Viktoria Kanevsky E Tail West Presentation

15 Ways To Increase Your Profit Without Increasing Your Budget – Post-Recession

Internet Marketing Tips And Tricks.

About www.EdHardyShop.com

An e-Commerce arm for the multichannel retailer Ed Hardy.

Sells in the United States as well as globally.

Brand focus – celebrity driven, hip, luxury apparel at affordable prices.

Design concept – tattoo art on clothes.

http://www.edhardyshop.com/

http://www.edhardyshop.com/

I’ve worked in the fashion industry for the last 10+ years.

Many fashion online retailers are from the traditional manufacturing and wholesale industry.

In most cases, the ideas of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars on technology and online marketing are a foreign concept and are considered unacceptable.

My Clients’ History

The usual predominant obstacles are

Small to non-existent budgets

Lack of resources such as graphic designers, web designers, web programmers and more


Lack of understanding by upper management of online marketing world (even though they understood that there is incredible monetizing potential in internet, they never were willing to go all the way.


Disclaimer All issues that I’m going to present are from my

own practice.

I will be presenting personal opinions based on personal experience so examples given may differ from “general internet marketing knowledge”.

I will be covering various issues that have arisen over the last 4-5 years so the presentation is a summary rather than a set of problems from one particular client.

The Good News about current internet situation

Your business is as down as you let it be!

The current situation pushes businesses to

the limit in terms ofspeed and productivity.

Post recession inspires people for the most unusual and creative solutions.



If you do business today, it means that you’ll be totally prepared to be super successful when economy turns around.





In order to survive and succeed we have to take risks (preferably calculated)



The Online Marketing Industry is experiencing the issues created by the recession/post recession for the first time in history. Congratulations!

1.Conversion rate is #1 metric

E-COMMERCE: Acquisition-> Conversion-> Retention

Before planning media buy spend, evaluate your conversion rate because while your media buy can increase your profit 5-15%, tuning the conversion rate can double or triple your profit right out of the gates.

If your budget is limited, consider investing in website tuning – improving conversion rates by testing website changes.



Website elements that can be tuned:

Headline Page layout Navigation Color scheme Form layout Button text Sales copy Graphic images Call to action Offers or promotions



*Suggested book to read – “Landing Page Optimization” by Tim Ash.

2. Affiliate marketing – Sell to affiliates first and they will take care of the rest.

Beat your competitors by providing higher commission

rates to your affiliates.


Provide customized commission rates to your top affiliates – everyone likes to feel special.

Do not commit to one network – In affiliate marketing cases I would suggest not to shoot for

a permanent marriage but instead for non-exclusive, multiple, quality relationships with bothlarge and small networks.


Celebrity endorsed online marketing creative tends to boost sales 5%-15%.


Be creative while developing and evaluating promotions. Don’t be afraid of “deep promotions”.

You are not losing out on larger commission revenue shares – you are gaining on quality customer acquisitions by following up long-term retention.

3. CPA deals – Sell to sales professionals

Remember why you advertise – you don’t advertise to get impressions or clicks, you advertise to get SALES!

3. CPA deals – Sell to sales professionals

If order to gain Cost Per Sale deals from various ad networks, you will have to sell them the benefits of involvement. In other words, you have to sell to them before the will sell to you.

Ask for CPS deals even when it seems totally impossible.

4. Information – educate and entertain

Information

personal attention

builds trust

trigs feeling that customer makes her/his own decision instead of being pushed

leads to a faster and more repetitive purchasing decision, increases impulse buys


In the current online marketplace customers are oversold and buried under the significant amount of choices, merchandise, and efforts to sell. Don’t make their lives even more complicated.

In stressful, post-recession times most people

turn to the internet and online shopping in order to relax and escape form everyday’s problems. If you can attract and hold visitor’s attentions, then will favor you over competition.


The most valuable informational content for online shoppers

How they will benefit from the product (tips and advices).

How celebrities use this product.

How other people use the product (for example pictures of other people wearing the apparel).

Videos of all above – short, fun, entertaining, memorable,

sometimes even silly.

5. Content Outsource

What can be outsourced Retouching product images.

Product descriptions.

Articles.

Video editing.

Data entry.

6. Search Engine Optimization

Saving money on SEO is like saving money on healthy eating or saving time on exercise. Can someone live without it? Yes. Would quality of life will be the same? No.


Reasons why SEO must be one of multiple online marketing channels.

Organic results create trust. It translates in a visitor’s mind that the company has been there for a while and it’s safe to do business with this company.

Customers that visit via organic engines seem to be more educated and prepared to take action.


Online shoppers are becoming aware of pay per click advertising. If they don’t see the same organic results along with PPC they tend to leave.

SEO reduces PPC budget.

SEO guarantees long term traffic (versus PPC –stop pay-lose visitors).

