Babs and Loy Digital Strategy

Babs and Loy digital strategy sets out the strategy we will take to promote our products to our target

markets and achieve our objectives. We are a niche retailer that offers innovative styles including

wristlets, totes, bucket bags, envelopes, doctor, hobo bags, clutches and any other handbag options.

Babs and Loy offers shopping products – handbags, hats and scarves – available in fantastic shapes,

colours and styles

All designs are imported from the Far East and this makes us price competitive while offering a

unique style to the fashion conscious woman.

Babs and Loy is an internet pure-play retailer that offers fast and convenient shopping to women

customers across the UK.

Our SWOT analysis states where we are now in relation to our competitors and our objectives state

where we want to be based on our strengths and resources – and the strategy sets out how we will

get there.

Executive Summary

Some key trends in the external environment are:

Centrality of mobile devices for consumers in 2015, and the ‘always on, always shopping’ lifestyle

arising from mobile usage

Smartphone owners use multiple devices to research, shop and make purchases, but they are not

necessarily seeing ads on all these devices – so it is important to be well represented on all devices

Research by Guess.com reveals that customers often respond better to free shipping than a discount

offer.

MARKETING AUDIT

MARKETING AUDIT (CONTD)

UK economy is to continue to grow in 2015,

leading to greater consumer optimism

Rise in Phablet usage in 2015 and will surpass

tablets but not Smartphones

Over 77% of the population will be online in 2015

Competitors

Some major competitors that sell womens accessories and target similar

customers include:

Very.co.uk

Guess.eu

Riverisland

House of Fraser

Lightinthebox.com

Gap.co.uk

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Competitive prices with free delivery

Deep focused product lines

Weaknesses

New and unknown brand

Low Marketing Skills

No client base

Opportunities

Growth in mobile usage

Mobile searches to surpass desktop in 2015

Threats

Large price-leading competitors such as Amazon

Basis for competing

Differential Advantage – Unique designs sourced from the far east and offered at very

competitive prices. They include a mixture of ethnicity and exotic flair.

Our basis for competing combines our differential advantage and strengths to offer unique

products to our target markets at prices that beat our competitors.

Objectives

These are the objectives to be achieved over the

next 6 months of our strategy:

1. 20,000 visitors from Adwords Traffic per month

by Oct 31 2015 (based on 20p per click)

2. 3000 Organic visitors per month by 31 Oct.

3. 3600 newsletter registered members by 31

Oct (based on 180,000 visitors over 6 months

and 2% conversion rate)

Strategy - Segmentation

25-34 year female (Millennials). Fashion conscious and looking for a bargain

35 – 40 year old career woman with or without children- middle class

Strategy - Segmentation

We have segmented the market into two groups – that are:

1. 25-34 Year Old Females

2. 25 – 40 Year Old Females

We will seek to achieve our objectives by targeting these two groups on all channels that

we have identified in our promotions mix.

We know that they are active on many channels and use a variety of devices such as

Smartphones, Tablets, Phablets and Desktop PCs so we will use a multi-channel approach in

our targeting strategy.

Marketing Mix - Products

Product range includes:

1. Handbags

2. Scarves

3. Hats

Available in an amazing range of shapes, colours and

materials.

Innovative styles include wristlets, totes, bucket bags,

envelopes, doctor, hobo bags, clutches and any other handbag

option available.

High end products a mystical feel of ethnicity and an exotic

flair.

Marketing Mix - Price

Products are competitively priced and this is

possible because of our partnership with Far East

suppliers.

Free shipping for all orders to remain competitive

and encourage purchase.

We will offer coupons or discounts during key

seasonal/holiday periods such as Christmas, Easter

and others.

Discounts include 10% off for students which we

will promote in our Text and Image Ads.

Marketing Mix - Place

Babs and Loy is an internet only retailer that offers convenient shopping to customers.

The site is mobile responsive and is easily accessible on Smartphones, Phablets and

Tablets.

Visitors can create an account before and during purchase and this will help us to build a

relationship with them. We will segment customers according to such variables as order

size, days since last purchase, frequency of orders and use this data to send coupons,

reminders and latest offers.

Customers can interact with the brand on social media platforms to keep up to date on

new seasonal arrivals and discounts and offers.

We will create an app that visitors will download and regularly search for new arrivals and

receive offers and coupons

The site is central to our strategy of acquiring, converting, retaining and extending

customers.

Marketing Mix - Promotions

Affiliate Marketing – Launch an affiliate program on one or more of the leading platforms such as

Affiliate Window, Clixgalore and Webgains. Build relationships with super affiliates and offer a

generous commission of 10% for new customers and 2.5% for existing customers. Cookie length will

initially be 30 days.

Google Adwords – PPC Adwords will be our primary traffic source especially at launch when

organic traffic will take time to build. We will create both Search and Display Network campaigns for

direct response and branding objectives to target our key demographics.

Marketing Mix – Promotions (CONTD)

Remarketing – This will be a separate campaign in Adwords to target people who have visited the

site before with new offers and products as they use the internet across a wide range of sites that are

part of the Google Adsense programme. Our remarketing audiences will be setup in Analytics and we

will update the tracking code and privacy policy to ensure we are compliant.

Bing Ads – These are PPC Ads like Adwords and we will transfer our Adwords campaigns to the Bing

platform. Traffic volumes are lower here and the Display network is not as good as the Google Display

Network. So a lot of testing will be required

Email marketing - Create a strong incentive to get prospects and customers to signup. Email will

be a major part of our retention strategy and extension too, to create advocates for our products.

Marketing Mix – Promotions (CONTD)

SEO – Organic traffic from Yahoo and Bing and especially Google will be one of our key traffic sources, so

website will be optimised to improve our rankings to Page 1 for keywords. Some work undertaken will be off-

page optimisation and on-page optimisation such as Title tags, content updates, image alt tags, meta tags

etc

Social Media – The main platforms we will have a presence on based on our target markets use of social

sites are Facebook, Twitter and Google+. We will work with a freelancer that will promote our brand,

products, offers and discounts and connect with our prospects and customers. Google+ is particularly

important because we can create a ‘Google My Business’ and gain greater exposure for our brand and gain

reviews for our service.

Marketing Mix – Promotions (CONTD)

PR – We will write and distribute a Press Release at launch to make our target market aware of our unique accessories styles. We will work with a PR expert that will write and publish the press release to major media.

Reports – Reports are a critical part of our success and we will use these to measure and manage

our key metrics such as conversion rate, bounce rate etc and build KPIs that we will benchmark

against our competitors. We will create Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts using the same

details we use for Google Adwords and link all these together

Budgets

This is our launch budget for the 1st of May 2015 of £6000 for the first month and the

next 6 months of our strategy:

Control

We will use a number of measurement and management tools such as Google Analytics and

Webmaster Tools to monitor progress and optimise our campaigns and strategy

KPIs will be use to benchmark progress against competitors and to help achieve our objectives