Treat your business as a boutique experience

EARLIER this month Myer announced that it planned to offer free shipping on its website, in an attempt to woo back customers who are shopping on overseas sites. But free shipping – and more importantly, price slashing – isn’t going to save Myer. Customers will still continue to buy from around the world, where they can get access to products and services faster and cheaper than Myer (and you) can offer them here.

The only real, sustainable long-term solution is to offer experiences, which, unlike products and services, can’t be outsourced to China and India. Act like a boutique business and offer better experiences at every touch point.

Let’s look at wineries, for example.

Capel Vale Winery, one of my favourites, is a pioneer in the Margaret River region. Some of its wine labels include a QR code, so customers with smartphones can visit the website for tasting notes. That’s innovative, but isn’t enough by itself (Lion Nathan is already doing the same thing). 

The real success formula for a winery like Capel Vale is to leverage the fact it can deliver a boutique experience. Here are five things a boutique winery – and you – can do.

1. Show your face: Meeting the owner of a winery is a privilege (for both of you), and a very personal experience. The same applies online. Amazon.com, Apple and Facebook are big enough brands that they don’t need Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg to show up on their websites.

But your website is different, so write in an informal manner, show your photograph, publish your email address, tell people how to follow you on social media, and share your thoughts in a blog.

2. Serve a niche: Small boutique wineries aren’t for everybody. They are usually in rural areas, and off the main roads (by necessity). They don’t stock hundreds of wines, they don’t have the same stock every season, and they might not even have regular opening hours. So they cater for a particular kind of person – not necessarily a wine connoisseur, but certainly not the average wine drinker either.

Adopt the same attitude with your online presence. Don’t market to the masses – leave that to those with deeper pockets. Instead, focus on a niche, where you can truly stand out as an authority.

3. Invest in reputation: The small boutique wineries survive because of their reputation, which they build by being good, attracting a loyal following and attracting customers through word-of-mouth marketing.

Do the same in your business. Write a blog, send an email newsletter every two weeks, answer some questions on LinkedIn, and tweet and re-tweet links to interesting, relevant stuff.

4. Make connections: Boutique wineries can’t rely on single transactions. They need to cultivate that loyal group of fans who’ll keep coming back, with things like loyalty cards, email newsletters and membership programs.

What are you doing to keep your customers? For example, give them an option to join your newsletter list, send them a bonus gift a few weeks later, put them on a special list so they get things non-customers don’t, and invite them to be friends on Facebook and put them in a special list.

5. Create experiences: You go to a liquor shop to buy wine, but you visit a boutique winery for the experience. It’s not just about the wine; it’s about the beautiful setting, the restaurant or cafe, the souvenir glasses from the wine tasting, the winemaker herself describing this year’s vintage, and so on.

What are you doing on your website to create a memorable experience for site visitors? This takes a bit of creative thinking, but start by thinking of what you can do that the big companies don’t. For example, if you’re selling a book, what can you do that Amazon.com doesn’t? You could include a welcome video, give them an e-book version immediately so they don’t have to wait, personally answer customer emails, autograph every copy, or bundle it with a CD and 12-month email coaching package.

Are you already positioning yourself as a boutique experience, or are you just like the rest? Don’t think free shipping – think superior experiences.

Gihan Perera is an Internet coach who helps thought leaders and business professionals use the Internet for e-marketing and e-learning, and the author of Fast, Flat and Free: How the Internet Has Changed Your Business. 

Contact Gihan via his website www.GihanPerera.com