"It can be easy for marketers to get tunnel vision when implementing their marketing plan and keeping up to date on industry trends. But the wonderful thing about marketing is that the discipline may be applied to literally any widget or service. I've found that looking to professionals from outside of my industry vertical can inspire some of the most amazing marketing ideas. So Blind Acre is (re)starting a monthly "Crash Interview" series where we will sit down with our clients and ask about thier challenges, best practices, and biggest successes. We begin with Justin Meats, VP of Marketing for Revolutions, Inc."
Tell us a little about Revolutions, Inc. and your customer base.
"Revoluitons, Inc. manages 10 successful and rapidly growing ecommerce websites. In 2000, we launched our flagship website, SpinLife.com, which has become the largest internet retailer of durable medical equipment.. Since then we’ve launched a family of online medical equipment retail brands, focusing largely on mobility products. We also operate Silver Netstores, which includes Scooter.com, Scooterville.com, theRespitorystore.com, wheelchairsonsale.com, patientliftdeals.com and several others."
As an online retailer, why is digital marketing important to your overall business and marketing strategy?
"Being an online retailer makes online marketing one of the most important aspects of our marketing efforts. Search engine marketing, both organic and paid is a large part of our focus. The equipment we sell is an involved purchase and patients do a lot of research, using hundreds of keywords and search terms, which we must consider."
As an online retailer, how do you position yourselves against brick & mortar and catalog-based equipment providers?
"We are competitive from a pricing standpoint, but more importantly we position ourselves as the most customer service-focused medical and mobility equipment retailer, online or otherwise. These are highly involved purchases, especially when custom equipment is being built, so it’s really about providing the best support to our customers at every phase of the purchase. We offer more options with better customer support than many local equipment and mobility storefronts are able to."
What is your greatest hurdle to implementing your digital strategy?
"Tracking and attribution... We track a lot, but at the end of the day, we are not able to track 100%."
How are you measuring the digital channels you’re using against your goals?
"We’re using many of the tools available to marketers. Google Analytics, Adwords and the detailed tracking and reporting our email system, Yesmail offers. We know what we want to see from each activity goes as far as ROI goes, so I spend a great deal of time analyzing those reports."
How do you keep yourself and your team on pace with emerging digital marketing tools and strategies.
"It’s just a lot of reading. Lately I’ve found that following and searching hashtags on Twitter rather than individual Twitter accounts has been putting useful information in front of me. I have followed SearchEngineLand.com four years which has been a great source for emerging trends and topics. They just launched a sister site, MarketingLand.com that I am starting to follow as well."
What emerging digital trend do you believe will have the greatest positive impact on companies’ digital strategies. Are there any game changers out there today?
"I don’t think there is any single tool that is going to have the impact that, say Twitter or Facebook had. I think the most important trend we’re going to see continue is the impact that social will continue to have on organic and paid search results. It’s crowd sourcing the most relevant, interesting and helpful information on the web. So the number of likes, shares, and recommendations your products and content gets is going to be more and more important."
If budget weren't an issue, what is one digital campaign or tactic you would love to implement?
"You know it’s funny because if budget weren’t an issue I would actually apply it to non-digital channels. Because we are an online retailer, and because we do have to focus on attribution and ROI of our online marketing so acutely, I would actually apply my “limitless budget” to traditional channels and explore how they can support and drive digital activity. We currently produce a 52 page catalog, but I would love to leverage print ads, outdoor signage and things of that vein to see how they would be able to drive online sales.
We kind of joke in our offices that we are “experimenting” in the opposite direction of many retailers today."
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If you would like to be connected with Revolutions, Inc., or be featured in our monthly interview series, contact David Ringler, Director of Marketing at dringler@blindacre.com