This presentation was done for my digital marketing class at Indiana University, Kelley

School of Business, as part of the M.S./Marketing program. The “inspiration” came

from interviews I did with Reeds Jewelers in Wilmington, NC. Reeds was looking to

take their online business to the next level. The following slides outline some tactical

ideas; some of which I shared with Reeds. (This assignment was completed

subsequent to my interviews with Reeds). © copyright 2016 by Rick Wingender

1

The primary business objective for REEDS Jewelers is to significantly improve sales in

areas (states) where there are no REEDS stores. This presentation will include six

main strategies to support this objective.

This branding information will feed one of the strategies, which will focus on

branded keyword spend via Google AdWords and Bing. We will create PPC-friendly

optimized landing pages for each brand that is authorized for online sale. These

landing pages will include content about the brands for brand-building and SEO

purposes, with a goal of attaining high Quality Scores in Google AdWords.

2

3

The 13 states include: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, Florida,

Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West

Virginia.

The primary business objective for REEDS Jewelers is to significantly improve sales in

areas (states) where there are no REEDS stores.

Map Source: https://www.amcharts.com/visited_states/#US-AL,US-FL,US-GA,US-

KY,US-MD,US-MS,US-NC,US-PA,US-SC,US-TN,US-TX,US-VA,US-WV

4

I spent over 5 years working for a jewelry retailer (Jewelry Television/JTV.com), and

it’s an interesting industry. The profit margins are decent (except in diamonds), but it

is highly competitive. Many jewelers went out of business in 2008-2009 due to the

recession that drove gold and silver prices sky high. The survivors now enjoy a

consolidated industry with fewer, but stronger, competitors for REEDS. When I spoke

to their COO, he specifically mentioned Blue Nile, Zales, Kay, and Jared. Jewelry is a

very low barrier-to-entry space; which you can see by all of the small sellers on

Amazon, eBay, Rakuten, and other marketplace sites. As a result, you find

competition in specialty chains, mom & pop stores, online marketplaces, home

shopping networks, and department stores. Other significant players in the jewelry

space, though probably not significant competitors to REEDS, would include Walmart,

Kohls, Target, Costco, Sears, and Tiffany.

This is a large, mature, but still growing industry, with sales of $75 billion in 2014**.

Thus, government regulation and consumer scrutiny are intense. Others shown here

are clearly competitors based on product type.

This long list of competitors represents an opportunity to bid on branded keywords.

5

** http://marketrealist.com/2015/12/state-jewelry-industry-2015-growth-

challenges/

5

REEDS targets upscale women with most of their 11,000+ SKUs.

It appears that bridal jewelry is a significant part of their business, with 14% of their

SKUs falling into the bridal category. It appears that bridal is also an acquisition

strategy for them; price points range from as low as $90 to about $30,000, with the

idea being to target less-affluent younger women, in order to sell more expensive

items to them as they mature and gain higher levels of disposable income. Furthering

this idea, they also use Google Shopping to list a significant quantity of product,

including lower-priced bridal sets.

The vast majority of REEDS sales come from the 13 states where they currently have

physical stores. Specific numbers are not shared, and the company is privately-held.

REEDS business objective is to increase its revenues in states where it currently has

no stores. To do this, they know they need to improve their website and their

marketing; thus they need to build out their ecommerce capabilities.

6

Strengths

1. Jewelry Industry expertise. This is not a fly-by-night operation run by

rookies.

2. Omnichannel capability in 13 states.

3. Quality merchandise and strong sourcing expertising and buying power.

4. The REEDS brand is well-known & well-respected in the industry, and from a

consumer point-of-view, in 13 states.

5. Company credit card program can be used as a marketing tool for both new

customer acquisition as well as repeat purchases. If it didn't exist, it would be

a serious competitive disadvantage. The financing programs can work

synergistically with social media and email marketing.

Weaknesses

1. No stores in 37 states, while some competitors have Omnichannel

touchpoints.

2. No significant internal ecommerce or digital marketing experience or

expertise due to outsourcing.

3. No international sales capability, resulting in overdependence on one large

7

market. For example, they can't benefit from non-U.S. holidays; leaves them

more vulnerable to local recessions.

