December 20, 2009 | No Comments »
Marketing is at the core of your business, and consumers make purchasing decisions based on your brand image. If retailers aren’t presenting that image properly, or aren’t presenting it at all, you are losing sales.
The Internet has made brand misrepresentation common. Sometimes unauthorized retailers display your own photography to dump your product on eBay. Sometimes legitimate retailers use poor-quality photographs that don’t properly represent your brand. Sometimes legitimate retailers don’t show any product photography or promotions. In each case, your brand image suffers.
Clarinova’s Front Window platform gives manufacturers more control over their brand images by making product photos and promotional images instantaneously accessible, but only to authorized retailers.
To accomplish this, manufacturers submit their latest product data to a limited-access Web application that allows retailers, publishers, and bloggers to access images, product descriptions, videos, product reviews, and user-generated content. Additionally, product images and information can be instantaneously distributed to the retailer microsites, ensuring up-to-date content.
Want more? With invoices from the latest product delivery, Front Window can instantly update the new product images on the corresponding retailer microsites.
With a simple Web form, retailers, publishers, bloggers, and social networking websites can ask for permission to access the data feed. After receiving approval, retailers can download product information and easily keep their websites up-to-date with the best product images and promotions. Publishers, bloggers, and social networking sites can further extend the brand message on their websites, giving the manufacturer additional free exposure.
The result is that manufacturers gain more control over their brand images, while retailers and publishers gain easier access. So the manufacturers’ brand is shown more accurately, more widely, and in the right places.
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Picture a search-engine-optimized website accurately representing your brand for each of your brick and mortar retailers. Now picture each of these “microsites” built to guide interested consumers to the nearest retailer carrying your product–each microsite a part of a network of hundreds or thousands of similar sites all working to promote your brand. This network functions as a powerful engine for driving organic search rankings and disseminating the latest manufacturer product images across the Web.
Even the most dedicated manufacturers, with excellent websites and technical staff, can only control half of their Internet presence. The other half is in the hands of their retailers, most of whom do not properly promote their websites or your products. With the Front Window platform, Clarinova can provide the engine that drives visitors to retailer websites displaying high-quality brand imagery from manufacturers.
Clarinova can further promote this network to consumers via:
- Forums
- Bulletin Boards
- Blogs
- E-mail
- Social Networks
Forums and Bulletin Boards. For some markets, forums and bulletin boards are the primary way enthusiasts communicate with each other. Clarinova works with forum and board operators to link product data and retailer websites into forum product reviews, creating a new way for forum users to review and promote manufacturers’ products.
Blogs. Other markets rely on blogs. Millions of consumers are creating and reading blogs, many of which focus on products. These blogs can use Clarinova’s product data network to access product images and descriptions and to receive notifications of new products from their favorite manufacturers. And bloggers can provide an additional service to their consumers by listing local retailers that sell the products.
E-mail. E-mail marketing is often a cost-effective way to reach consumers. Clarinova’s e-mail marketing services allow manufacturers and retailers to work together to create larger, more focused e-mail lists with the right messages to increase sales.
Social Networks. Clarinova is working with social networks to integrate the product data network with social networking sites. This enables consumers to make their favorite products part of their conversations, and it enables retailers to gain access to the photographs, videos, and reviews that socially-networked consumers create.
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Ace has thousands of retailers, but few have websites, so consumers don’t know where to buy Ace Shoes.
Ace sends its product catalog to Clarinova.
When consumers know where to buy,
they visit stores, increasing sales for Ace Shoes and their retailers.
May 11, 2009 | No Comments »
Joint Internet Marketing for Manufacturers and Retailers
Even the most dedicated manufacturers, with excellent websites and technical staff, can only control half of their Internet presence. The other half is in the hands of their retailers, most of whom do not properly promote their websites. When manufacturers use Clarinova’s product data management service and retailers become part of Clarinova’s retailer network, Clarinova can provide the Internet marketing that drives visitors to retailer websites displaying high-quality brand imagery from manufacturers.
With Clarinova’s Internet marketing service, a manufacturer’s retailer network becomes a platform for marketing to consumers through:
- Search Engines
- Forums
- E-mail
- Social Networks
Comprehensive Internet Marketing
Clarinova takes a comprehensive approach to Internet marketing, considering a wide variety of techniques and their application to the manufacturer’s website as well as associated retailers’ websites.
Search Engine Optimization. When retailers create a website with Clarinova’s website builder, the website is automatically optimized for search engines. The right structure, keywords, and content ensure that search engines can find the site and the manufacturer’s products on the site.
