Strategic Marketing for a National Chain of Sporting Goods Stores
December 2005 - Reciprocal Consulting began a marketing relationship with a large national sporting goods franchise. During the first two weeks of the contract, we conducted market research and operational research on the company. The market research identified a new marketing strategy for the company. This strategy combines the franchise's online and "bricks and mortar" channels to synergize online and offline sales. The operational research identified numerous issues which needed to be addressed if the SEO work was to result in increased sales and have a satisfactory return on investment (ROI).
While this strategy was being developed and presented, we addressed the numerous operational issues we had identified. We brought in a programming team that revamped the existing e-commerce website. We made the pages of the site more efficient by lowering the page weight of the images and the menu coding. We also requested a beta version of the shopping cart software from the shopping cart vendor to launch new features on the site such as coupon codes and multiple image enlargements. Reciprocal also found issues in the order fulfillment process and made several recommendations that quickly reduced the volume of customer service calls by 50%.
After taking over the company's Adwords account, Reciprocal quickly realized a 23% decrease in click costs and a 40% increase in lead volume over the previous month. We also identified other sources of low cost, high quality, traffic that would drive sales directly into the retail stores. Many dead links in their Adwords program were identified and repaired.
In January, 2006, Reciprocal was invited to present the new marketing strategy to franchisees at the yearly company meeting to solicit their reaction and feedback. Once the franchisees had been educated on the research relating to the impact of online advertising in a company that had both online and "bricks and mortar" channels, their response to the strategy was overwhelmingly positive.
Reciprocal is now in the process of implementing a comprehensive strategy that is well researched. Both the corporate management and the franchisees have a clear vision of how online sales and retail sales will feed each other. Prior to Reciprocal's engagement with the company, the franchisees perceived online sales as a direct threat to their retail businesses. What had been a contentious business issue within the company had been turned into a rationally based source of optimism.
Reciprocal Consulting is unique among web marketing firms in that we look at the whole picture and align our goals and compensation with the success of the entire company. Prior to retaining us, the company had hired another SEO firm and had spent over $250,000 on web advertising to capture $250,000 in online sales. The firm was not concerned with any aspect of reasonable ROI (as evidenced by their results). In addition, they ignored aspects of standard SEO work such as on page optimization, not to speak of the unique services offered by Reciprocal in the realm of operational issues such as pricing, fulfillment, and customer service, all critical elements of success in this type of business.
Internet marketing is not a "basket of tricks." It requires research, strategic thinking and planning, and comprehensive implementation - the results of which are measurable as increased profits.
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