Re-Distribution Of Commerce

So many out there in cyberspace attempting to gain a larger piece of the available pie. It really doesn’t matter what it is, the purpose is always the same. Be it Social media, targeting, data harvesting, marketing, advertising, blogging, affiliate marketing, content creation, search marketing…….The list can go on and on forever!

But playing the same game as everyone else has never been our style. I mean really, how could anything become great through the practice of conformity. Although the path be extraordinarily difficult, if one can pull it off, a larger piece of the pie most often is the result.

So how can you go against any and every trend, process, strategy and still hope to succeed?

To quote the famous microbiologist Louis Pasteur, “In the fields of observation, chance favors the prepared mind”.

It did not take to long to realize, that if we are going to provide a successful service on the web,  many would need to benefit greatly by it’s use. So much so, that all preexisting barriers are removed.

In the realm of retail commerce, there may be no more challenging, but no better space to create a major disturbance. As most attach themselves to the promotion of what is, we looked in a completely different direction. How could we change or twist commerce from it’s current course and re-distribute those who purvey and consume? In other words, what kind of tool could we offer to adjust commerce so favorably much, that it could not be denied.

Step 1

Take a long hard look at where commerce is and identify it’s most vulnerable shortcomings.

 

 

 

 

A) Commerce has major portals that aid in it’s facilitation. Most are marketing environments, some are marketplaces and others are what I will call planned purchase destinations. Most, excluding the flash or daily deal environments, offer wares upon the web at a fixed price.

√ We will call this Shortcoming #1 

Solution: Provide all consumers, of any type of product, an easy to use tool that can be used anywhere from every device, to get a better offer on nearly all items of interest.

 

B) Where’s the waste? Most think that if the internet does not require merchants to have a store, the savings will be greater. We have found this not necessarily true. As a matter of fact, less than 3% of marketing efforts cause a resulting purchase.  If approx $200 billion was sold of internet retail products in 2011 and approx $40 billion was spent on marketing to achieve that level of sales, the opportunity to disrupt this category is so big, you could drive a truck the size of  Texas right through it!

√ This is Shortcoming #2

Ideal Solution: Provide the service without advertising and marketing expense to merchants.

Encourage purposeful participation to eliminate waste.

 

 

 

C) Who is excluded? Do a Google search for nearly any popular product, digital camera, tablet or anything you choose. The first several page results will most often be populated with those who have spent the most marketing dollars with Google.

If you are a fantastic merchant who provides great service and product, it will never matter. Google (or any other) will not refer buyers in your direction for anything less than a “whole bunch of money”.

√This is Shortcoming #3

Solution: Make the service available to all merchants (without exclusion) for very little cost.

 

 

D) Social networks as Facebook, Twitter and Google G+ are networks where a superb amount of sellers and an unbelievable amount of focused consumers reside for significant portions of their day. It is mystifying to know that none have implemented a successful process to identify and align highly focused consumers with a wide variety of matching sellers without marketing or advertising.

 √Shortcoming #4

Solution: (Special Sauce) Identify and pull relevant users from every social network to engage for a defined and highly useful purpose.

 

E) For any merchant that offers product upon Amazon.com, eBay or any other popular shopping portal, an ever rising average fee structure of 8 – 15%  must be paid. Does this mean consumers are paying 8 to 15% more for the products they buy? Or are merchants making that much less?

After your answer, we will call this shortcoming #6

Solution: Monetize in a manner which does not add expense to the merchandise being offered.

 

While we could go on and on of how un-lean and inefficient commerce upon the internet is, at some point it just gets to be a little much.

So I’ll conclude with a few more thoughts on how About2Buy will work:

• Don’t attempt to change the users need.
• Provide tools facilitating the service in a manner that only very slightly adjusts the users normal routines. In doing so, make sure the detour is entertaining and greatly rewarded. New routine = enhanced reward
• Format the process to ensure confidence and credibility.
• Use familiar features and processes.
• Immediately leverage the interface to propel size and scale.

Don’t be shy! your (constructive) comments are welcome. Who knows, we might like ya and beg you to be part of the team.

My email is: Brad@About2Buy.Com

Their was a great man who taught me how to fish (nearly every day of my childhood). Often in the day he would say “It’s a great life………Isn’t it”!  Took me years to figure out that fishing had very little to do with catching them.

