Chapter 12. The Power of PARM: Positioning Your Business

William James, the famous nineteenth-century philosopher, once compared the universe to a “blooming, buzzing mass of confusion.” Internet marketing can also resemble a mass of confusion to those trying to understand and use an almost infinite variety of marketing tools and tactics. Search engine submittals, placement and optimization, keyword purchases, promotional emails, text, HTML and rich media newsletters, opt-in list building, database email marketing, affiliate marketing, strategic partnerships, link exchanges, banner exchanges, newsgroup and forum postings, community building, and websites, newsletter, and electronic magazine advertising are just some of the many marketing tools available to you to market and promote your Yahoo! store.

These are only the ones we use today. With the advent of the “always on,” always connected Internet to every digital device, we’re sure to see marketing strategies and tactics that we haven’t even thought of yet. What we need is an “organizing concept” that can make sense of this blooming, buzzing confusion and make this vast variety of e-marketing tools work in concert to achieve your company’s e-commerce goals and objectives.

In this chapter and the three that follow, we discuss the power of PARM (positioning, acquiring, retaining, and monetizing) as an organizing concept for your Yahoo! store marketing strategy.

The Power of PARM

The many marketing tools and tactics available might seem confusing at first, but if you stack each of them up under the elements of PARM, you can create a well-planned and effective marketing plan for your Yahoo! store.

PARM is a marketing strategy: positioning, acquiring, retaining, and monetizing. Positioning sits atop acquiring, which rests upon retaining; all three sit atop monetizing.

By positioning, we mean how your Yahoo! store positions itself in the digital marketplace. After you’ve positioned your business and when you know who your target audience is, it’s time to acquire customers. You then need to retain those customers. It’s well known that it costs 10 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain the ones you have, so retention becomes an important objective of your marketing program. Finally, all this positioning, acquiring, and retaining is for naught if you can’t make a buck from customers. So, monetizing all this traffic to your digital presence is obviously your ultimate goal.

Any one of the marketing tools in itself will not make your company’s Internet marketing plan a success. The slow and steady, consistent combination of them all wins the e-commerce race. Keep in mind that the tools we offer in this chapter and the ones that follow are only a start. By thinking long and hard about your digital business strategy, you can come up with even more marketing tools and tactics to apply to your particular Yahoo! store.

We take a closer look at each one and see which marketing tools and tactics you can use when creating a marketing strategy for your business. The details of each marketing tool are covered later in this chapter and in the ones that follow.

Positioning Your Business

Positioning your business is the first step when creating your marketing plan for your Yahoo! store. This includes reviewing how your communications and collateral material—such as your letterhead, business cards, brochures, and advertising copy (print, radio, TV)—are integrated into your digital strategy solution. For example, all your offline collateral materials and activities should include at least an email addresses and a reference to the URL of your website. You might even consider offering readers, viewers, and listeners the ability to sign up for your informative newsletter or for further information on your company. If you have a printed catalog, advertise and promote it on your website.

Positioning also includes reviewing your website’s search engine placement and ranking in the search results, and analyzing site traffic logs, your business positioning, and your communication process with site visitors.

That last piece is important: How do you communicate with your site visitors? In fact, how do you communicate with any visitor who communicates with you through your digital presence? The phrase digital presence reflects the many more ways a business today can communicate its presence than just in a website.

Finally, there’s the importance of branding....

The Alphabet of Branding: USP, ESP, OSP, and BSD

How you position your product or service in the digital marketplace is your brand. Now, branding has many definitions. The best we’ve found is from the free Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org):

A brand is the symbolic embodiment of all the information connected with a product or service. A brand typically includes a name, logo, and other visual elements such as images or symbols. It also encompasses the set of expectations associated with a product or service which typically arise in the minds of people. Such people include employees of the brand owner; people involved with distribution, sale, or supply of the product or service; and ultimate consumers.

Examples of great brands are Nike, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, IBM, Amazon, Ben & Jerry’s, Starbucks, and Priceline.

As you can see, a company’s brand is not just its name, its logo, or its packaging. It’s also a set of shopper expectations and the service you supply your customers. Let’s take a closer look of what makes up a company’s brand.

