So what is all the rage of retail blogging and what are you losing as a business if you don’t blog? The answer is a lot! Blogging has become a popular form of online marketing and is saving businesses money that less effective, traditional marketing absorbs. Businesses are starting to make a change in their marketing and advertising expenses as everything is seemingly shifting to online. The return on traditional marketing techniques is not worth the ineffective results they produce. Why not do what works and costs less?

Social media networks and blogs are changing the way traditional ads affect and “sell” customers.  Online consumers are more receptive to “word of mouth” advertising which in turn influences their buying decisions. In 2008, there were 184 million people on the Internet who have started their own blog and 346 million people read blogs, noted by Technorati, many of whom discuss their thoughts on particular brands and products. Why not get online with them and increase your chance of positive brand reputation and feedback. Promote what you want about your brand, establish yourself as an expert in your industry, incorporate authoritative backlinks to product promotions on your site, and get those online influencers talking to you, with you and about you.

Why would you miss out on blogging when its a great way to talk to your customers and out maneuver your competitors? If your company is not blogging and your competition is, you are quickly losing the game and are not cognizant of consumer expectations. As a retailer you know there are several types of customers, some like to know everything about the product or brand and have a sense of trust before buying. Others just want to read what others say about a product (aka “people like me”) so they know they’re making the right purchase.

Give your brand a “voice” through blogging and you will see a change — plus you can measure it through web analytics!

Now, more individuals than ever before, are participating in the blogging community. As social media networks are rising in popularity, retailers must recognize the importance of connecting with these communities. These groups of bloggers help to create the content of these brands, and in a sense contribute to the future of their image. As a retail business, it is necessary to effectively get engaged with the bloggers, by listening to what they have to say. From adult to youth bloggers, many different aspects can be touched about your business than can help you fine-tune and alter your business practices. At the same time, many aspects may be touched about your business that either are not true or you don’t want portrayed to the online community.

It is important to participate in ongoing dialogues, to help generate good content and a trusted image amongst consumers. Through these you can create a larger conversation to extend the content, especially if it is of good quality, or even to steer it in a positive direction. By keeping customers updated on the latest online or in-store promos, special events, or campaigns through your blog, you can really make money off of creating a retail blog. You take that further step in reaching a whole community of bloggers and you really can increase online exposure and build raptor with your customers. Use your blog to discuss retail trends, marketing ideas, merchandising tips, and other facets of your business or industry to help promote and strengthen your brand.

As a retail business, you want to make sure the content is good and effective, so being proactive in the blogging community is a must. What others say about your brand impacts your business more than what you say about your brand; especially in user generated content circles. You want people to promote your business by blogging about you, your products, and your company without the common sales pitch. While, most retail businesses don’t have the time to comment on blogs and write articles you can find new media and social marketing companies that can integrate these techniques into your online retail marketing practices. These tactics will help deliver traffic to your website as your retail blog will serve as a communication engine, pumping out content to receive higher search engine rankings. It isn’t easy enough for the average, non-tech business owner through, or their staff, so it is best to hand this task over to a company who has the tools to help drive online success for your business.

eMarketer.com recently reported that retail shoppers are checking out stores’ websites first before deciding where to spend their money, even if they plan on going to the brick-and-mortar store. Competition tightens because it is now so easy for consumers to compare prices offered by different retailers.

With so much information available now on the internet revealing prices offered by different stores, there is limited information bias, and retailers have to offer competitive prices in order to survive. This is especially relevant for retailers that sell goods that are exactly identical to those sold by other stores, such as electronics.

According to a May 2008 Nielsen Online survey, even most of those who end up buying in a brick-and-mortar store check the web first. They found that eight out of ten consumers in the survey that had recently purchased electronics in a physical store had checked the retailer’s website beforehand. Consumers don’t need to drive around town to find out price differences. It seems that even if they are planning to stop by their local store, they check the website first to see what’s available, so they don’t waste a trip. With children now growing up surfing the web, we can expect to see this trend increase, and for shoppers to be more and more informed about competitors’ prices.

For a retail marketing blog to be successful, you have to keep up with updates. If you are posting something everyday, your blog will get picked up by the major search engines and gain your website better placement on the SERP and more traffic.

If you find it difficult to sit down and write a post everyday, take advantage of changing the post timestamp and setting posts to publish in the future. This way, you can write several posts at once, and then set some of them to post in the future, basically having your blog publish itself with a new post each day. If you are using Wordpress software for your blog, just change the timestamp to the future (say, tomorrow), and then click “Publish.”

Thanks to this handy little feature, you can publish new, unique content everyday and not actually have to keep up with your blog each day. Just don’t forget to come back and write some more!

In a recent post, I predicted an increase in online shopping because of increased gas prices. I found an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal that showed that shopping centers are having difficulty leasing storefronts.

Lifestyle centers, a trend in shopping centers that has flourished during the past decade, are becoming less and less successful, according to the Wall Street Journal. These shopping centers contain a mixture of retail stores, fountains, and cafes in an open-air format. You have probably noticed that construction of enclosed malls dwindled in recent years, as this type of shopping center became more popular. But, owners of these lifestyle centers are finding it hard to fill storefronts and attract customers.

This is further support for the idea that online shopping will increase. This could help retailers, as a way to supplement lack of growth into new stores. While leasing a storefront is costly, maintaining a website is fairly inexpensive.

