by Mercedes Westbrook | Dec 7, 2015 | B2B Sales, Business, E-commerce
The Pro Shop opened its first store in the heart of Johannesburg’s CBD in 1976, today this iconic sports brand represents South Africa’s largest golf superstore offering sportsmen and women a full range of professional golfing equipment.
A focussed approach to its brand marketing and an understanding of its core target market has seen continued success for the brand following a decision to embrace programmatic marketing with the support of digital media buying agency Atmosphere Orange.
Today it continues to hold its position front and centre as the biggest golfing website in the country. The Pro Shop’s Marketing Manager Trevor Rebello discusses their campaign and the process which took them to the top of their game.
How did you first come to understand programmatic marketing and initiate the campaign with Atmosphere Orange?
We engaged Atmosphere Orange a year ago, around the time of our annual August sales and we saw immediate results. Since we had never used online campaigns of this nature before we have no benchmark to measure against but I can say that the company is doing better than it has compared to results of the past five years, while the industry as a whole is down over the same period.
At one stage, we did dabble with online advertising but found we had to think hard about which websites would work for our products and where our market would be visiting. We looked at sites such as Golf Weather, Super Sport or Golf Digest assuming golfers would be online there, but the CPMs we were being quoted were too high for the number of visitors they were seeing. We were spending the money but we weren’t able to track the results to leads or sales and so the pricing was too high.
Teaming up with Atmosphere Orange has definitely shifted the way we think about marketing. The Pro Shop has been in operation for 40 years. We were stuck with outdated thinking which focussed mainly on traditional forms of media and on an older LSM as we felt this was where spend was. We had never considered either our website or an online presence as part of our total sales turnover. Our main product, golf clubs, are also a high ticket item transaction, so The Pro Shop typically sees less online purchase averages than other types of online stores. Our target market likes to be able to try their golf clubs out before they purchase, so they come in store to get a feel for the clubs and see if they match their swing. The budgets from online couldn’t compare to our in store retail levels where clubs are custom fitted. Working with Atmosphere Orange, we moved away from a static product information focus to new product launch initiatives instead.
We now have 30 000 – 40 000 unique visits to our own website each month and are probably one of the biggest golfing websites in South Africa. When customers want to buy golf clubs they come directly to us. As a result, we currently set aside monthly budgets for our online advertising. Atmosphere Orange finds the golfers for us.
What was different with Atmosphere Orange and why did you decide to try them?
Atmosphere Orange reversed the approach. Instead of us advertising on a few websites where visitors were seeing our ads on TV and in magazines, they said they would find us golfers over many websites who weren’t already our customers, they would be unique views. I was impressed by their scientific approach. They were able to reduce the CPM and at the same time increase the number of impressions and all their claims were validated.
Were there any surprises in the process or in the results?
There were no surprises in the process. From the first meeting I was able to gain a good idea of how it was going to work. They would define the target market for the individual campaigns and the final pricing invoices matched the figures quoted in our initial meeting, together with the guarantees being met of a higher click through rate and a lower CPM.
Has it changed the way you think about your clients, branding, advertising or your business?
Prior to this, The Pro Shop was spending almost zero on online advertising. We were focussing on TV coverage at events and in magazines and paying massive amounts of money for a magazine circulation of about 40 000. Now we spend R20 000 per campaign over a two to four week period and get a million impressions. There is no guess work. For R20 000 we are getting at least 8 000 customers clicking through to our website, searching for information or making an online purchase.
Online spend now makes up about 8% of our total budget and we realise that even this is a low figure. We were very clearly shown that for less money we can target more golfers across all age groups. Our budget spend has to continue to increase in this direction. We are also putting more focus on our social media profiles and all have grown as a result, in just one year. We realise digital is the way forward – we definitely see the results.
by Gary Simons | Nov 13, 2015 | B2B Sales, Business, E-commerce, E-learning, Firehorse Media
A quick look at the pros and cons of entering the online retail market
Online shopping in South Africa has continued to hit record highs, especially during last year’s holiday season when online spending increased between 30-40% compared to previous years. The country’s internet economy has been projected to double to R103bn by 2016 from the R51billion recorded in 2011.
