Digital Marketing Strategy for Watters Creek

11

Table of Contents

22

• Executive Summary: 3-6

• Usability/Recommendations: 7-10

• SEO Optimization: 11-16

• Google Adwords Campaign: 17-22

• Social Media and Localization: 23-27

• Mobile: 28-29

• Conclusion and Recommendations: 30

Executive Summary

• Overview of Competition:– Primary Competitors: Allen Premium Outlets, The Villages at Allen– Secondary Competitors: The Galleria, NorthPark, Stonebriar, etc…

• Description of Watters Creek and Competition:• Size: Watters Creek- 61 stores, Allen Premium Outlets- 90+, Villages- 170 stores• Segmentation: Watters Creek and both primary competitors are targeting the same

segment in terms of demographics and location. • Digital Marketing Goals: For Watters Creek and their competitors, the goals is to

increase awareness via mobile, social media, and pc to increase daily customer traffic.

Competitors

Watters Creek

3

Executive Summary

• Target Market:– Demographic: Upper middle class families and young professionals.– For our campaign we were asked to target women ages 20-35. – Location: Consumer living within 30 miles of Watters Creek.– Behavioral: Preferred consumer would either become aware of Watters Creek

through word of mouth or via mobile/pc and would then make their purchase in-store. Purchases made online may benefit the individual retailers, but not the entity of Watters Creek.

– Device Type: Heavily geo-location and mobile driven. 15,000+ check-ins via Facebook, and 4,500+ check-ins via foursquare.

• The Offer1. Objective: For the customer to physically go to Watters Creek.2. Market Research: Goal- increase the number young professional female visitors.3. Offer: Retail resort with many shops and restaurants, as well as filling other needs.4. Test the Offer: Analyze watterscreek.com web traffic and Adwords performance.

4

Executive Summary

• Testing & Metrics– We are testing advertisements in five campaigns: shopping, restaurants,

leasing, events, and stores.– Our goal is to increase awareness and mall traffic among women ages 20-35,

upper middle class families and young professionals in general. – We want to find the campaigns that perform effectively in Adwords, eliminate

the ineffective campaigns, and suggest targeting and promoting those areas in future in order for Watters Creek to increase awareness and attendance.

• Success Metrics:1. 5% c t r

2. Negatively sloping cost per click as our campaigns progress.

3. Positively sloping daily ctr as campaign progress.

4. Average quality score of 7.5 on all keywords used throughout our campaign

5. 500 clicks / 10,000 impressions over 2 weeks.

5

Executive Summary

• Return on Promotion Forecast

6

Website Usability Testing and Recommendations

• Navigational/Content Recommendations

A. There should be a search bar at the top of the page (not the middle), and there should be auto-correct and auto-fill features as well. Move log-in to top left corner.

B. Since the word “Live” has two meanings, and the word “Buzz” may be ambiguous to some visitors, we suggest changing both to words that are more clear (Lofts and Events, instead). We also suggest changing the link labeled “Work” to “Office Leasing.” “Work” is vague.

C. Edit the background images on the home page so that they don’t blend with the Watters Creek logo.

D. Bread crumbs/granular refinement to locate store/restaurants pages easier.

E. There should be a directory of stores and restaurants organized by category (cafes, italian, and Tex-Mex for example). This is similar to the granular suggestion.

F. Even though the website has a black background, it is well contrasted with its basic white fonts. Font sizes are readable and reasonably sized.

G. Improve site load time (average is 2.85 seconds).

7

Website Usability Testing and Recommendations

A.

B.C..

A.

8

Website Usability Testing and Recommendations

D.

E.

9

Website Usability Testing and Recommendations

• Usability Metrics– United States Traffic Rank of watterscreek.com: 153,272– Reputation/Referral Sites (sites linking in): 83 (link juice)– Search Engine Keywords: 1. watters creek - 17.54% 2. watters creek allen - 13.09% 3.

watters creek valentines - 2.39% 4. watters creek shops - 2.12% 5. concerts by the creek in allen texas….2.05%

– Bounce Rate: 25.50 %– % of Site Visits from Search Engines: 51.9% (Google)– Conversion Rate: Relevant, but hard to measure in this case. Our conversion rate would be

the number of people who see our advertisements, then physically go to Watters Creek. Our goal is not sales, but awareness and increased traffic to the mall.