4. The current PPC performance is ineffective.

5. In a digital-only shopping experience, site visitors cannot try on the

merchandise, or see it with their own eyes as they would in a store. This

increases return risk.

Opportunities

1. Enhance the product line with a long-tail mix. They can do this through

buying, or by adding a catalog drop-ship program.

2. Enhance the product line with new product categories. They can do this

through buying, or by adding a catalog drop-ship program.

3. Utilize a Western distribution center(s).

4. Use of social networking sites can be used to build the brand and grow

awareness among potential customers."

5. Focusing on states and nations - going global - will reduce dependency on

one market, increase revenues and profits.

Threats

1. Highly competitive market, with constant threat of new competitors

entering the jewelry market.

2. The company is vulnerable to gold and silver (material) price fluctuations.

3. Technology issues, such as denial of service (DOS) attacks or hacking into

customer databases. These can cause dramatic business disruption, loss of

revenue, and damage to brand.

4. Being based in Wilmington, NC, a small market, presents a unique threat to

the stated objective of improving the digital business. If a key digital employee

leaves the company, that person will be difficult to replace; there are just few

ecommerce professionals in a market like Wilmington. And, experienced

digital marketing professionals with experience in the jewelry vertical will be

attractive targets to competitors.

7

My recommendations all require a significant amount of both expertise AND

“bandwidth”. Therefore, I am recommending that REEDS build up a “E-Commerce

Department”, as Tactic #1. The following four slides will detail how the team will grow

over time.

Tactic #2 is all about merchandising and the product mix. Currently, REEDS is a very

typical jewelry chain. There is nothing unique about it, as I explained to the execs I

interviewed with. One way for them to differentiate is to follow an “Amazon-like”

strategy, which includes deepening existing categories’ SKU counts (i.e., creating a

long-tail of product), and also broadening the mix of product categories, which helps

not only revenue, but helps in with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Having a

broader product mix gives a company a much greater opportunity to re-market new

products to past customers – a historically key strategy for Amazon and other

retailers.

Tactic #3 entails re-establishing a paid search program (PPC), focusing on Google

AdWords, but including Bing, Facebook, and Amazon PPC. A key requirement is the

build-out of the ecommerce department and the hiring of a PPC Manager in 2017.

8

Tactic #4 is about utilizing social media platforms to deepen consumer relationships,

develop more brand awareness, create interactive marketing campaigns, create and

disseminate relevant content, and to synergistically support digital and traditional

media ad campaigns. Focus on reaching young women, by promoting sweepstakes,

relevant content, or other interactive campaigns.

Tactic #5 Improvements to the existing website. Add product ratings & reviews.

Enhance SEO, load times, and other issues. Add additional category landing pages to

better support both SEO and SEM. Dramatically improve product images and

educational content. Create a virtual tour of a store

(https://www.youvisit.com/tour/covancedaytonaparticipantas) as a way for new

visitors to familiarize with the company. Add Web Designers and Web Developers to

the staff to response time on enhancements, and improve internal technical

capabilities.

Tactic #6 Establish successful 3rd-party marketplace stores on Amazon.com, eBay,

Jet.com, and Rakuten.com. Carefully manage the brand reputation the consumer

ratings and reviews on these sites. Cultivate these customers; converting them to

become Reeds.com customers. Get these customers to follow Reeds on Facebook,

Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter. This is both a revenue strategy and a New Customer

Acquisition strategy, as well as a brand awareness strategy.

8

This slide (“Year 0”), and the next three slides, can be viewed quickly in succession in

order to see how the organizational chart will fill in over a 4-year period.

REEDS currently has very few dedicated resources to manage the ecommerce

operations. The only fulltime resources are:

1. a Social Community Manager,

2. a Web Designer, and

3. a “Project Manager”, whose duties are nebulous but probably focus on

merchandising duties.

The vast majority of activities are executed by external resources, and overseen by a

Director of Multichannel Marketing. This of course leads to a lack of focus, and a lack

of internal expertise development.