Recent studies reveal that the internet economy contributes 2% to South Africa’s GDP and this contribution is rising by about 0.1% every year, resulting in 2.5% increases by 2016.
What does this mean for South African’s retailers?
An increase in online shopping is driving structural changes in the retail sector, according to a recent report issued by PwC.
Online users in South Africa tend to fall within the medium to high-income sector of the population. “This group appears to have a strong pent-up demand for online services,” says John Wilkinson, PwC Retail and Consumer Leader in South Africa.
However, Wilkinson says that South Africa’s online retail market is still relatively small and niche with a strong focus on consumer products such as books, music and DVDs. “This is unlike many of the developed markets, such as Asia and Australia, where there has been an explosive growth of online retailers. Suffice to say there is huge online potential that has yet to be discovered and tapped in South Africa.”
Having already set up an important channel for their long-term future are Edcon’s CNA division, Walton’s with their e-store and Mr Price which are all already operating in the online retail market.
So how easy is it to tap into this market? Let’s consider the pro’s and con’s:
The Pro’s:
There’s no loss to theft
You have access to 24 hour sales
You have national and international reach
Less employees are required
You can collect more data and get better visibility of your customers buying behaviour online, from age and location demographics, initial search terms, related items they are interested in and much more, easily collected via a simple analytics program.
You look bigger than you actually are
You van stock more items. A retail storefront will perform better for a business that sells a select amount of products, while an online store may work better for a business that carries an extensive selection.
Environmental factors such as position, weather, traffic, parking or increased petrol prices don’t affect you.
No bottlenecks or customer queues
Your customers can easily promote your products via sharing on social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest at the click of a button. (Word of mouth marketing is very powerful and it is much easier for you to encourage this via an online store.)
The Cons:|
There is more competition online – the web is where people go to get bargains and consequently competition is fierce. Margins in online retail tend of be lower than on the high street and so retailers need to compensate by selling more.
There is more admin required
There is less customer contact
There is no touch or feel of quality for customers and returns are time-consuming
There are lower margins. It has been found that consumers pay significantly more for products they can view in person and for the ‘experience’ within a retail store.
Postage and shipping costs can be expensive
There is no passing foot traffic
There is less impulse buying
There is a dependency on hardware
There is less trust of the brand or product.
The solution? To have both of course.
What you will need:
An online payment system such as Paypal for example.
You will need to pay for web hosting and technical support
You will pay for shipping and accepting online payments.
You will pay for your desired domain name and for someone to develop your website and e-commerce platform.
You will need to handle fulfillment and shipping
You will need to maintain it.
Building a customer base is one of the most-essential components of starting a successful retail business, online or offline. With a retail store, the potential customer base is limited to the surrounding area. Online, the customer base is limitless.
by Gary Simons | Oct 13, 2015 | B2B Sales, Business, E-commerce, E-learning
E-learning makes educational content available electronically, free from language, literacy, and social constraints.
In the current economic climate, many businesses find themselves having to cut training costs, however companies can save up to 70% on training costs if they consider the opportunity of e-learning to up skill their workforce.
E-learning refers to any form of electronic learning or teaching. Designed to be interactive and to incorporate quizzes, games and video to enhance learning, learner material is provided through film, animation, learning games or learning mobile applications, depending on which is the best solution for the intended audience, delivering “what is needed, when it is needed”, aligning training with the company’s business goals and objectives.
E-learning classes tend to be up to 50% shorter in duration than traditional classes and, according to certifyme.net, retention of information is increased by up to 60%. This contributes to increased productivity, which in turn adds to further cost savings.
Being highly accessible, e-learning means that trainees can use it just about anywhere, at any time, on any device and it is intended to remove the focus from the trainer and transfer it onto the student, who is able to assess his or her own development, as they progress with the course. Question types, time limits, pass marks and the type of assessment used, are tailored to each unique situation.
Africa has become the most dynamic e-learning market in the world with a 38.6% growth rate of cloud-based e-learning products. “E-learning is currently a $56.2 billion business globally, and is likely to double in size before 2015 and this is because it works,” says e-learning expert, Kirsty Chadwick, of e-learning design and development company, The Training Room Online, a company which designs and develops tailor-made e-learning material for the corporate, industrial and private sectors.
