Tableware and Home Goods Marketing Strategy: 2008 Online Sales to Grow 12% Over 2007

Sunday, November 30, 2008

2008 Online Sales to Grow 12% Over 2007

From Advertising Age magazine regarding online sales:

Overall retail sales are projected to grow only 2.2% by the National Retail Federation, making online growth projections of 12% downright cheery.

Deloitte's annual holiday survey also presents several compelling reasons to maintain spending online. The category is ranked by consumers as the No. 2 shopping destination this year behind discount department stores. A full 21% of consumers plan to shop primarily or entirely online this season, up from 19% last year. And 24% of total dollars spent this season are expected to be spent online, compared with 22% last year.

"Retailers should be viewing [online investments] as a way to capture lost sales and prevent them from going to a competitor," said Mr. Silverman. "I'm not going to say the growth in online is all additive -- a lot of it is shift. However, if you haven't been investing in your online store, that shift may not go to you, it may go to a competitor."

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1) How do we deliver value?

A. We build sites that bring in new customers. New customers mainly find our clients' site via Google. This is possible because we build sites from the first sketch with Google in mind. Customers also come to our clients' sites via other websites, such as blogs. These are sales that otherwise would not exist. Once our store is found in Google, our e-commerce sites mirror what would occur in a store. Our sites market the product, and then the customer conducts the 'checkout.'

B. We also boost sales with a client's current customers.

C. We move business operations online resulting in cost savings. For
example, showing a person items online is cheaper than sending a print catalog. Furthermore, there is cost savings in that a website isn't thrown away like paper. Instead of spending $1k on a magazine ad and getting four sales leads, we spend $1k online and get the same amount of sales leads each month thereafter. A website is an investment that lives on; print ads die after the print piece is put in the trash.

D. We increase the amount of knowledge in a company, and make it easy to share product and market information. We also allow people to store and review past purchases and information.

2) Who do we deliver our services to?

Our clients
We work for national brands and distributors that sell tableware and retailers that sell home goods. We are interested in working with clients across the country. For example, some of our current clients are located in: Missouri, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York.

We seek clients that want to energize the home goods industry and work
in new ways to engage customers. One way to do this is to pursue the strategy that customer service should be the same high quality experience whether it's provided in a store or by a computer.

3) How do we deliver our services?

From our office in the East Village of Manhattan, we provide the services by phone, e-mail, and in person. We send business ideas and design to clients for review by e-mail. Once approved, we build the idea on the client's website.
We saves clients money by allowing the client to not have full time IT employees, nor have people physically working on site. The payment structure is freelance, so the client has no exposure besides the agreed upon costs to build and maintain the site (a.k.a. vacation, stock options, etc.).

Tableware and Home Goods Marketing Strategy

Sunday, November 30, 2008

2008 Online Sales to Grow 12% Over 2007

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Jason Solarek - Marketing and Communications Advisor

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1) How do we deliver value?

2) Who do we deliver our services to?

3) How do we deliver our services?

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