However, I’m sure investors who are having trouble leasing storefronts in their newly-built lifestyle centers aren’t too happy about the website alternative.

One of the ways to drum up more business, is by way of your RSS feed.
You can add your affiliate links in the bottom, you can use partial feeds to make readers come to your blog so all links in the sidebar are seen, and you can use your affiliate links inside your posts to create extra sales.

Every time I watch a new movie, I link to it with an affiliate account inside one of my posts.
It sends readers to that affiliate link, and even if they don’t buy that DVD, they usually end up buying something else within a few hours, or even sometimes a full week later, depending on the affiliate cookie hold.

Using images inside your entries is a great way to hold your readers attention. A post with a picture tends to keep your readers on your blog longer than just text.
People like to look at things, especially items that you are reviewing, so they can really see it’s value.
The average consumer believes word of mouth marketing more than just the products description page telling you how great it is.
Real people doing honest reviews, makes people believe it more, and therefore, more willing to go out and buy the item themselves.

So if you are looking for a great way to boost affiliate sales, use pictures of the product you are reviewing, review it honestly, the good, the bad, and the downright awful.
People want to know it isn’t very good so they don’t waste money.
But if it’s great, talk up it’s awesome points, and watch those sales go up.

So when did everyone get their first email address? ‘95? ‘97? Then when did you finally feel comfortable buying something online, giving out your credit card information without fear of getting your life stolen from you? ‘98 maybe? Back then, could you imagine purchasing the majority of what you buy online instead of in stores? If it’s not your reality now, it’s pretty darn close. Now, I bet you have absolutely no problem letting amazon or ebay remember your cc numbers. Simply amazing what can happen in 10 years.

Well, online retail has officially been around for 13 or 14 years, according to shop.org. And it’s not going anywhere anytime soon (obviously). But what’s really interesting is that it’s showing absolutely no signs of saturation whatsoever. In fact, according to Forrester Research, online retail grew 25% last year, and it’s expected to grow 18% this year.

What’s even more interesting is that the study doesn’t take into account buying decisions that are made online but made in brick-and-mortar stores. Buyers are increasing looking to blogs and other social media outlets to help them make decisions. So online retail will officially grow 18% this year, but what percentage of buying decisions will be made online? With the increasing popularity of blogs and video, online retail growth might be more than they expect.

New Media channels of today have expanded far beyond search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Directors of marketing simply aren’t delivering their company’s brand through these channels. Being reluctant to do so will simply put companies behind their competition that welcomes integration. The blogosphere is full of consumers discussing products and services. It’s a network of consumer generated content. Being part of their daily discussion is truly a viable resource for organizations capable of thinking outside of the box.

It looks like Wall Street traders now have access to what consumers have to say in the blogosphere. Monitoring what is being said in the blogosphere provides traders with quality information. The tool they use, scans blogs for information, like Google scans websites – and sends that valuable information to them via RSS feeds. Are investors or consumers finding your company in the blogosphere. Contact Retail Blog Marketing for information on expanding your brand’s online reach.

Over the last nine years or so search engine’s algorithms have become more and more sophisticated. Trying to figure these algorithms out will never happen by any in-house marketing team or their marketing director. Therefore it is important for marketing teams and marketing directors to think outside of the box when it comes to their online marketing strategy. Sure old tactics to achieve better organic positioning might have worked back in the day. However, with today’s new media channels and more sophisticated algorithms, marketers that do not adapt to this change are simply hurting their business’ brands.

More and more consumers are becoming a part of social networks. They use these networks as a trusted resource to find any information imaginable. Penetrating these consumer communities means marketers are faced with a decision. Continue to use the same SEO strategy that you used in 2003, 2004 etc. Or not.

New media channels such as blogs and RSS feeds can help companies achieve the same result in half the time – if marketers are willing to listen and apply a new strategy. Because of the shift in more consumer generated content retail blogs give smaller businesses the opportunity to drive deeper into their niche’ market by joining the consumer communities and talking with them about their products in their blog.

Exploit the weakness of your competitors. If you are a small business and want more revenue coming in from your website, the best way is to use a fully optimized retail blog. The staff at Triangle Direct Media will train you on proper strategies to apply when posting articles in your blog, support you and your staff when questions arise and give free updates to all of our clients. Be a leader in your space, not a follower. Start blogging about your products and reach more consumers online by thinking outside of the box.

Keep the number of monthly website clicks high and the cost needed to acquire those clicks as low as possible. This is the standard concept used by Marketing Directors and marketing teams that quite frankly……are going to be left behind and forced into catch up and scramble mode as New Media continues to take over Web Marketing 1.0.

Retail website owners and marketers have begun using New Media strategies such as blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds to give their website visitors an easier path to conversion. Others have simply ignored this evolution and continue to spend more and more dollars each month with sponsored ads on Google, Yahoo, MSN etc with Pay Per Click. As search algorithms revamp to include newer up to date content from New Media Channels, so are internet consumers changing their method of finding this content when they search for products to purchase.

Marketing Directors and marketing teams are in the drivers seat when it comes to changing their company’s presentation of it’s content. It’s a matter of changing the users experience when they visit your website and using additional mediums to bring them in. Transitioning from brand compatible content to actual brand-building encounters is where higher conversions will come from. Positioning your company’s brand, and distributing your content with a retail blog will definitely improve conversion rates.

Strategy is what separates winners from losers and adapters from slow movers.  Contact Retail Blog Marketing to learn more about our strategies for your business.