“Many organisations in Africa who choose e-learning also benefit from the fact that language, literacy and numeracy gaps are overcome by highly visual e-learning material that makes vital training available to all, irrespective of differing education levels.”
“E-learning products are tailor-made to suit the specific needs of the company and more specifically, the learners and include basic computer literacy courses available, which will teach learners anything from turning their computers on, to connecting a printer,” said Chadwick.
by Mercedes Westbrook | Oct 7, 2015 | B2B Sales, Business, E-commerce, Firehorse Media
Belinda Taylor, Media Mind at Cape Town based agency Tag 8 discusses their business alignment with digital media buying agency Atmosphere Orange and their programmatic campaign successes to date.
How has working with Atmosphere Orange boosted your business?
“We currently partner with Atmosphere Orange on the digital aspect for two of our clients. We have seen a real boost in business for both our clients. Personally, I enjoy working with programmatic marketing in the digital space. It has reach and offers such a defined target market across a variety of sites. It’s affordable and it’s trackable. It delivers on a brand’s campaign objectives.
For the one campaign we wanted to drive consumers to their website and heighten the amount of conversions. Using visual media and real time bidding (RTB) through MediaMath we got the highest conversions they had had throughout the campaign, and those conversions originated right out of the RTB aspect.
When a client has clearly defined objectives and KPIs they need to meet, we always motivate for RTB if it aligns with the campaigns goals. Our biggest challenge is communicating to our clients what RTB is and how it works; this is central to them understanding its effectiveness. In order to do so, we provide presentations and use case studies to show its relevancy, how it meets those KPIs and how exactly RTB can achieve that.
Were there any surprises in the process or in the results?
With our one client we had a surprise. It was a long campaign and we found there was a drop in click through rates, which was a result of banner fatigue. We went back to creative to reassess before going live again with the next burst.
Weekly reporting is helpful and we always do an end of phase report inclusive of insights, and we always brief creative on the results we get back from the data.
Using data metrics, we can then redefine a route to optimise the campaign. With the client, we decided to rework the banners and change the call to action. Atmosphere Orange also suggested we use AB split testing with two different calls to action to see which worked best and then further optimisation from there.
Has it changed the way you think about either clients, branding, advertising or your business?
Working with Atmosphere Orange has definitely changed our digital strategy. We started noticing it was more important to communicate its effectiveness to the client in order to understand RTB’s importance.
Most brands see digital as an add-on, but we see it as an ‘always on’ aspect to the campaign. It has the ability to achieve other objectives and it should be integrated within the overall media plan, it makes for a more holistic campaign. We get it, but it helps to remember where the client is coming from.
Digital is second nature to us but the forever changing online environment makes it hard for everyone to understand why it is so important. It’s still a traditional marketplace.
We aim to educate that digital is in fact the closest channel to their target market since it’s part of their habitual everyday life. Its the current trend and all brands should use it to connect with their consumers.”
by Gary Simons | Aug 13, 2015 | B2B Sales, Business, E-commerce
Brand is made up of quality and service. The logo is the image of the brand, and people remember it through the experience your business delivered.
Your brand is your reputation — the most valuable thing you possess. A strong brand and the trust it engenders are the only aspects of your company that competitors can’t steal.
Brands are also the most powerful business tools in business as they help customers to understand the positioning of products in their market contexts, and encourage customers to come back for repeat business.
The path to brand awesomeness is 1) a promise 2) a personality and 3) unwavering focus on that promise that will ultimately deliver you brand equity.
What remains key for a brand to be successful in its industry is consistency. It must consistently deliver great services and great results from its product lineup or multiple services.
Research into current trends and your own brand’s data will improve your products and services in the creation of a successful brand, and enable the company to compete efficiently. This is why research and development is a must in any business.
What do great brands share?
- a compelling idea that captures customer’s attention and loyalty by filling an unmet or unsatisfied need.
- A resolute core purpose and supporting values. These remain in place even through the business strategy, where tactics are regularly revised to address and take advantage of the circumstances of the changing business environment.
