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Posted by Isla_McKetta

Fifteen minutes into my first ever flight with my newborn son — a flight that had been delayed for an hour and a half, during which we’d held off feeding him so he could eat on the way up to make sure his little ears wouldn’t pop from the pressure and he wouldn’t start the flight screeching — fifteen minutes in, we were still ascending and even with his little head concealed beneath a nursing scarf, I could tell he was starting to get full.

I was terrified.

If he started screaming I had no idea how we would survive the four hours left in the flight. My husband and I were not the cool couple who had brought earplugs and coffee cards for all the passengers around us. I was certain everyone would hate us and, even worse, we’d never, ever fly again. I was the worst mother in the history of mothers.

As I was readjusting my son and trying to keep him calm, I noticed this phrase on the back of the nursing scarf’s label:

“You’re doing a great job!” Were there any words I needed more to hear in that moment? Would anything less perfect have incited me to expose this very personal, vulnerable moment to the vast readership of the Moz Blog? If the makers of the Itzy Ritzy nursing scarf hadn’t reached deep into my soul and sent me a message across the universe, would you have ever heard of their product?

You, too, can grab your audience by the heartstrings and build a lasting connection that gets them to come back to you time and again while also evangelizing your business to all their friends. Because while the designers of the Itzy Ritzy nursing scarf did not know specifically when or how this new mom was going to need encouragement and, yes, the kindness of strangers, it was an easy guess to say that every one of their customers would at some point. And with a cheap, but creative, insertion of content on the back side of their label, they won my heart and loyalty.

This is called manufacturing serendipity and here’s how you do it.

Understand your audience’s needs

We talk a lot about empathy at Moz, and that’s because the value of empathy cannot be overstated — in marketing or in life. Empathy is a super power. Dr. Brené Brown describes that super power as “feeling with people,” and it creates a spark of connection for the person being empathized with. That spark can be fanned into the burning passion of a long-lasting relationship — in business and in life.

To understand how to empathize with your customer, first create personas. Find out where your audience is emotionally. Figure out what they’re insecure about, what scares them, what they most need in the moment that they’re visiting your site. It’s not rocket science to understand that a new mom might be feeling insecure about nursing her child in public, and if that’s what your product is designed to help her with… go that extra mile to connect.

Ways to reach into your customer’s soul and speak to their needs include:

• A car insurance company that caters to the accident prone starting their rate page with copy that assures the customer the company will be there no matter what happens.
• Creating an ROI calculator after uncovering that your customer needs your software to generate client reports, sure, but she also needs to be able to show her boss the value she’s adding to the company with her daily work.
• Understanding that everyone’s time is limited, ask the most essential survey question first and then give your customer the chance to expound if he wants to. Like Sears does at the bottom of their two-question satisfaction survey:
  

Put content in the right places

Are you using all the content opportunities available to you? Reeling from the sniffles, fussiness, and, yes, boogies, that came with my son’s first cold, I opened up the lid on a package of Boogie Wipes to find this:

The wise marketers at Boogie Wipes know that many parents will buy almost anything to make their child feel better. So they seized the opportunity to let me know that they have even more products to help me. Serendipity? It sure felt like it. And you can bet someone (not it!) dashed off to the drug store to buy some saline spray.

You don’t have to turn your site into the Times Square of the Internet to put content in the right places. Instead:

• Include a call to action at the end of product-related blog posts for a free trial or other promo.
• Send a reminder email to a customer who’s filled their cart and then left your site. Bonus points if you can pinpoint and speak to why they might not have finished the transaction. Comparison shopping? Offer a discount. Too busy to finish? Suggest a recurring delivery option.
• Use the mobile version of your site or app to direct customers to your nearest storefront.
• Make sure the link to your next webinar or event is on your homepage so no one has to dig for it.
• Or, like clothing retailer Boden, put an order widget at the bottom of all those reviews so it’s super easy to order the item after doing your due diligence:
  

It doesn’t always take a large change to connect your customer with the content they need.

