Cultivating Word of Mouth Marketing

Todd Walbridge of Tuxedo T-shirts Online is a self-proclaimed customer service freak.  That’s because he believes in the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

To grow his store's clientele, Todd abides by the age-old philosophy “The customer is always right.”  “The most successful large online stores have grown to their size with that mentality,” he says.  “We ship ungodly fast because that gets people talking.  We take care of the customer first even if the bottom line doesn’t make sense for that one sale.  It will at the end of the month because that customer will come back and become a repeat customer and tell his friends.” 

On the flip side, offering stellar customer service also helps him avoid negative word of mouth.  “Word of mouth can be your best and worst enemy on the Internet," he explains.  "You get a few people mad at you and it can spread like wildfire through Yelp, Facebook and Twitter.  One bad blog or review can take you down.”

Merchants, though, can't always know if someone has published a negative opinion.  Todd monitors his reputation by using GoogleAlerts, which tells him how many times his name appears online.  “It gives us an idea about how our customers are feeling.  If someone says something bad, we can do damage control by reaching out to them.  If we've done something wrong, we can fix it.  The most dangerous customers are the ones that don’t complain to you because they instead complain to their family and friends.” 

From Wholesale to Retail

With the economy such as it is, many merchants have had to reinvent their sales models to take advantage of new and changing markets.  Most of them say that opening an eCommerce storefront was what gave them that edge to prosper in a challenging environment.   

Tuxedo T-shirts Online and Dog is Good do most of their business wholesale.  Todd Walbridge of Tuxedo T-Shirts Online has a screen printing business.  Jon and Gila Kurtz and J. Nichole Smith of Dog is Good sell humorous products that celebrate the dog-human relationship.  In the late 2000s, each business opened their first eCommerce storefront.  Since then, the move has helped them improve their profits despite a Recession. 

“I’m thankful we did it,” says Todd.  “After the downturn, our business dropped off 30 percent because we were dealing mostly with businesses.  Now that we’re going directly to consumers, I picked up that 30 percent again.”

 

 

Dog is Good’s eCommerce storefront now accounts for more than 10 percent of the company’s revenue.  "Our web store may be a small percentage of our business, but it brings us a good-sized profit margin,” explains Jon.  “For something that costs us, say, $5.50 to make, we can sell it wholesale for $10 and retail it for $20.” 

Once businesses open an eCommerce storefront, their multi-channel selling possibilities open up even more, as markets today increasingly incorporate mobile platform selling, sales on social media sites, and other sophisticated online eCommerce tools.

Sell One Thing and Sell it Well

ProStores merchant Todd Walbridge has a screen printing business and sells humorous T-shirts online.  He carries tuxedo T-shirts, security T-shirts and T-shirts that raise money to fight multiple sclerosis, but instead of selling them all on one web store, he has three separate sites--Tux-Tees.com, security-tshirts.com and MSTshirts.com.

Todd learned from experience.  “In the beginning, I was trying to be a mini-Amazon.  I thought I’d appeal to a lot of people with a lot of different products.  Then I realized that I was never going to be Amazon, and I started focusing on niches.”

Having niche products on discrete web stores allows Todd to avoid having to compete with superstores.  He can instead focus on specific SEO keywords, attracting shoppers further along in their buying process.  “Because you’re so niche, you get more searches,” explains Todd.  “That’s what the Internet is about."

You might recall that the same thing happened to Dealzer owner Albert Farajian.  He opened his online store with 25,000 products.  When in the the first month he sold just two products, one being a hydroponic gardening system, he realized that he was better off focusing his inventory.  

“The best thing to do is start with a niche web storefront," he says.  "If it gets popular, then you can start expanding.”