Should Leboutin's new cosmetically-enhanced Barbie be our Net Promoter mascot? Read on to find out...
Head over to the online Barbie store and you’ll no longer see Barbie’s infamous fat ankles. Thanks to recent laments by celebrity bootmaker Christian Louboutin, the offending ankles have been mercifully subjected to plastic surgery.
What you will find over at the Barbie site though is some smart use of social media (online media that supports social interaction and user contributions). Specifically, you can go “social shopping” and co-browse the site in realtime with your remote Facebook friends and Twitter followers to share shopping advice and recommendations.
The result? An expectation-beating e-commerce experience that drives sales. Brands using social media to enhance the online customer experience have seen sales jump by 10%+ (see here for a fabulous compendium of evidence). In fact, a recent test of the social media feature on the Barbie store saw sales rise by 15%, with a 50% rise in average order value.
With its Barbie store, Mattel is part of the vanguard of brands using Net Promoter logic with social media to drive sales. The logic is simple - use social media to offer an expectation-beating online experience (the key variable driving your Net Promoter Score) and then monetize the result immediately with e-commerce.
It’s simple, it’s smart and it solves two challenges faced by Net Promoter and Social Media. First, “How do I get ROI on my Net Promoter investment fast?” Second, “How do I monetize my social media investment?” The answer, fusing social media with e-commerce and Net Promoter logic to deliver expectation-beating experiences that can be immediately monetized through e-commerce, may turn out to be your ROI solution.
Not all social media experiences can be monetized directly, and nor should they, but where they can they provide a fast business case for social media and Net Promoter investment. Take a look at how other brands are using “social commerce” (social media + e-commerce) with Net Promoter logic to monetize social media and drive sales, and ask yourself a simple question: How could we make social media pay with Net Promoter?
- P&G, Nine West, and Best Buy walking the customer-centric talk and beating expectations by making e-commerce convenient and social with Facebook stores
- Dell, beating their followers expectations on Twitter, by offering exclusive deals on their "Deal Feed" - and selling $7m+ of gear
- Carrefour, the world's largest hypermarket retailer doing the same thing in Facebook, offering expectation-beating exclusive deals on their Deal Feed to their fans
- Burberry showing how luxury brands can harness social media, with a ground-breaking Art of the Trench "user generated, brand curated" gallery linked to their e-commerce store
- The Limited US fashion retail chain offering the ultimate in customer convenience, enabling people to buy directly from their social media newsfeed, with a newsfeed store on Facebook
- Dell again, with Dell Swarm beating expectations with a nifty Group Buy feature - buy together with your social network - the more people who buy, the cheaper the price
- Amazon beating expectations again their new Universal Wishlist service and Tag-Based and Contrast Reviews
Now, get over to the Mattel site and check out Barbie’s ankles with your friends....