A Marketplace Within a Marketing Environment

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 all these marketing revenue models out there 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

Sign up 
http://www.about2buy.co
m

Social Networks, A Bad Place For Commerce

Why is commerce such a problem in Facebook and other social environments?

You would think it be a great place to further connection between buyer and seller. With all the tracking, harvesting and data these retain about the user, it is surprising to know they and others like, experience such difficulty monetizing what simply has occurred for thousands of years.

Researching commerce for the last eight years has been long, laborious and difficult to fully assimilate the rapidly changing landscape. Observing it’s progression to what it is today, could have been predicted if I would have known what is certain now.

Sustainable commerce has and most always will take place in a marketplace environment. While the marketplace may take many shapes, it remains a place where things are offered and acquired. It‘s important this very simple and sometime eloquent occurrence remain uninterrupted to flourish. Mindful civic leaders know this lesson well while attending to community infrastructure. Those communities in decline, fail in their stewardship somewhere along the way.

This may be similar to where commerce upon the internet is today. We have so very many interesting offerings from which to choose, many positioned to attract traffic hoping to monetize in one form or another. This is where I will draw the (general) lines in the sand.

Internet Commerce has but a few successful offerings:

1)  Marketplace and like services receiving revenue from the sale of product offerings.

                                          

2)  Attractions receiving revenue via marketing scheme’s leveraged to benefit from considerable user traffic.

Now some are quite successful, who could argue with 1) the Amazons, eBay‘s and Walmart‘s of the retail cyberspace, and 2) Google‘s, Facebook‘s, Twitters and Pinterest‘s of the search and social space.

So how could a basic observation go so unnoticed?

It’s obvious that “Marketing and Marketplace“ do not mix very well. The reason; once the consumer is in the marketplace, the usefulness of marketing is greatly diminished.

It‘s kind of like offering excursions to the moon to those who are already there.

The message would be late, unmemorable and quite ineffective. This is why Google makes so very much money directing traffic via it‘s marketing, search, etc. and Amazon does so very well at facilitating sales within it‘s marketplace. But the two very seldom (or to date) have mixed very well together, but  they work beautifully apart.

1) Place a large volume of Amazon themed marketing within all that is Google

and presto magico

2) Consumers are directed to Amazon‘s marketplace in groves. This, from these and many others, is orchestrated for millions of Internet users daily.

So while it’s difficult to conduct a marketplace and marketing revenue model within the same environment, then it may be no wonder social commerce in Facebook and others receive limited results. These as we all know depend highly upon “all that is marketing” for revenue.

So now what, how can these adversities be overcome and still include all the attractions which retain such a large audience? Maybe it simply requires a look at what is needed to conduct commerce, and also what is not.

There are many pre and post stages of the consumers journey which marketing is a magnificent tool, and there are a few where marketing should stop and marketplace take over. Knowing where and when is a skill the enormous influence of marketing fails to deliver.

So how could commerce thrive in a social environment supporting marketing and marketplace revenue models? To me it‘s quite clear:

1) Allow marketing to do what it does best throughout the discovery portions of the consumer journey.

2) Identify when discovery has concluded, and a more focused “marketplace environment“ is required. At this juncture, marketing is done, detailed presentation and negotiation should ensue.

3) If the consummation is successful, marketing may once again display it‘s importance within post sale activity.

Now at About2Buy, we are very certain as to how this will be accomplished, for our service only begins after the consumers discovery activity is done and marketplace process begins.

How an existing infrastructure as Facebook, Twitter and others will accomplish this?

When someone of influence illustrates how marketing and marketplaces possess roles serving consumers with completely different identities.

Visit our site page to sign up for the beta and further updates.

http://www.about2buy.com/

Live Well

Improving the Outcome

I’m the Future of Commerce

I know what many consumers will purchase in the next few min., hours or days.

In every town or city, county or state

Online, I don’t track or harvest data about them. That job belongs to the Past.

On average I’m 97% accurate in predicting precisely what, when and where consumer’s will purchase.

The Past, 3 to 7% at best.

How do I do it?

It’s really quite simple.

It all begins with a question.

If knowledge of a most certain future is shared, can I improve the outcome?

