Consumer behaviour is changing. Never before have the public been so anti-commercial. TV advertisers have tried to combat this by increasing the volume during commercial breaks as they know that people walk away during the ads. Twitter have responded to the sensitivity of their users through very non-intrusive service related ads. As word of mouth plays a more critical role in advertising than ever before, the emergence of online brands have never been more important.
It’s no longer enough to talk the talk, brands really need to be living their values (a company that do this well are www.graze.com) as this is what will bring longevity and a level of authenticity that consumers will respect. This is what will set you apart from your competitors.
Whilst consumers are aware that companies need to make money to stay afloat, after all, that’s what keeps the economy going, they’re more aware than ever of margins. There is a fine balance to strike between doing the best for the consumer and being a profit driven organisation. Those that give consumers choices and put their needs first will be the ones that fair the best in the long run.
So what’s this to do with you, our partners? Not only does this confirm the need for you to be working on building your brand, it means that there’s work to do in ascertaining what makes your members click. It might be that your site is targeted at an older audience where they’re using the site for entertainment and may be happier to pay for a longer subscription if this proves better value. If the target audience is younger, they may want to dip a toe with a 1 month subscription before committing to anything further. To these people, presenting them with a 6 month package first might just put them off.
Nobody knows them better than you and given the new reporting tools that you’ve been equipped with in the portal, you’re now able to keep a really close eye on them, from their demographic to location and gender. You can see which packages your members are opting for and how many of these are renewing. Whilst we are of the belief that the 6 month package provides the highest lifetime value per member – we’re now giving control of the packages over to you. You, as a partner, will be able to dictate whether you’d rather the 1 month or 6 month package be displayed as default at the top of the payment page.
This new functionality can be accessed by visiting the portal, choosing to edit your site and clicking on option 5 of the top navigation, Finalise Details. You can then select the package mix where you are able to choose the 1 or 6 month package first.
As always, when we roll out new functionality, we’re keen to gather your feedback to let us know what you think of the changes. The most effective way of doing this is to feed back to your Partner Manager who will be collating all of the feedback.
We look forward to hearing what you think of these changes and seeing what influence they have on the conversions of your sites.