- A central organisational principle. The brand position, purpose and values are employed as management levers to guide decision-making. This becomes so ingrained in leading organisations that they consciously ask themselves, “How will this decision impact upon the brand?” or “Is this on-brand?” According to Shelly Lazarus, chairman of Ogilvy & Mather: “Once the enterprise understands what the brand is all about, it gives direction to the whole enterprise. You know what products you’re supposed to make and not make. You know how you’re supposed to answer your telephone. You know how you’re going to package things. It gives a set of principles to an entire enterprise.”
- An ability to stay relevant. Leading brands constantly maintain their relevance to a targeted set of customers, ensuring ownership of clear points of differentiation compared to the competition.
Not all brands are successful and successful brands can lose their way, the most common cause being that of lost leadership taking the brand for granted. This usually happens when brand owners treat their asset as a cash cow, eroding the original brand idea and marginalising the customer experience. It goes without saying, a good product is only as good as the accompanying service.
How do you create a great brand?
– Brands should look to relevance, differentiation and credibility. Never lose touch with your customer or ignore a potential new audience. Make your customer real. Determine your ideal customer and market to that person.
Be authentic and consistent in your messaging, visuals, and experience. If you claim customer service is your most important differentiator, then return calls and emails in a reasonable amount of time and don’t leave people in an automated telephone maze to get the help they need. If you claim quality, make sure your products are up to scratch.
Bear in mind that people need to experience things multiple times before they stick. Be clear but be consistent – they need to see your message seven times before they are likely to remember it. The Nike swoosh did not see overnight success, it spent years and lots of money making that mark mean something to people. Don’t expect one ad to get you to your sales targets, or a website to get you all your customers. Branding is not the same as direct response marketing – it takes time and it should be integrated across all your customer touch points.
Brands that communicate unique selling propositions are the most convincing to clients and the easiest for them to remember. Ensure all of your communications – not just advertising and marketing pieces – are consistent with your brand. Everything your company distributes must reflect it.
Continually promote, publicise, and invest in your brand. Building a business brand can be compared to training and conditioning an athlete: The harder he works, the better the results.
Who is a brand manager?
Brand-building skills require creative, intelligent, innovative, adventuresome, nurturing, disciplined and service focused managers. Brand managers are role models who portray appropriate behaviour and act in the best interests of the brand and company. Conversely, they must also challenge convention to keep the brand fresh by questioning what has become the status quo. They must be continually searching out what makes the brand unique. Customer preferences, competitive frameworks and market conditions are incredibly dynamic. Renewing and refreshing the brand to ensure continuing relevance, differentiation and credibility are the most strategic tasks and perhaps the most consuming tactically. Brand managers must determine what cannot change and what must change.
The questions CEO’s should be asking are:
How can my company ensure delivery on its brand promises to customers?
How can I meet sustainability concerns and protect brand value?
And how do I develop the type of workforce associated with a world-class brand?
Ultimately, brand custodianship should not just be left in the hands of the brand manager or CEO. Rather, each and every staff member should carry their own brand loyalty through their every spoken word, action and service orientation… at the end of the day it is people who interact with brands and it is their emotional dynamics that the message is tapping directly into.
by Gary Simons | Aug 13, 2015 | B2B Sales, Business
In order to gain the most profitability from your customer base, you will need to drill down into each client’s portfolio and deliver on a well-defined service and product strategy
Many companies today still approach their client base with a ‘one size fits all’ mind-set when it comes to their supply chain processes and policies, over serving some customers and underserving others. Through the analyses of your profit profiles of both your customers and products, you can custom-build a more profitable CRM supply chain strategy to each client and thereby increase the overall profitability of their individual portfolios. In order to do so, you will need to consider the following:
1: Understand your products
Whether you are selling stationery, automation, Jan/San or furniture – or all of the above – you need to understand exactly which products give you the most profit, are best sellers, give a boost to another sale or are losing traction with customers. In a competitive market, this knowledge will be your mainstay of which products you should be promoting or not.
Use your CRM system to help you make your business decisions, tell you past behaviours and generate return sales in similar product lines. Your sales reports will show you which products are giving you the best margins, allowing you to further maximise your profits by finding where they can dovetail with other best-selling products. For example, who has purchased a mop but no cleaning fluid in the past month? While the mop itself may not deliver on the best margins, cleaning fluid can and will. Sales reports that deliver demand and cost-to-serve analysis* can help sales people to cross-sell additional product lines or undercut your competitors on a lower cost item since you are able to regain the profit from the second sale.