Stay tuned, sign up to know more.

http://www.about2buy.com

The Intermediation of DisIntermediation

Disintermediation refers to companies going directly to customers with products and services. No channel partners are used to move offerings or to manage interactions with customers. The CMO Survey (
http://www.cmosurvey.org
) asked managers to report whether their companies will increase their level of disintermediation in the next 12 months. The percentage responding “yes” has increased over the last three years as shown in the figure. In fact, there has been an increase of over 100% between August 2009 and August 2011!

Now there appear to be two good reasons.

1. Companies can learn more from customers through direct engagement.

2. Direct interaction can help you serve your customers more effectively.

Source: 
http://www.cmosurvey.org/blog/the-lure-of-disintermediation

This hits the nail squarely on the head. Internet commerce from its beginnings as a 24 hour catalog and ordering system has seen it’s better days, the consumer is tired of being herded as cattle across the Internet plain. But if no channel partner may be used to facilitate a holistic ”Disintermediation” strategy, then how is it facilitated? Social Media…. nope, that’s a channel partner. Advertising….Nada, Channel partner again. Hmm then how is it done?

Enter the era of the “Intermediation of DisIntermediation”, the new tools of the online engagement trade. Certain tools to aid companies who are rapidly opting out of the current commercial system to more favorably connect directly to the consumer. About2Buy is at the forefront of such technology, as to more appropriately be inline with the (growing) many who have chosen this path.

Sign up for our Beta at:
http://www.about2buy.com
.

Live Free, Live Well

 

 

 

 

It’s not about the data, It’s the space between!

If you haven’t figured it out by now, it’s not really about the data. Actually by the time a solution is created to gather, many new data requirements emerge. It’s a never-ending battle to which we all feel required to tackle in one form or another. Thoughts and actions create the data or potential for something useful that may (for some) cause an opportunity to satisfy a need or desire. Harvesting to form a purpose from what was and is, tends to be what all this technology is about.

As we all by our every action create new data to be assimilated, there will forever more be a gap or space between data being formed and that which has yet to be assimilated. For now it appears that it is impossible for new data and the actions resulting from to appear precisely at the same time and in the same space (yes, time does exist).  As we advance the space will just get smaller but may never be at once. For me this is great, absence of this singularity will continue to provide a welcome purpose.

As indicated prior, About2Buy (as most commercial efforts) is a product made possible by the enormous gap between pursuit and attainment. I mean really, how could one form a want/need and possession of  precisely at the same time? To be weird about it, that would be like living and dying simultaneously.  So as we build to provide our space-saving solution between buyer and seller, (upon the Internet) the gap between will be far smaller than it ever has been before. Live Free, Live Well!

Stay plugged in and sign up for our secret closed Beta:  
http://www.about2buy.com/

Estimate Of Social Commerce Market Size 2011-2015

Click to enlarge

Source: Booz & Company

Forrester: US Marketing Spend Forecast

Click to enlarge

Who wants personalized offers?

72% of those surveyed in the US prefer personalized offers (click on image to enlarge)

The Space

Throughout the years much has been written about spaces, the gaps between. If I am here and you are there, what is between us. If that is there and this is here, what may bring them together. There is so very much which may be done with that to which resides between. Appears at times to be our primary purpose.

Much of the time concerns of what, why & how dominate. What is between, why is it, how do we remove or replace, the contemplation’s for these from those with purpose. To fill or replace that which resides is our role.

The Internet being so new and vibrant is the perfect  subject, beginning as a haven for holistic communication to what it is today. Wherever communication or a medium for exchange is present, it is certain that commerce will appear. The initial intent may have been to improved upon the connection between the many with, to those who want. But spaces need to be filled as our nature and history exhibit, for this is where opportunity resides.

The space between Seller &  Buyer may be expanding, if not how could so much within materialize. Connectors to which for a fee offer (with uncertainty) to nudge a seller in proximity of a buyer. Through limitless effort termed as marketing, advertising, lead generation, targeting and alike, this ever expanding space formed it’s barrier with a toll to pass. Now not many upon the Internet may see it in this way, be it not the 1st. time by the masses we have been so conditioned.

Now imagine the Internet as it is and a way around to it’s side. An alternative connection to every buyer and relevant seller, absent the wall, net or toll to pass. Connection as are under construction as we speak, a short path with little space for the purposeful to meet.

Sign up for our test site (beta). Go to: 
http://www.about2buy.com/