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Avoid the "Product Marketing Gap"

Where's the Information When You Need It?

This is the question an online consumer asks. 

While many manufacturers have already developed the rich product descriptions and enhanced merchandising tools that can help differentiate their products and better educate their online consumers, most product information remains unavailable to their consumers at their online partners' websites.

That's because a typical online retailer, reseller, or affiliate site will usually focus on factors such as operational efficiency, minimizing content expenditures and maximizing their clicks-to-buy ratio. Limiting their product content to basic information like price, a description, perhaps an image and a few specifications, they are often missing the information that helps customers when making a purchase decision: detailed product features, external reviews, comparison charts and compatibility information to name a few.

To solve this problem, manufacturers need the ability to leverage and extend their product marketing materials disseminating this information automatically, and continuously, through their online partners.

Factoid: Web retailers are using more syndicated information because the cost of developing new internal content can be substantial, ranging from $80 to more than $500 per hour, depending how much internal time and resources are needed to build out a new product page and to what lengths the retailer has to go to obtain the initial information.

Welcome to the product marketing gap. Look at this chart.

Manufacturers often have the tools to provide a rich online merchandising environment however their customers will usually turn to their online channel partners first when looking to make a purchase. On the other hand, these online partners (Google, Yahoo, Ebay and affiliate networks) often lack the information needed to aid in the purchase decision process and subsequently risk losing the sale to either a competitor's online retailer or another manufacturer. (Note: Executive Coaching - Delivering Performance partners with Amazon.)

Lost Sales, Higher Service Costs and Reduced Customer Loyalty all can follow from this and is the high cost of inadequate merchandising.

The Bottom line?  Poor product presentation on a website (or partner website) often means lost sales opportunities, higher service costs and reduced customer loyalty.

Here are some ways the impact can be felt by both manufacturers and their online partners: 

Manufacturers: Lost Sales Inability to educate shoppers about their products or services Diminished Brand Value Inconsistent or non-existent brand presentation on channel partner websites Inability to differentiate their product offering vs. competing models/brands Reduced Marketing Effectiveness Impact of advertising campaigns is mitigated at critical points-of-sale   Channel Partners: Lost Sales Inability of customers to make a purchase with existing information Reduced Customer Loyalty Customers are forced to seek information from alternative sources Higher service costs Additional customer service support inquiries due to insufficient information Smaller product margins Need to compete on price due to undifferentiated product presentation

Coaching will assist Information Technology and Marketing to come together by implementing online marketing technology from a consumer perspective. This involves more than typical staff training, it includes examining related enterprise systems across partnerships to ensure product information becomes an enabler of marketing processes and online sales.

Follow this link for more about the Purchase Decision Process.

Confidentiality/Privacy: Some professionals suggest a non-disclosure agreement will respect the confidentiality of a client's identifying information. Coaches obtain agreement from clients before releasing their names as clients or references. Coaches obtain agreement from the person being coached before releasing information to another person who may be paying the fees.Conflicts of interest, or the potential for a conflict of interest to arise, requires disclosure and full discussion with a client how to deal with it in whatever way best serves all parties.

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