Pervasive Commerce: Close the Disconnect Between Online Marketing and Shopping

By Joe Chung

Some quick tips to help aid the way to pervasive commerce:

1. Make your merchandise play a starring role in your interactive marketing. As a multichannel retailer, one key aspect of your brand is your merchandise. The online presentation of your brand should showcase your merchandise in a manner that lets your customers interact with the merchandise as part of the overall experience.

2. Look for opportunities to tie content with commerce. It’s not just Internet retailers who should incorporate pervasive commerce. A company with unique, compelling content should examine ways in which it can provide contextually appropriate shopping opportunities for consumers. There are now ways to incorporate commerce without interrupting or overpowering the content that spurs initial consumer interest. It’s time to take another look at all of your company’s online assets and think creatively about tying them with commerce.

3. Insist on measuring the full ROI of interactive marketing. Not only focus on the brand impact, which is important, but also track the commercial impact of interactive marketing micro-sites. Are they driving sales? If not, why?

4. Avoid reflecting your organizational structure in how you present your brand. Often a company’s main e-commerce site is built and maintained by core programming, while the marketing micro-site(s) is owned by a separate team of designers. Bridge organization gaps to close dislocations in the customer experience.

5. Revisit past assumptions. Previously, technology limitations made it very difficult to tie marketing with commerce, but now there are many new e-commerce technologies to help facilitate pervasive commerce. Take the time to review new technologies and capabilities, especially as you make your 2008 plans.