My recommendations all require a significant amount of both expertise AND

“bandwidth”. Therefore, I am recommending that REEDS build up a “E-Commerce

Department”, as Tactic #1. The construction of this team would probably need to

happen over a few years and needs to be flexible. I am modeling a three year

expansion plan, or roughly 7 new hires per year.

9

Year 1. Seven new employees, including a Director of Ecommerce. This

multifunctional role is not limited to just digital marketing; it includes site product

management, merchandising, web design, and web development. This person, along

with the Web Development Manager, is the key liaison with the IT department and

various external resources.

This year also shows the addition of a DMM (Digital Marketing Manager), the Web

Design and Dev Manager (eventually, these would be split into two different roles),

and the PPC/SEM Manager, who will lead Tactic #3 beginning immediately this year.

10

Year 2.

This year brings in a dedicated email manager. In the past, email creation and strategy

was handled mostly by an outside agency. This person will bring focus and

measurement to email marketing. This year also brings significant enhancement to

online merchandising, with a web merchandising manager and a REEDS.com

Merchandiser. These positions will help bring focus to online merchandising, bringing

the traditional buyers into the strategy through product mix extensions and category

additions. These positions will also help with site UX/UI (usability) improvements).

Lastly, they will coordinate with the marketplace merchandising functions, in terms of

product mix merchandising and promotions planning.

Lastly, year 2 brings significant technical resources in-house. The idea is to improve

the user experience through more interactive experiences (better navigation, search,

intuitive interfaces, etc), as well as more visually-appealing designs and imagery.

11

Year 3 and beyond.

This year sees the addition of two more key digital marketing personnel, to bring

more focus on New Customer Acquisition – Promotions Management and

CSE/Affiliates. Previously, these roles were the part-time focus of the DMM or

designees.

This year also sees the addition of multiple merchandising resources, to get more

product online, to help find that product better, and to provide more responsiveness

to needs of Marketplace customers.

Lastly, I added one more web developer – you can never have too many – but the

idea at the point is to begin bringing in more specialized skillsets, in order to provide

more “wow” kinds of user experiences to the site. In years past, this might have been

a Flash developer.

12

Tactic #2 is all about merchandising and the product mix. Most of the strategy is only

loosely related to digital marketing, if at all, so there will not be much depth on this

topic in this presentation.

Currently, REEDS is a very typical jewelry chain. There is nothing unique about it, as I

explained to the execs I interviewed with. One way for them to differentiate is to

follow an “Amazon-like” strategy, which includes deepening existing categories’ SKU

counts (i.e., creating a long-tail of product), and also broadening the mix of product

categories, which helps not only revenue, but helps with Search Engine Optimization

(SEO). Having a broader product mix gives a company a much greater opportunity to

re-market new products to past customers – a historically key strategy for Amazon

and other retailers.

The SEO concept is key. I conducted a study and created a new metric called the

“sales to listings ratio” when I launched the Marketplaces channel at JTV.com. What I

discovered was that the relationship of sales to listings is not linear – it is exponential.

That’s why it’s clearly important to have as many products on the site as possible.

Amazon insists on the full product catalog from their “Platinum” sellers.

13

So, my recommendation to REEDS was to add more SKUs to their existing online

categories, and to add new online categories. When a customer is looking for a snow

globe, you want them to find REEDS, so that you not only have a chance to sell them

a snow globe, but you have them in your file, and now you can market other product

categories to them later. You have also created awareness of your jewelry business to

those customers who were looking for, found, and purchased a snow globe from you.

What I actually recommended to REEDS was that they look at demographically

synergistic product categories found on ThingsRemembered.com or Hallmark.com.

Pursuing this product mix expansion strategy will make any loyalty program more

effective, and it certainly makes RFM analysis more interesting and fun! Lastly,

compared to other normal jewelry retailers, having gifts would make REEDS more

unique – a unique selling proposition.

13

The PPC program at REEDS is almost non-existent. Checking Google, Bing, Facebook, and Amazon, there is no

significant presence for REEDS, except for their brand terms. REEDS does employ an agency (I was told this), but

they do not appear to be actively investing in PPC, nor do they have a full-time PPC manager within REEDS.

Step 1 for this strategy is to find a SEM Manager to manage the agency relationship. This is part of STRATEGY #1,

previously outlined in Year 2017.