Technology will also assist you in scrutinising the different market segments and identify where to put your focus, i.e. which companies are looking to outsource their Jan/San servicing to a contractor; or the exponential growth in the number of educational facilities and the health care market which are seeing growth in cleanable space. It might also tell you that paper towels, facial tissue and toilet tissue are still the leading seller in this category, and that bin liners are the next hottest selling item, along with hard floor chemicals and cleaners and degreasers.
By understanding both your customers and your product combinations you can identify which are winners and which are losers, and then structure your supply chain policies so that some or all of the losers are turned into winners. For example, a stationery supplier which provides the same one-day lead time for both A customers and D customers may want to change the policy to three days for the D customers. This would move the inventory buffer point upstream in the supply chain, reducing overall inventory. The upstream buffer would hold a larger pool of inventory, thus increasing the odds that downstream demand will be satisfied with the exact product required. This change may have the effect of turning D customers into B customers.
2. Repeat versus new customers
It’s a well-known fact that it costs seven times more to grow a new customer than to retain an existing one. For the majority of businesses which see recurring revenue, these existing customers don’t just fuel growth, they represent all of the businesses’ profits.
With customer expectations higher today than ever before, the client also knows they have a choice to move over to your competitor if you don’t deliver. The simple 80/20 principle will serve you best here in identifying your most profitable customers instead of wasting efforts in chasing new customers. Identify which of your customers generate 80% of your sales, this will generally be about 20% of your current customer base.
This will also prove a strategy for SMEs facing competition from the big-box stores which win over those customers who are price shopping. By differentiating yourself from the box-movers by providing value on the back-end of purchases you can woo back price-conscious end users. Ensure your focus is on retaining customers by identifying which need reigniting, along with strategies to cross-sell, upsell and link-sell to your customer base.
In order to speed up your sales process, have a slightly different script for your different types of prospects which focusses on their problems. Then spend time making them feel special enough to become loyal to you. Ensure your service levels are excellent and your sales follow up on a par. People don’t buy products they buy solutions – people also buy from people – so make your contact personal and build their trust. The happier and more valued your current customer base feels, the more likely they will make repeat purchases and increase spend with you and not your competitor.
3. Be switched on, all the time
Use today’s technology tools to boost productivity and leverage it in order to simplify operations, improve service levels and at the same time reduce internal costs. Cloud based tools will ensure you stay connected to customer data, accounts, price lists, and current stock levels and will streamline communication and other processes, such as document revisions, so the team has more time to sell. Most importantly all data will be backed up all the time.
Since the best way to handle an economic downturn is to sell your way out of it, hire more sales staff to recoup lost margins and let them hit the road running to win more business. While your investment in technology will streamline your processes and productivity, your investment in human capital is the best asset in which to create revenue.
With mobile employees backed by the Cloud’s mobile technology you can save money in increasing efficiency and traveling time and shortening the sales cycle. At any chosen moment, a sales rep is able to see what orders a client placed last year, what stock has been delivered or not and instantly identify what the customer bought this year compared to last year. By placing your CRM in the cloud, you are afforded better scalability without time-consuming updates and licensing issues or loss of data due to power outages; and for SMEs the Cloud often ensures more security that they might have on their current IT systems. With big data the new watchword, you will need to adapt to these new technologies in order to boost your business decisions. If you think it is not for you, consider Amazon. They were one of the first companies to adopt business intelligence to analyse their customer’s buying behaviour through big data.
Social media can also assist in identifying what the market feels about your company and highlight issues with other suppliers. In addition, it can help you ‘read’ your crowd, for example which companies are focussing on sustainability and therefore interested in green cleaning products and equipment such as floor scrubbers that use less chemical products and machines that ionize water to help lift dirt particles.Today’s technology offers solutions such as e-commerce, back office automation, delivery optimisation and Internet purchasing and will empower you to handle more business and serve a greater number of customers using fewer resources – without the right technology, expect to be left behind.
*Cost to serve analysis: calculates the profitability of products, customers and routes to market, and provides a fact-based focus for decision making on service mix and operational changes for each customer.
