Digital communication is a sales opportunity

Every single digital asset you air should provide a direct opportunity to buy your product. And it should take no more than two clicks.

This is the current mantra in digital communication. To ensure a perfect link between communication and e-commerce, in a way that is unrivalled by traditional media. And it is just based on logic:

- the consumer logic, that if a consumer finds a product s/he likes and needs, it wants to buy it in the most convenient way;

- the customer journey logic, that says that you want to shorten the path to purchase as much as possible;

- the sales logic, that says that you should never lose an opportunity to sell, as "a sale lost today will never be recovered tomorrow" (and thank you for the lesson 15 years ago, João Aleixo)

Until a few years ago, this was nearly impossible. The paradigm would be that you advertise (even digitally) to indirectly generate sales in brick & mortar stores. But e-commerce changed this and it is now easy to setup sales opportunities on digital assets - any kind of digital asset. On search terms, you can do it through Google Shopping, that connects a search term directly with online retailers to buy the product you googled; or through a shop section on your Facebook account; you can link any display (banner) or video to your direct-to-consumer online store or your product's page in a partner customer. And you can even generate powerful data and insights into the shopping behaviour of your shoppers that can help you improve your product / shopping experience.

There are still many digital assets that are produced and aired daily that point to a quite passive brand page or Facebook brand page that still follow the indirect advertising path from traditional media. To be more effective, these digital assets should be linking with e-commerce opportunities. It really is the way forward. So, repeat after me: "Every single digital asset should be linked to a direct opportunity to buy my products". That's the mantra.

The importance of online reviews

When you go looking for a product - or better said, when you go looking for an answer for a need (typical marketeer language, but you get what I mean) - who do you trust? The commercial that has been done by the product manufacturer, what the salesperson is trying to tell you about it? No, typically, you trust other people's opinions the most. Ideally, people you know, and whose opinion you trust - but if they are not around (or they don't know the product), you just trust other people.

And that's the fundamental thing to understand about online reviews for products - they are rooted in simple human behaviour, in the way our brains are engineered to work in a society. We trust other persons that have tried the product and have no incentive to praise (or dirt-mouth) it. We trust simple, honest opinion of "Jack", "Jane", "John", "Camilla".

86% of online shoppers say that they read product reviews when shopping - not only ratings, but worded reviews. 42% of  site administrators report sales growth when they include product reviews (vs 8% that said that their sales actually went down - which, for me means they need to pay more attention to what they are selling...).

And that's why you should always ensure you have them for your product. Let me share a few simple tips on how to ensure this:
- ask your shopper to leave a review - break the inercia and just ash him/her how is the product. The best time for this is after your costumer has used the product but never too much after - typically 24h after the purchase, or 3 days after is a good timing.
- ensure leaving a review is easy - remove whatever obstacle there is for this, make sure the consumer can do it with a click. And avoid the temptation of cluttering the review process by trying to sell him/her more products before the review is submitted.
- provide an incentive - especially when you are in the early stages of your e.commerce presence, and your critical mass (number of customers) is still low, you can incentivize reviewing - a discount coupon is the traditional way to do it.
- use it as an opportunity for interaction - if you get a negative review, fix the situation and tell so to the customer - eventually ask him/her if he wants to update the review. If you get a positive one, thank your shopper, show some grattitude.