Ecommerce can be used in conjunction with many different businesses and business models to enhance and grow their overall business. We're going to look at three types of businesses today and how they can use ecommerce to improve their bottom line:
1. Brick and Mortar
This is probably the "lowest" of the low hanging fruit for the expanding ecommerce market today. The new "Main Street, USA" isn't in Bentonville, Arkansas, it's online. Tomorrow's Sears, JC Penney and Wal-Mart are more than likely going to have achieved their growth online instead of building brick and mortar stores one by one.
Yet even now with online shopping in its second decade, more often than not when talking to existing Brick and Mortar retailer's two things always come up. First they know they need to have a high quality online presence and shopping experience and second they generally have no idea of how to do it successfully.
These customers are ripe for building an online store, but they don't just need to be sold, they need assistance. They need guidance and help with best practices, advice on how to setup their products and categories and need to know why it's so important to have great product pictures. These things are all too often taken for granted by people who work in the online space and cause traditional retailers to feel left out in the cold.
2. Event Promoters
This group of people is often completely overlooked yet they tend to have one of the hardest things any business struggles to obtain, a built in list of happy customers.
Who exactly am I talking about in this group? Anyone who puts on recurring events. They could be local charities, or civic minded fundraisers, or sporting events or groups like golf outings or youth athletics. Event organizers already go to great lengths to build up a clientele, protect the image of their event or organization and understand the needs of their members.
Adding an online store to their offering that includes both ticket events when appropriate and branded merchandise and other relevant items to the members of that organization is often a very easy way to increase the bottom line of this organization. Much like the traditional retailers above, we need to reach out to people like this and help them understand how to improve their business using ecommerce.
3. Digital Information Providers
Many people have already learned to unlock the potential of turning their digital information into an online product, but this group still has A LOT of growth ahead of it.
Many people who are part of this have no idea they belong in this group, including: Authors, Bands, Artists, Photographer, Bloggers, Analysts, etc... People who generate tons of information as a natural course of their daily existence yet they're not currently turning any of that information into online revenue.
An ecommerce professional can help these customers unlock the online revenue that all of the information they generate and partner with them to build a highly profitable online business.
Ultimately we as online presence and ecommerce professionals take a moment and step back, there are a myriad of ways to help people grow their business. We should spend more time providing our customers the knowledge they need to succeed, sharing this knowledge will help ensure both your customers success and your own long term success.
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Comment by Anonymous on Saturday, January 23, 2010
Often we forget the little guy, the SMB, in our discussions of the comings and goings of the Internet marketing industry. Sure there are times like this when a report surfaces talking about their issues and concerns but, for the most part, we like to talk about big brands and how they do the Internet marketing thing well or not so well.
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