Surprise, delight, inform

Serendipity is the feeling of happy coincidence. If your content sparks surprise, incites delight, and manages to inform along the way, you’re more likely to get the response you’re looking for from a potential customer. According to Dr. Read Montague, a neuroscientist at Baylor, surprise lights up the brain’s reward pathways. And, unfortunately, delight in marketing is still surprising to most people, so by delighting your customer, you’re creating a positive association with your brand in two ways.

Some favorite examples of content that’s surprised, delighted, and informed me are:

• The way The Land of Nod positions a website error is both amusing and perfectly tailored to their audience:
• A “Moments” announcement email from Twitter. Instead of telling me about their new feature, they clued into what I use this account for (live-tweeting The Bachelor) and surfaced content that’s specific to my interests:
• The image on AirBNB’s 503 error page captures that feeling we have when something gets between us and that sweet treat (or vacation reservation) we’ve been dreaming about:
• And, finally, because not all content is online, I love the way yogurt maker Brown Cow uses the lids of their yogurt to playfully highlight the many ways a customer could eat the yogurt’s cream top. This both signals to me that the yogurt has a cream top (not everyone’s favorite) and shows me new ways to experience it:

Serendipity isn’t new. Rand’s been talking about it for a long time. But it’s important to remember that serendipity sometimes needs a little help

Now that you understand your customer’s needs, are looking at creative content placement, and understand how important it is to surprise, delight, and inform your audience, you have the tools you need to help serendipity along.

So if you’re ready to build a lasting connection with your customers, go manufacture some serendipity already. You might just soothe the nerves of a new mom so well that she’ll start evangelizing your products the minute she safely steps off the plane with her calm, jet-setting son.

The title for this post may have subconsciously been inspired by an earlier (but much different) post by Rand. Serendipity? You decide.

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Neither were they desperately researching which colour would dominate this season and updating their collections accordingly.

They were mostly trying to work out how not to break their necks on a Saturday night.

But even more surprisingly, this term was searched for equally by men and women.

Why you need to understand search behaviour

Both these strange insights from Google underline one important message.

If you want to understand and take advantage of the retail opportunities presented by search, you really have to understand what search is all about.

Because, despite the odd quirks of search behaviour – or maybe because of them – there is vast branding and commercial potential here for fashion brands.

And now, more than ever, luxury brands that are ignoring search are missing huge revenue opportunities that others are capitalising on.

But what’s the opportunity in search for luxury brands?

With 1 trillion Google searches in 2015, luxury customers are just as likely to Google as everyone else.

And luxury customers were 4.7 times more likely to Google ‘Black Friday’ than the average.

Add to this the fact that 39% of luxury clothes bought on the internet last year were bought on impulse, search really does look like the place where the smartest luxury brands would want to be.

At a fashion digital conference last week we presented with our client Net-A-Porter on luxury consumer search behaviour and it really demonstrates how crucial ecommerce is for luxury brand health in the years ahead:

Black Friday: what a difference a day makes

Luxury brands really can benefit from the retail ‘holidays’ which have established themselves in recent years.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2015 marked the highest and second highest sales days on record for Net-A-Porter.

• The retailer sold one item every second.
• Of these, the most expensive item sold online was priced at $27,307.
• While a single Saint Laurent mini-dress was sold for $14,943.

This is not loss-leading discounting reluctantly undertaken for fear of losing brand profile.

This is a strategic opportunity to engage with high-net-worth individuals and galvanise profitable sales activity at specific points in the calendar.

And search plays a crucial part in this.

And what a difference a change makes

Data from fashion brands is pointing to a shift from slow, curated purchasing patterns to fast decision making tipped by arresting content. 

Once luxury brands understand that price is no longer the key driver behind online luxury brand buying decisions, it becomes much clearer what search barriers are really in the way of increased sales.

McKinsey released research demonstrating that returns (75%) and delivery policy (73%) were key factors influencing luxury buying decisions, especially interesting when considering only 48% were interested in price.  