First, the positioning and branding of your Yahoo! store should reflect your company’s unique selling position (USP). Your USP tells a potential customer the uniqueness of your product or service, how your business differs from your competition, and, above all, what’s in it for them. In other words, you need to answer that burning question of every shopper: “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM) Several studies have shown that when a customer looks at your ad or website, you have 1.54 seconds to convince them of the WIIFM before they close your window. Then if you do, you have less than 5 seconds to keep them there.

So, what makes the business unique in the market and in the eyes of a potential customer? To do that, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• What gives your company a unique advantage over your competition?

• What is the distinct reason for consumers to buy from you?

• Can you portray in the consumer’s mind a compelling image of what your business will do for them that others can’t?

For example, maybe it’s your no-questions return policy, like Nordstrom’s. Or maybe your delivery policy matches that of Dominoes: You get it within 20 minutes, or it’s free. Or you might offer service that matches the latest Best Buy guarantee: Place your order online and pick it up at the nearest Best Buy store in 23 minutes, or you get $23.

Too many companies believe that it’s about them. It’s not. It’s about the customers. Remember this cardinal rule: Consumers could care less about you. They want to know what you can do for them. Then they will hand over their hard-earned cash.

Vincent Flanders, who runs Web Pages That Suck, advises e-commerce sites to write the following two sentences and post them near their computer so they can see them every day:

1. “The only reason my website exists is to solve my customers’ problems.”
2. “What problems does the page I’m looking at solve?”

Consumers care only about getting their problems solved. They’re looking for information. They’re looking to make a purchase. They’re looking for entertainment. Fill those needs, and you will have a successful Yahoo! store.

Martin Lindstrom, a recognized branding guru by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, adds some other elements that you should consider when branding your Yahoo! business. Besides your USP, you should consider an ESP, an emotional selling proposition. He cites Coke and Pepsi as good examples of ESP. They differentiate themselves from each other not on rationale logic and product attributes (after all, a soft drink is a soft drink, no matter what the “taste challenge tests” say) but by calling on the feelings, identity, and values they promote in the consumer’s mind. Kevin Roberts, Worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, has stated that “the brands with legs are those that create an emotional connection with customers.”

Another of Lindstrom’s branding elements is your organizational selling proposition, or OSP. This type of branding is reflected in the organizational structure of the business itself. Lindstrom cites Nike as an example of OSP. Nike promotes a sports culture among it employees, and encourages them to use Nike’s products and make sports a big part of their lives, both at work and away. The offices of Nike are more than just a workplace; they’re a sports lifestyle for its staff.

Lindstrom’s final element of branding is the brand selling proposition, or BSP. With BSP, the product or service itself is irrelevant. He cites the Harry Potter brand as an example. Although only the books have been sold, thousands of related products (toys, clothing, lunch boxes, and more) sell only because of the brand name “Harry Potter” on them. George Lucas created this type of branding, now called merchandising, with Star Wars.

So, when you’re creating your company brand, keep this alphabet soup in mind and apply the different elements of branding, where appropriate, to your positioning strategy.

Underpromise and Overdeliver

A big part of branding—and, thus, the positioning of your Yahoo! store in the digital marketplace—involves consumer perception. That is, it involves the set of expectations that arise in the consumer’s mind about your product or service. One of the best ways to do this is to underpromise and overdeliver.

One way is to respond to customer inquiries faster than you promise. For example, you might claim on your customer service and frequently asked questions (FAQ) pages (you do have a separate FAQ page that answers many of a potential customer’s questions about your product or service and company policies, right?) that you answer all email inquiries within 48 to 72 hours. But let’s say you actually answer your inquiries in 24 hours. The consumer now expects that if he or she buys from you, you will go the extra mile for that customer if a problem develops. Or perhaps you add a small present of nominal cost in each order that the customer was not expecting. Remember, it’s not the cost, but the thought that counts.

If you deliver a quality product with better service than the customer expects, you will win the most important promotional tools that a business can have: positive word-of-mouth that builds a valuable brand in the minds of consumers.

Martin Lindstrom offers a good example of this.