Forums and Bulletin Boards. For some markets, such as surf and skate, forums and bulletin boards are the primary way enthusiasts communicate with each other. Clarinova is working with forum and board operators to link product data and retailer websites into forum product reviews, creating a new way for forum users to review and promote manufacturers’ products.
Blogs. Other markets rely on blogs. Millions of fashion-conscious consumers are creating and reading hundreds of fashion and apparel blogs, many of which focus on products. These blogs can use Clarinova’s product data network to access product images and descriptions and to receive notifications of new products from their favorite manufacturers. And bloggers can provide an additional service to their consumers by listing local retailers that sell the products.
E-mail Marketing. E-mail marketing is the most cost-effective way to reach consumers. Clarinova’s e-mail marketing services allow manufacturers and retailers to work together to create larger, more focused e-mail lists with the right messages to increase sales.
Social Media Marketing. Clarinova is working with social networks to integrate the product data network with social networking sites. This enables consumers to make their favorite products part of their conversations, and it enables retailers to gain access to the photographs, videos, and reviews that socially-networked consumers create.
Promote the Whole Network
Clarinova can help you promote your whole network by including your retailers, thereby reaching consumers closer to the point of purchase. For more information about Clarinova and its products and services, follow our progress via e-mail, our blog, or Twitter. You can also call Eric Busboom at: 858 386-4134.
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Marketing is at the core of your business, and consumers make purchasing decisions based on your brand image. If retailers aren’t presenting that image properly, or aren’t presenting it at all, you are losing sales.
The Internet has made brand misrepresentation very common. Sometimes unauthorized retailers display your own photography to dump your product on eBay. Sometimes legitimate retailers use poor-quality photographs that don’t properly represent your brand. Sometimes legitimate retailers don’t show any product photography or promotions. In each case, your brand image suffers.
Product Data Management for Brand Control
Clarinova’s product data management service gives manufacturers more control over their brand images by making product photos and promotional images easily accessible, but only to authorized retailers.
Manufacturers submit their product data to a limited-access Web application that allows other retailers, publishers, and bloggers to access images, product descriptions, videos, product reviews, and user-generated content.
The result is that manufacturers gain more control over their brand images, while retailers and publishers gain easier access. So the manufacturers’ brands are shown more widely, in the right places.
Distribute Widely and Regulate
Using Clarinova’s system, manufacturers create data feeds of:
- Product photography
- Product descriptions
- Promotional videos
- Promotional images
- User reviews
With a simple Web form, retailers, publishers, bloggers, and social networking websites can ask for permission to access the data feed. After receiving approval, retailers can download product information and easily keep their websites up-to-date with the best product images and promotions. Publishers, bloggers, and social networking sites can further extend the brand message on their websites, giving the manufacturer additional free exposure.
By distributing product and promotional images through Clarinova’s data management service, manufacturers can limit data access to authorized retailers and can detect violations more easily. With the basic level of service, easier legal access to images decreases the incentive to steal. Higher levels of service offer image watermarking and a search service for finding usage violations. While the service can’t stop rogue Web administrators from copying images from a website, it can discourage and detect unauthorized use and make complying with the manufacturer’s policies easier and more common.
Easy and Inexpensive
Clarinova’s service can take data from manufacturers’ existing data feeds or from their existing websites, so using the service requires minimal effort.
For the simplest service, manufacturers only need to fill out a short online form to grant Clarinova approval to access their websites. For the most sophisticated manufacturers, Clarinova is working with e-commerce, ERP, and content management software vendors to integrate into common tools, making data upload reliable and automatic.
The service has a Web interface for uploading data and can take data in a variety of formats, including files from shopping search engines like Google Shopping or Shopzilla, exports from e-commerce applications, CSV files, and XML files.
The basic service is free to manufacturers; retailers pay a subscription fee to access data feeds. Manufacturers can also subsidize their data feeds, granting retailers free access while still maintaining access control.
For more information about Clarinova and its products and services, follow our progress via e-mail, our blog, or Twitter. You can also call Eric Busboom at: 858 386-4134.
Marketing is at the core of your business, and consumers make purchasing decisions based on your brand image. If retailers aren’t presenting that image properly, or aren’t presenting it at all, you are losing sales.
“We need customers to find us no matter how they search on the web. Whether they type in a city, zip code or a neighborhood along with our company name — we need our retailers to pop up in the search, and the Front Window microsites are making this happen.”