There is a planned course of direction for every retail product marketing or commerce strategy, the purpose is to promote a favored result. The Internet has (generally) just but a few primary concerns to this extent.
1) Content and attractions supported by marketing revenue
2) Products or services available for sale
“All that is marketing” provides what seemingly is an endless stream of content and attractions. These are most often utilized to attract participants who may be exposed to various forms of marketing. While this is quite common, it is surprising how seldom these “exposures” provide a sale. In fact: less than 3% (generous figure) of retail product marketing exposures lead to a direct sale.
Reason: In most instances, If an exposure converts to an immediate sale, further related exposures (and revenue) would decrease. I can imagine the closed room conversations at Google, Facebook and alike: “We can’t have exposures rapidly converting, that would decrease our marketing exposure revenue”!
You see marketing revenue models depend upon a continuous loop of participation. For marketing, it would be for all engaged exposures to encourage a continued path to more marketing and content. This strategy extends marketing revenue by encouraging more exposures per participant than what may be required. Now this is not how all marketing upon the web works, but is the most dominant strategy.
Yep, your right….”Internet marketing has become a vast valley of oblivion with the purpose to further marketing, not conversion”.
Now as all may know, there are most certainly ways to create a more optimized internet path to serve the most focused consumer. The question is; can it be done in a content marketing environment?
Below illustrates several existing (1 & 2) and one optimized (3) consumer path models.
1) Marketing Loop
Where the Internet user behavior path creates data used to further participation into more content and marketing. While this loop works quite well for information and discovery, as a would be consumer becomes more focused, options to reward their journey are limited.
Paying to be placed well into the consumers path is how most merchants are discovered online. Those who spend the most, have a better chance at capturing consumers. Focused consumer choices are limited to only the largest merchants and may contribute to a large amount of lost conversions and cart abandonment.
2) Closed Provider Loop
Where the Internet user behavior path creates data used to further participation to particular destinations. Still few consumers convert, this may be due to a limited amount of merchant options and static pricing environment.
Simply Put: The routine path does not provide a sufficient reward for most focused consumers.
3) Open Marketplace Loop
Where the Internet user behavior path creates data used to further participation into an open marketplace. This model realizes marketing and marketplace roles as separate. Once the discovery and qualification is complete, an open marketplace for “all and every relevant merchant” is provided to serve consumers possessing more focused intent. Participation, pricing and packaging are no longer static, allowing for a superior reward environment.
As you might have imagined, the About2Buy process resembles model 3. The consumers normal routine is (momentarily) offered a superior reward marketplace outside of and away from marketing. This allows for the consumer possessing a more focused identity to fulfill their intent to purchase in a less proprietary environment.
Cheers
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