A man purchased a barbeque grill as a gift for a friend. After spending the time to assemble the grill, the man’s friend said that he could not accept the present. So the man returned the grill to the store for a refund. The merchant gladly accepted the grill, and the man was refunded the full amount—plus $30. The man asked what the $30 was for, and the merchant replied that because he had taken the time to assemble the grill, he should be compensated for it. The salesperson replied, “You’ve used most of the day collecting and assembling this grill, so you’ve made life easier for its next owner. You should be rewarded for this.”

You can bet that the next time someone asks the man for a recommendation on where to buy a barbeque grill, that store will be his first suggestion. Surprise your customers by underpromising and overdelivering, and your brand will reap the benefits.

Tips for Online Branding

Larry Chase Web Digest for Marketers (www.wdfm.com) is an excellent resource for marketers. Chase’s weekly newsletter is always packed with marketing tips and resources that you can use to promote your Yahoo! store. Chase has compiled a list of branding tips that you should review when creating your brand, to make your positioning message stand out among your competition.

First, look at your tagline—those few words or one phrase that quickly tells a visitor to your Yahoo! store about your USP. Does it really differentiate your business from the competition? Remember, you don’t have very many seconds (1.54) to grab a visitor’s attention, so your tagline must be short and effective. “Our prices can’t be beat” and “We are the lowest price” don’t sell the shopper. Customers need to know why you are the lowest and why it’s important to them.

Michelin’s tagline is an example of one that focuses on the customer’s need: “Because so much is riding on your tires.” This tagline personalizes the USP and answers the question in the consumer’s mind, “Why should I care? What’s in it for me?”

Your objective is to create a solid, exact, and usable USP that both positions you in the marketplace and convinces a consumer to buy from you.

Second, don’t be perceived as a “me, too.” Marvin Honig, well-known creative director who was responsible for the classic ads for Volkswagen, warns against losing your business in the Sea of Sameness. As an example, he once took the soundtrack from one noted soft drink ad and placed it over the visuals of a second noted soft drink ad. They synched up perfectly! His focus groups proved that people could not tell the difference between one soft drink ad of that time and another.

Third, show customers—don’t tell them. Talk is cheap, so show your shoppers how you will anticipate their needs and meet their expectations. Again, this is the idea of underpromising and overdelivering.

Fourth, find a personality for your site, otherwise known as your voice. Don’t make your product or service (even your company polices) sound like boring spec sheet. Talk to your shoppers. Get in their shoes. If you can do that, you go long way toward answering their question of WIIFM: “What’s in it for me?”

Fifth, ask for criticism. Show your worse critic your Yahoo! store. In fact, show it to as many critics as you can. Tell them to be fair but brutal. Take their criticism to heart, and make the appropriate changes.

Finally, you can’t please everybody. That’s why you have chosen a target audience. Market to those consumers, position your business, and build a brand for those you want to sell to.

Branding with the Big 5

In our previous book, Launching Your Yahoo! Business (Que, 2006), we spoke about the Big 5 of e-commerce: price, selection, convenience, service, and security. These five elements can help you define your brand and separate it from your competition.

Briefly, you can brand on price, selection, or experience (convenience, service, and security).

Price is no longer king on the Internet. Yes, it’s important, but with a consumer’s ability to shop for the best price using search engines, comparison-shopping sites, and auctions, it has become very difficult to compete on price alone. So how do you avoid the lowest-price trap? By adding the other four of the Big 5 to your branding mix.

First, start with your target audience and focus on selection. You can’t be all things to all people, so sharpen the focus of your product or service selection. More sales to more people outside your target market will not necessarily bring you profitable customers. Choose your selection and then add value to it. Are you selling a price-sensitive commodity such as books, CDs, or videos? Don’t try to be the lowest. Find ways to add value to the product, such as free shipping or packaged deals or knowledgeable recommendations—anything that you can use to raise your price a bit and still make a good margin.

Value is in the eyes of the consumers. If they feel that they are getting a good deal because you went the extra mile for them or made their purchase more convenient, they will pay more. Amazon is a good example. Why not pay a little more than their competitors if you know you can purchase your product quickly and easily with a “one click” purchase?

Construct a brand that incorporates your version of the Big 5, and you will create a USP for your Yahoo! store.

In the next chapter, we cover some of the best marketing tools for acquiring visitors in your Yahoo! store.