7. Retention Program – Email Marketing

Best practice – 82% of existing customers returned to shop during the month of December 08.

Keep email marketing in house under your total control.


Set up “flowing schedules” so your customers (and competitors) will not get accustomed to receiving promotions on a certain day of the week.

Invest in a good in house graphic artist who understand that email creative is not only about beautiful design, but about information, functionality, copy and color psychology.


Don’t re-create the wheel. Find out which online publisher get the best click-through rates and monitor their headlines.

Examples:

“5 tips for writing a v-day card he’ll love” Cosmopolitan magazine 5 styles he’ll love to see you wearing to a v-dinner

“You asked, we found: star looks” People magazine You wanted it, we designed it: look like a star

“Cold weather style” Lucky magazine Chic Californian fashion


Call to action, promotions lengths with expiration

days, “cut and paste” coupon code.

Get rid of black background – having black website or sending email with black background is like inviting people shopping in the dark.

8. Incentives

In the post-recession economy, customers hold onto their savings and look for the best deals.

Providing customers with a discount doesn’t mean you cheapen your product, you acquire new customers or provide existing customers with a reason to return.

8. Incentives

If providing discounts is not profitable for your business, then increase mark ups and provide alternative incentives.

Pre-sell is the best option for selling without any incentives.

Create a “post-recession” line of products with much lower prices.

9. Celebrity use

Consult with your lawyers and find out ways to use celebrity endorsements.

In the “Celebrity Gallery”, landing pages, news,

blog, social media. Email blasts/direct mail/catalog to existing

customers. Banners, emails, text links, press releases placed on

third party websites.

10. Online advertising versus offline advertising

If at least 20% of your business come from e-Commerce activities, cut the offline budget and invest it in online marketing.

Offline budget can’t be completely measured while each and every online activity can.

10. Online advertising versus offline advertising

Online advertising could boost offline retail sales by 9 percent over a three month period while TV advertising tends to boost retail sales about 8 percent over 12 month.

11. Re evaluate social media importance

While everyone is talking about social media effectiveness, my personal experience proved that “awareness” and “buzz” does not necessarily translate into sales or even leads.

Cutting advertising with Facebook will let you invest in other online marketing channels or save your budget.

12. Monitor Competition –

they take away your customers-> increase your advertising budget

Determine your competition wisely using as many metrics as you can find. Sometimes your real competitors are not who you think they are. Don’t fall for “imaginary” or “company-we-want-to-become” entities – be realistic.


Keep a very close eye on your competition; monitor as many aspects of their activities as you possible can such as traffic, demographics, technology, creative, ad copy, prices, website features, sales schedules, promotions, celebrities, events, testimonials.


Do NOT copy all competitors’ activities blindly because your resources can be better and your vendors might be more intelligent and /or experienced. Always listed to your common sense and if you have any doubts, hire a consultant with a proven track record.

13. Internal educational policy

Each team member from online marketing assistant and graphic artist to upper

executive officer, needs to understand not only the marketing channel strategy, but

also the main metrics for the actual goal – Conversion!


SALES & CONVERSION RATES METRICS – each of following influence sales:

I. Website


1. Design

1) Web real estate use

2) Functionality

3) Usability

4) Composition

5) Color psychology

6) Graphics


2. Web copy

3. Headlines

4. Landing pages

5. Merchandising

6. Inventory (at least 5 pages of products for the each category that is used in promotion)


7. Photography

1) Products

2) Models (coordinated to reach correct customer segment)

3) Themes (coordinated with online marketing seasonal/holiday calendar

4) Styling

5) Lifestyle representation


II.Online Marketing Channels

1. Vendors

2. Type of negotiated deals


III.Promotions

1. Diversity

2. Ad Copy

3. Celebrity use

4. Creative Design

5. Call to action

6. Length of promotion

IV. Management /Team Cooperation

14. Lead Generation

Substitute buying lead from ad networks with more creative approaches such as:

Running social media contests and turning your “facebook fans or friends” in to warm leads.

Create an iPhone application (that can be outsourced) and give it away for free in exchange to email addresses.

Alternate standard white paper downloads with something more creative – an entertaining online video show or e-book with tips and advices, and let customers gain access in exchange for their emails.

15. Reuse of old inventory – “but this is so last year, no one ever going

to buy it”

Unless the trend is too obvious, customers won’t remember each and every style.

Instead of discounting up to 75% off, merchandise can be re-styled and re-shoot.

Use old inventory to create affiliate promotions.

Mix old inventory with the hottest new styles for contests giveaways.

Contact Information

Viktoria Kanevsky, Ed Hardy

Director of Online Marketing & E-Commerce

[email protected],

[email protected]

Office: 323-785-4460 ext 347,

Cell: 310-871-7151

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Viktoria Kanevsky E Tail West Presentation

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