Adjusting to a multi-device world

It’s a cliché, but luxury brand customers are cash rich and time poor – the question is how does this translate into search and buying behaviour online?

In online luxury retail there is no such thing as a single customer journey anymore, these customers with their demanding lifestyles, constantly switch between devices that are ‘always on’.

What’s more, they have the best devices (high spec, tablets, laptops, smartphones) and they expect the experiences they have on them to be equally high spec.

Therefore, as one absolute takeaway – don’t ever think in devices (desktop, mobile), think only of the consumer journey.

The beautiful customer experience

Ecommerce is now a multi-device world and brands need to understand the importance of a ‘beautiful customer experience’, meaning a series of seamless, all-encompassing, cross-platform customer journeys that often begin with search and are highly mobile.

Every year marketers have been told that this year is the year of mobile and 2016 will be no exception.

For luxury mobile is becoming increasingly important to keep up with the demands of the luxury consumer.

Often we hear about the increase in mobile penetration in a market – however when you consider the affluence of a luxury shopper that becomes even more important.

McKinsey suggests that across the world 95% of luxury shoppers have a smartphone, with 100% penetration in some markets.

Forrester research last year stated most luxury consumers expect retailers to have mobile optimised website or app – however in January 2016 only half do.

Luxury customers are everywhere in terms of device and location, and mobile has become key to closing sales.

• 41% of Net-A-Porter’s customer orders over Thanksgiving were on a mobile device.
• Nearly half (48%) of its sales in Japan were on mobile.

Customers are not only visiting Net-A-Porter’s sites on mobile, but buying items as well.

As such there are opportunities to optimise search in specific ways, in specific locations and for specific groups that could make all the difference to traffic and sales.

Gender targeting through Google search

Gender targeting is one of these opportunities. Male luxury customers still often seem to be impulsive and impatient in their purchases as they tend to shop for gifts on mobile devices at the last minute. 

Males tend to spend more time examining search engine results pages (SERPS) and are 5.4 times more likely than females to inspect lower ranked results.

Therefore, a key opportunity to maximize conversion from search is by reassuring customers on the SERPS that the mobile checkout process will be simple and painless.

Location, location, location?

Location is also significant when selling to these customers, but not necessarily in the ways that you think.

The average luxury customers takes 16 trips a year. So, where these customers are searching is not necessarily where they live.

This means brands need to be careful about the kind of delivery offers they’re making based on location.

Don’t go offering free delivery in Tokyo when the customer lives in New York.

Therefore, when a consumer adds location-based search queries we have to listen to the signal – dig deeper into data, don’t make assumptions and tailor to location.

Social & content converts

Even if they’re not buying, your customers want to talk to you and about you.

Working out when to sell to them and when to talk to them is part of the challenge of dealing with customer search.

But in reality every search is an opportunity for engagement that may lead to a sale.

In fashion it is even more important to have a focus on social, with two-thirds of the target audience generating content on a regular basis and 15% doing that on a daily basis.

Social and content is presenting more and more chances to capture the imagination of potential customers and shortening the gap between catwalk and shopping basket.

Fashion is throwing open the doors to the public with live streaming and interactive digital tools.

Lining up your social, content and search is presenting more and more chances to share amazing content and arrest the attention of a customer base primed and willing to buy into your brand.

Rising to the challenge of search for luxury brands

“How to Walk In Heels” is not a comment on the mundanity of search.

Instead it’s an imaginative challenge to agencies and marketers to interpret needs and wants in ways that are thrilling to customers.

I hear there’s a trick to walking in heels, but once learned it looks elegant and effortless.

Learning the secrets of luxury search is learning to create beautiful experiences, optimised customer journeys that seamlessly capture, build your brand and convert sales in new and exciting ways.

For more on this topic, read:

• How fashion brands are setting trends in digital
• 20 beautiful examples of web design from high fashion brands
• Fashion Ecommerce and Content Marketing Report