– Average Time Spent on Site: 5:01 (224% higher compared to last 3 months).– Daily Page Views Per Visitor: 3.30• Visitor Demographics:• Gender: Females are greatly over-represented.• Education: People who went to graduate school are similar to the general internet

population.• Browsing Location: People browsing from home are over-represented.

10

SEO Optimization Recommendations

• Site Authority: Watters Creek Versus The Competition

11

SEO Optimization Recommendations

Top Pages

Linking Domains

12

SEO Optimization Recommendations • SERP Results Display

– Title Page - The webpage has keywords in its page title which describe its name, address, and phone number. This is a simple and clear title but it would be also effective to add brief description of the nature of the business.

– U R L – The URL for the homepage is simple and descriptive: www.watterscreek.com

– Meta Tags

13

SEO Optimization Recommendations

• Meta Tag Recommendations :– The meta description on the home page is focused solely on the name of the

business, with no description about the content on the site. Although the name is important, the meta tags need to describe the core business and the customer needs that are being satisfied using keywords. Other pages have separate meta descriptions, but each one only consists of a few keywords. Instead, each page needs to have its descriptive information on its meta description.

• Organic SEO:• Crawling: After clicking the link to the Ann Taylor at Watters Creek, the URL

appears as: http://www.watterscreek.com/store/ann-taylor/348/2138822265. The unnecessary random group of numbers at the end needs to be eliminated to improve crawling…this applies to all store pages.

14

SEO Optimization Recommendations

• Summary– We think that Ln (Links number) and Cr (Content Research) are helping this website.

We also believe they are doing well engaging their visitors. The bounce rate is only 25.5%, and visitors spend on average five minutes on the site (Ce). The Cq (Content Quality) of each page is decent. The individual store pages link directly to social media. As we mentioned earlier, we believed the titles (Ht), headers (Hh), and meta-tags (Hd) should be edited so that they are more descriptive and clear. The 2.85 second load speed (As) needs to be improved. For more effective crawling (Ac), the unnecessary numbers in the store page URLs (Au) need to be eliminated.

Eliminate Flash and Pop-Ups

15

SEO Optimization Recommendations

16

Google Adwords Campaign• Highlights

– Running Time: 2 weeks, 3 days. Funds Spent: $160.33– Total Impressions: 8,322, Clicks: 622, Overall C T R : 7.47%– Search Impression: 7,307, Clicks: 622, Overall C T R : 8.51%– Overall Quality Score Average (All 200 Keywords) : 5.665– Total Keywords with a Quality Score of 10: 45

– Primary Campaigns: Watters Creek Shopping, Watters Creek Restaurants

17

Google Adwords Campaign

• Negative Keywords: the villages, retail space dallas, allen premium outlets, coach, galleria, golf, indian food, indian restaurants, lease retail dallas, leasing dallas, mens casual sports mall, mens clothing stores, mens suits, northpark center, northpark mall.

• The Numbers:

18

Google Adwords Campaign

• The Numbers: Graphically

7/17/2

013

7/19/2

013

7/21/2

013

7/23/2

013

7/25/2

013

7/27/2

013

7/29/2

013

7/31/2

013

8/2/2

0130

1020304050607080

Clicks

Clicks

7/17/2

013

7/19/2

013

7/21/2

013

7/23/2

013

7/25/2

013

7/27/2

013

7/29/2

013

7/31/2

013

8/2/2

0130

400

800

1200

1600

2000

Impr.

Impr.

