Store Owners it is Time to Embrace The Internet With Both Feet

Today, Christine Whittemore had a great post on MarketingProfs called: Still Holding Back? 10 (Business) Reasons to Participate in Social Media. In her article she talked about how stores should use social media to be a great listeners and to create conversations with their customers and new prospects. She also listed 10 reasons why businesses should be participating in social media:


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Point number #3 really hit on something I have been observing for quite some time.

3. Social media allows you to bring to life your otherwise static brochure-like website with a dynamic presence.

Static websites means a website that doesn’t change often, if at all. Store sales and other store events are rarely updated. New photos of events and other store changes are never added to the websites. No new store announcements and no customer feedbacks or customer reviews / testimonials.

On Tuesday I was following tweets from GetListed.org's “Local University” workshop, which took place in Portland, Oregon. One of the many tweets was about social media. The presenter's comment was sent over Twitter..

#1 reason customers connect w social media - discounts and special offers.

So consumers are hunting for discounts and special offers on Facebook, Twitter, etc.? Maybe this is why I see more and more large retailers posting deals all day. For example, HomeDepotDeals is shouting HD special store deals and discounts all day long on Twitter.

Another interesting article surfaced on Twitter and it was about MerchantCircle's recent press release. MerchantCircle released a report about a study of 8500 small, local businesses (most under 5 employees) and they found 70% prefer using Facebook for their marketing. They also stated most of these small businesses are gravitating towards simple, low-cost online marketing methods, such as Facebook. These small businesses say they do not have the time, understanding, nor the budget for other online advertising methods. No surprise, Facebook is easy to upload photos, add links, videos and insert text.

This leads me to what has been in the back of my mind for a long time. Most retailers really don’t embrace their website. Most flooring store owners seem to gravitate to a cookie-cutter website that is truly static and takes no effort on their part. These static website don’t allow retailers to make changes themselves. So they turn to Facebook to add their salespromotions and other store news while their website becomes stale and fails to engage their potential customers.

Store owners need to begin to recognize they need to put more effort into making their website interactive, updated and much more personal. Static cookie-cutter websites wont do it.

In Christine’s point 8. she states:

You direct prequalified prospects—with whom you’ve already established a relationship—to your website, so you can engage in business.

She is right, but unfortunately a static, stale website with outdated content will probably send the wrong message to your prospects. Stores need to be able to make changes on their website as easily as they do on Facebook. They also need to find ways to engage and interact better with their website visitors. Also, store owners need to use analytics to see if in fact their Facebook prospects are going to their websites.

Bottom line is, you get out of it what you put in it. Static, impersonal, cookie-cutter websites are not enough. Stores need to begin to create a content strategy, an online marketing plan, and find ways to engage and interact with their visitors both on social media websites as well on their websites.