Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2019 - 14

THE PULSE

MARKETING

Passion Powers
Performance

Here's how you can leverage the way your shop provides intimacy
and trust in the face of an online behemoth's algorithms and data.
by Mike Geraci
"If you're David, don't let Goliath choose the weapons."-SIGURD (SIG) RINGE
SPECIALTY RETAILERS CAN'T COMPETE ON
Amazon's terms. It's not that they won't have
competitive pricing, extensive product selection, or free shipping. It's that they don't have
the one key thing that keeps the Amazon retail
model out of reach: a sugar daddy subsidizing
everything they do.
In 2017, all of Amazon's operating income
came from Amazon Web Services (AWS), it's
cloud computing division. For Q2 of 2018, the
Guardian reports that Amazon posted a record profit of $2.5 billion, "...thanks to strong
performance by the retail giant's non-retail divisions-advertising and cloud-computing."
If your business is benchmarking Amazon
without accounting for the huge AWS subsidies, the math will never work.
AWS is Amazon's secret subsidy. What's
yours?

14 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ Winter 2019

Amazon and other e-commerce companies
battle it out with data, algorithms, and personalization. If you get sucked into that arena, you
will performance market yourself to death.
Data is the red ocean, it's commoditized-so
what is the blue ocean you can own?
Passion and trust are what customers pay a
premium for, so make them think twice before
shopping on price alone. Specialty retail has
the opportunity to differentiate, to make the
experience personal, not just personalized.
Some would even say intimate.

CUSTOMER INTIMACY IS THE HOLY GRAIL
for retail, online and off. It's not just Amazon,
etc. that struggle with it- big box retailers
do as well. There's nothing more soul sucking
than walking into a cavernous store and feeling as if you are alone.

As Kevin Roberts catalogs in his seminal
2004 book Lovemarks: The Future Beyond
Brands, intimacy is comprised of three core
attributes: Empathy, commitment, and passion. What do those look like in specialty?
EMPATHY: The ability to listen and respond
appropriately. Online stores are talking at you
via workflows, programmatic ads, and algorithmic recommendations. They know what
you are doing and when you are doing it, but
they still can't understand why you are doing
it. They are getting better at understanding
the context of a person's online behaviors, but
empathy is the X factor that can't be built into
an algorithm. The best salespeople listen, understand, then sell.
COMMITMENT: Prove you are in the relationship for the long haul. Everybody online
is focused on increasing "conversion rates"
and "LTV." These are transactional relationships and hardly give you the warm fuzzies.
What are you investing in the relationship,
through education, training, advocacy, loyalty
programs, or personalized concierge service?
This isn't a side gig or a way to make a quick
buck off of tourists wandering through town.
PASSION: Roberts defines passion as, "...
that bright spark that keeps the relationship
alive." Shoppers crave unique experiences-
the little signals that surround the activity and
prove you understand and share their passion.
Shopping at Amazon is not a unique experience. It's industrial. Even their physical stores
are designed to be automated. A business has
to demonstrate passion for retail, passion for
adventure, passion for the gear, passion for the
brands you carry, passion for the wild places in
your market, passion for the people and organizations immersed in these activities.
Robert's book documents how seemingly
intangible emotional attributes can build a
tangible emotional bond with brands. With
all the focus on tangible data and algorithms,
intimacy can be the secret subsidy that can't
be replicated, as each area provides its own
unique context for what intimacy can be. O.R.
-Mike Geraci is principal of Geraci &
Co., a brand strategy and communications
group based in Jackson, Wyoming.

Andrew Kornylak

TRUST THESE GUYS
Charles Langelier and
Ryan Constantine live
their passion in Utah's
Wasatch Mountains.

Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2019