized websites, event driven marketing or reward systems.

Customer profiles are accurately turned into an effective marketing approach, lower costs and a source for new clients. That makes individual customer profiles an imporant cost saving tool, excellent for times of recession

Obtain real-time insights in campaign results

Many companies fail to obtain the required insight in their campaigns' marketing results. It's not that hard to get those insights though, and it's impossible to properly adjust your actions without realizing the crossmedial results your campaigns are returning. My experience is that good insights in customer value and campaign results directly lead to better decisions. It doesn't matter if you're spending millions or just a couple thousand dollars on marketing: with the right insights, you can adjust quicker, make better decisions and be ready to strike when the market shows opportunities. Companies who do obtain real-time insights in campaign results, will perform better than their competitors.

I'd even go so far as to say a campaign should not be launched, if its results cannot be presented: it's the most important investment for any commercial organisation.

Create a website that inspires and 'sticks'

For years, website conversion has been stuck at 3%. This means 97% of all visitors does not buy, does not download or does not sign up.

Despite all of our knowledge and techniques, we're still not able to improve this figure. Visitors are quick to leave: online, we have five to ten seconds at most to inspire a visitor. If we don't, he's gone. This 'inspiration' could be anything ranging from a personal video, interactivity or games to surprising content based on behavioral targeting or profile information.

After 'inspiration' (marketer seduces client to stay) follow 'connection' (marketer poses a question), 'dialogue' (marketer and consumer talk) and 'conversion' (consumer buys from marketer). We have to facilitate each of these phases online to improve the results from our web presence. Online visitors have to be placed in an environment and atmosphere that puts them at ease and gently pushes them toward wanting to do what we want them to do: I call this the 'pre-experience'. It allows visitors to almost experience online what they'll experience when they've bought our product or service, stimulating conversion. If a website visitor can almost feel or experience our product or service online as if it were the real thing, our website results will be significantly higher than the 'digital brochures' most companies call their websites.

So pay attention to your 'pre-experience' and think about what kind of experience could raise conversion. Just think of what you'd do when you're talking with a client: you shake your client or prospect's hand, you use your charm and playfully find out his desires or needs. That's how you get that final signature beneath the contract. Translating these interactions to an online environment, we're looking at video Q&A, personal
avatars and behavioral targeting. There are more examples. For instance, think of the excitement and energy of people in a rollercoaster ride, on a beautiful summer's day. Could you grab that feeling, grab that energy, personalize it and unleash it in an online environment? Yes, yes you can! Just look at Nike, Adidas or Meez, who let you create your own online avatar, bringing the shopping experience to your computer monitor.

Remaking' your current website can be very interesting, if coupled with concrete targets. Websites are more and more becoming commercially important tools and we've got to prove that. It's not just sales goals though. We may be looking for profiles (containing client information), e-mail addresses, research data, or
leads and prospects. Those other data are valuable too. Putting those in our business case, it'll pave the road toward getting the budgets you need for serious Webpresence 2.0.