**

*

* Saturday 7/17/2

013

7/19/2

013

7/21/2

013

7/23/2

013

7/25/2

013

7/27/2

013

7/29/2

013

7/31/2

013

8/2/2

0130.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

CTR

CTR

7/17/2

013

7/19/2

013

7/21/2

013

7/23/2

013

7/25/2

013

7/27/2

013

7/29/2

013

7/31/2

013

8/2/2

0130

0.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9

1

Avg. CPC

Avg. CPC

19

Google Adwords Campaign• Best Keywords (min 150 impr.):

1. watters creek shopping

2. “watters creek restaurants”

3. watters creek allen

4. shops at watters creek

• Total Impressions by Top 4 Keywords: 2,912• Total Clicks by Top 4 Keywords: 444• Total Overall CTR for Top 4 Keywords: 15.25%

20

Google Adwords Campaign

• Top Ad Group Performance:

* Note: All Top Performing Ad Groups were either in Shopping or Restaurants campaigns.

21

Google Adwords Campaign

• Top Performing Ads:

1

2

3

4

5

6

*Note: Ad Performance was judged by CTR and Total Impression Count, not solely CTR.

22

Social Media and Localization Strategy

• Facebook: – Status updates are made almost every other day– Events are emphasized on a weekly basis; it might be beneficial to feature the

calendar of events on this page in addition to their home website.– There are links to other social media (Pintrest and Instagram), but not all that

they offer (Twitter and YouTube).– Include a directory of stores and restaurants they have to offer under info.

23

Social Media and Localization Strategy

• Pinterest:– They feature and pin products that are new and available at their stores .– They also feature food and other categories that would grab the attention of their

target segment.– Not many followers (little over 100), those who are following are related to their

business which keeps a level of professionalism.

24

Social Media and Localization Strategy• Twitter

– More than 1500 followers. Most are related to their business in some way (journalists, stylists, brands).

– There are only a few pictures (6). Adding more pictures could help promote awareness and increased traffic with the already ample number of followers.

25

Social Media and Localization Strategy

26

•Instagram• Bio doesn’t state the nature of their business. It just claims that they are a resort style

development. They should highlighted some of the things they have to offer such as the lofts, retail space, stores, and restraints.

• They usually post a new picture twice a week. To get the most out of this free social media, I think it would be beneficial to post pictures based on themes. 4 per week – apparel, new, seasonal clothing, sales. 2 per week- events/concerts .1 per week- news/awards/journal features on them

• They don’t have many followers, by posing more pictures, using hash tags to categorize pictures, and following more people who are related to their business I think they could gain popularity.

• The sales they usually feature are geared more toward women. It’d be beneficial to feature more pictures for men and children as well as the athletic stores and classes they hold on the property such as yoga.

Social Media and Localization Strategy• Yelp

– We suggest offering incentives for visitors to provide Yelp reviews. Right now there are only 13 reviews of Watters Creek on Yelp.

– Watters Creek has a great Yelp ranking: 4/5 stars.

27

• Localization Suggestions• Set up an SMS program to offer discounts and drive more business on

days when there is less traffic.• Set up a Groupon offer for one of the more popular restaurants. This

will in turn drive more traffic to the mall, restaurants, and retail as well.

Mobile

28

Free Mobile App Mobile Website

Mobile

• Mobile Website Critique– Home screen is easy to navigate– Single Columns– Has all information available as desktop website– No Call to Action– No QR Codes on mobile website or mobile app

29

• Recommendations/ Proposed Campaign• Needs some clean up: color coordination, text sizes, more consistency • Needs less steps/clicks to get where you want to go• Add a call to action option for information • Recruit retailers to add QR Codes under their associated product on Watters

Creek website. • Consider implementing a 2 column website – even easier to navigate• Proposed Campaign: Offer discounts for online shares similar to Hertz

example

Conclusions and Recommendations

• The two components of Watters Creek that should be the focal points for increasing traffic and awareness are restaurants and shopping.

• Mentioning both points: great shopping, and great restaurants was the most effective way of advertising in Google Adwords.

• Continue to broaden mobile and social media related marketing. With a large foundation of followers already established, there is a lot of potential for growth and increasing awareness.

• In terms of usability and search engine optimization, titles and meta tags need to be edited. Load time needs to be improved, navigation could also be improved. In terms of engagement, Watters Creek is doing very well (1/4 bounce rate, and average five minutes per visit).

30