Do It Wrong Quickly: Applying The Three R's to a Fashion Retailer

Moran also introduces the notion of the Three R’s of online marketing in his book, as an extension of the traditional Four P’s. As customers are nowadays overwhelmed with marketing massages, companies have to make sure that they are relevant, real and responsive. Although the Three R’s are not really new to Internet marketing, Moran provides new a perspective on it by suggesting achieving the Three R’s with quick experiments. What does this mean for example for a medium-sized fashion retailer?

First of all, the company has to be relevant to the target customer. Because customers choose relevant web sites through search engines such as Google, a fashion retailer has to make sure that target customers find their web site. Therefore, the company should test how it can be found through search engines. If the company does not come up on the first page of Google when using relevant key words, the company should consider building in the right key words into their web site or alternatively using paid search. After changes have been implemented, the company has to measure if the traffic on the web site has increased. If not, the paid search did not pay off or the key words were incorrect, and the company has to adjust it accordingly.

In order to convince consumers to become your customer, the retailer needs to be real. This is particularly important as Web 2.0 customers are highly informed and will call the company on every little lie. By telling the truth, trust and long-term relationships can be built. When applying ‘being real’ to a fashion company this can also mean talking to your customers like to real people, so that they’ll talk back. Many fashion companies (i.e. http://www.aritzia.com/blog or http://www.vagabond.com/blog/) that write company blogs are using a more ‘spoken language’ rather than a facts driven language. Aritzia's blog for example sounds usually more conversational:


This makes the marketing message more personal, so that customers are more likely to answer to it, which leads us to the third R. Once a customer gives feedback, the company has to be prepared to be responsive no matter if the feedback is positive or negative. It is especially dangerous if customer complaints are not answered quickly, as these will spread online very fast. Consequently, a fashion retailer has to make sure that all comments on the blogs, especially if these are requests or even complaints, are dealt with immediately. If the retailer is able to get the three R’s right, the company will be able to develop long-term relationships with its customers.