How NOT to Promote Your Ecommerce Products

If you have a line of related products, would you showcase only ONE of those products over and over?

Wouldn’t you want to showcase the entire line — to appeal to the broadest number of visitors?

Even the Big-Name Companies Can Have Flawed Strategies

Clothing companies produce seasonal lines of clothing. So it is with Nike Tennis. They have a Spring line, a Summer line, etc. And they pay big bucks to professional tennis players to wear their clothing.

So I scratch my head (and I’m not the only one, judging from the number of posts on this topic) when I watch professional tennis tournaments — and I see EVERY pro that Nike sponsors wearing EXACTLY the same clothing.

As a club and league tennis player, I know how much tennis clothing my friends and teammates buy (a lot!). And I also know how much us tennis fanatics watch tennis (a lot!). How much more clothing would Nike sell if they showcased a variety of options to  have wider appeal?

• After a few recent tournaments where EVERY female player wore the same rust-colored outfit, that was all we could talk about between games on court. “Why is everyone wearing the same thing?” and “Is that really the only outfit Nike wants to show us?” were everyone’s questions.

And did having every pro wear exactly the same outfit drive us tennis apparel-buying fanatics online? Nope. Why would we, if we didn’t see anything we liked.

If I were the women’s tennis apparel product manager, I’d want to showcase the entire line of our current season. I’d give each pro their choice of MULTIPLE outfits they could wear during the 7-14 day tournaments.

(As a note, I understand that tennis players can be superstitious. If I wore the blue dress and won on Monday, maybe I should continue to wear that blue dress . . . so Nike will give each pro 7 copies of the same outfit to wear every day of a tournament. I get that. But why not give each pro the OPTION of choosing what outfit they want to showcase from Nike’s entire current line?)

When I actually search for Nike women’s tennis apparel, I see the AMAZING color choices and multiple pieces Nike actually created for the Spring season. And I wonder how many millions of dollars in sales Nike missed because showcasing only a single choice at recent tournaments didn’t appeal to everyone.

Because the problem is this: if I hadn’t been writing this blog post, I would have had no reason to visit my favorite online tennis site to check out Nike’s offerings.  Throughout all of the recent tennis tournaments I watched on TV, I didn’t see the other options in the spring line that I actually might have purchased had I seen a pro wearing them.

Marketers Need to Appeal to Your Particular Audience — With Your Entire Line

Moral of the story: if you sell clothing, you must understand that not every piece or color is for everyone. That’s the ENTIRE PURPOSE of having a collection. You create multiple pieces in multiple colors to appeal to the widest number of customers.

If you have a line of related products, you no doubt painstakingly created each product to serve a particular purpose in the line.

Because each product in your line or collection was created to serve a particular purpose for a particular target customer, each product needs to be visible. In Nike’s case:

• If I didn’t like the rust color, why didn’t they show me the same pieces came in my favorite lavender color?
• If I didn’t appreciate the old-school pleats and the longer back of the skirt they showcased, why didn’t they show me the other skirts in the line?

If you sell online, you have to constantly give your audience a strong reason to re-visit your website or seek out your products on their favorite ecommerce site.

If you instead spend your massive sponsorship budget promoting a single option from your line, you BY DESIGN will appeal to a small sliver of your audience for whom that single option was created.

Nike product managers: is your current strategy really a good use of your sponsorship budget to launch the season’s line?