Social eCommerce

Chapter 3. Marketing Strategy: Physical Goods

In the beginning of this book, we said that a successful strategy has three components: intention, context, and tactics. This is why we have separated the sale of physical goods—things that have to be stocked, pulled, packed, shipped, and warrantied—from the sale of other sorts of things. There is a much higher barrier to entry for a physical sale compared with other categories. A click on a link can put an item and a quantity into a shopping cart, but the customer has to type in a lot of extra information to complete the sale. When you put it into the proper perspective, it’s easy to see why a “physical goods” ecommerce business wouldn’t want to use tactics designed for local businesses or service providers.

A strong, competent social media presence will give you a competitive advantage that separates you from your competitors. This is especially important in industries that sell goods with long life cycles, such as tools and appliances. We’ve spoken to people at marketing conferences who have very expensive, high-margin, niche-market, highly reliable products that they sell to customers on a 10-year sales cycle. Losing one customer is a significant problem for the whole company. Those are extreme cases, but the sentiment applies across the physical goods market segment: you’ve got to have the right alignment of intention, context, and tactics to complete the sale.

Physical Goods That Do Well on Social Media

No matter what you’re selling, ...