Retail Relevancy: How Brands and Retailers will Connect in a Post-Physical World

Retail is transforming from a place where people “get” things to the facilitation of “getting” things.

Consumer shopping is changing in the digital age faster than many may have anticipated, and this is putting downward pressure on store-based environments. In fact, the very definition and understanding of retail as a whole is undergoing change. How radical that change will be is anyone’s guess. However, we believe it’s going to increase geometrically and destroy the current retail model completely over the next decade.

Ecommerce is having a massive impact already on most retailers, and many will not survive. If they do, they will be somewhat unrecognizable from their current forms. Many retailers find false comfort in the fact that current e-commerce penetration is only 15% or so in the US. It’s perhaps double that in China and India where many new consumers skipped large store-based retail when entering the marketplace. The rate of transition for most consumers is getting ready to experience hockey stick growth upward as a host of technologies converge to make “place-based retailing” simply less convenient than e-commerce at price parity or even price-advantaged.

Like any brand, “retail relevance” exists in the mind of the shopper and, unfortunately for many brands, relevancy will vanish as their ability to connect with shoppers is diminished. Retailers must redefine themselves in consumers’ minds as a “complete shopping facilitation service” no matter where the consumer chooses to interact.

Our goal is to explore how brands and retailers can thrive in the future by being relevant in consumer’s minds… an objective which has always been the core of branding and is now more important than ever.

The Age of Influence: Selling to the Digitally Connected Customer

Whether you’re a parent, an employee, a manager or an executive, you have the power to build and maintain personal and business influence with an ever-widening audience of people. This has many ramifications for the future of sales in the digital age, because the mechanisms by which we expand our personal influence are being created at an exponential rate, giving people the ability to have an effect from anywhere, anytime for any reason.

This book explores that power, and how businesses can take advantage of it by helping their employees become more influential and working with outside influencers. It also explores the roadblocks to building influence, takes a look at some of the companies that are leading the charge, and gives us a peek into the future–explaining how businesses can flip the marketing funnel to leverage this new-found power of influence to attract more digitally connected customers.

How to Look People in the Eye Digitally

In today’s digital world it’s all too easy for us as brands and individuals to let our relationship-building muscles atrophy. We get caught up in a multitasking whirlwind of emails, social updates and text messages where it’s easy to let a connection or a conversation fall through the cracks. We’re super-connected, yet somehow disconnected at the same time. This puts us at risk of losing the very relationships that help us prosper as companies and people.

In How to Look People in the Eye Digitally, Ted re-introduces us to the one-on-one communication skills we’ve forgotten in our rush to new technologies. He shows us how we’ve let social and mobile technologies hold us back, and teaches us new ways to use the people skills we already have to stay connected in an authentic, human way. Through anecdotes from his own experiences as a busy, socially connected executive and single dad, plus examples from brands that are getting it right, Ted inspires new ways to build relationships online that truly grow and prosper.

Return on Relationship

Ted Rubin on How to Look People in the Eye Digitally: Bringing In-Person Social Skills to the Digital World

This book is a companion work to Ted Rubin’s book, How to Look People in the Eye Digitally. It contains 140 AhaMessages™ that inspire new ways to build relationships online that truly grow and prosper.

In today’s digital world it’s all too easy for us as brands and individuals to let our relationship-building muscles atrophy. We get caught up in a multitasking whirlwind of emails, social updates and text messages where it’s easy to let a connection or a conversation fall through the cracks. We’re super-connected, yet somehow disconnected at the same time. This puts us at risk of losing the very relationships that help us prosper as companies and people.

Ted Rubin on ROR #RonR: 140 Aha Moments Exploring Return on Relationship

There’s no doubt that the global market is changing and has significantly changed just within the last five years. Selling used to be about having the best product and the best business practices but now “it’s all about relationships,” social marketing strategist Ted Rubin proclaims in Ted Rubin on ROR #RonR.

With customers reading reviews upon reviews of products online, asking their friends and followers via social media for product feedback, building and maintaining customer relationships is more important–and easier–than ever. What is your organization’s Return on Relationship?

Written by a leading social media marketing strategist, Ted Rubin takes you through how the value of your relationships will accrue tenfold over time; how just connecting with followers/future advocates online isn’t enough-it’s engagement that’s key; and how to not just be social on social media but to socialize your way to successful Return on Relationship.