Step 2 will be to determine a paid search strategy, keeping in mind the stated objective of growing the business

in “non-stored” states.

Step 3 will be to obtain a monthly spend budget for PPC.

14

Once hired, I would direct the new SEM Manager to begin implementing various

PPC/SEM programs.

Specific tactics:

1. The first tactic will be to develop a PPC geographical progression plan, as part of an

overall geographical progression, state-by-state targeting plan for all marketing. Due

to expected budget constraints, it’s not expected that REEDS will have the money to

competitively bid nationally from the outset in this highly competitive industry. We

would begin by strategically prioritizing states (“digital priority”), according to the

State by State Tracking Chart (an Excel file).

2. The second tactic will be to develop a Google Display campaign in order to develop

brand awareness for REEDS JEWELERS, in accordance with the geographical

progression plan. We will need to develop a plan for measuring progress on brand

awareness, likely via online or phone surveys, each state as it initializes and at various

timeframes thereafter.

3. The third tactic will be to utilize the branding information (previously provided),

15

which will focus on branded keyword spend via Google AdWords and Bing search

campaigns. We will then create PPC-friendly optimized landing pages for each brand

that is authorized for online sale. These landing pages will include content about the

brands for brand-building and SEO purposes, with a goal of attaining high Quality

Scores in Google AdWords.

4. The fourth tactic will be to create a re-targeting campaign, in accordance with the

geographical progression plan.

5. The fifth tactic will be to create Amazon PPC campaigns, of which there are two

types:

A. Amazon’s Sponsored Products ads. Sponsored Products are

advertisements for products sold by merchants on Amazon.com.

When you click on a Sponsored Product ad, you will be taken to an

Amazon detail page where you can learn more about the product and

purchase it. https://advertising.amazon.com/products-self-

serve?ref_=ext_amzn_wtsp.

B. In addition, I would engage in Amazon’s PPC program that drives

traffic back to REEDS.com.

https://advertising.amazon.com/linkout?ref_=A20M_footer. This takes

advantage of Amazon’s traffic, and targets a large number of people

who do not ordinarily buy from sites other than Amazon – which is

about 40% of their customers.

6. The sixth tactic will be to build-out the barely-existing Google Shopping program.

This will be addressed further in a subsequent slide.

7. The seventh and final PPC-related tactic to support this PPC strategy is to

implement a limited Facebook Newsfeed program. This will be run by the PPC

manager, with input from the DMM and Social Community Manager for targeting

ideas.

15

If the objective is to increase sales in states where REEDS does NOT have stores, we

will require various means to measure and report. From AdWords and other PPC

programs, we will collect data from the PPC programs, from Google Analytics, and

from the website’s ecommerce platform, in order to create reports similar to the

report shown above.

Each month, we’ll track certain PPC-related key metrics, on a state-by-state basis. The

metrics will include (but not be limited to):

1. State Revenue.

2. Unique Customers by State

3. Unique Visitors by State

4. Returning Visitors by State

5. Site Conversion rate by State

6. Bounce Rate by State

7. Time on Site by State

8. % of Total Business on REEDS.com

9. AOV by State

10. Total Ad Spend by State

16

11. Promotional Email Subscriptions

16

Google Shopping is managed through the Google AdWords PPC program, and REEDS

is selling on Google Shopping. It’s great that they are sending a feed to Google, to

drive sales to their own website, but it doesn’t appear that they have their full

product line available here. So, once getting the SEM Manager hired, and after getting

the AdWords Search & Display programs running, and the other PPC programs

running, the next tactic will be to enhance the Google Shopping feed; especially

focusing on non-stored areas, to drive more traffic to REEDS.com.

17

Tactic #4 is all about Social Media Marketing. I believe that social media will be a key

driver in creating brand awareness, building a brand promise, and humanizing a

company that has no physical presence in most states. For a small company with a

limited budget for traditional mass media ads, we’ll develop social channels as a way

to develop messaging for new items, public reminders of key gift-giving occasions,

educating consumers, and maintaining relevancy in the absence of mass media

advertising or physical stores. We will use REEDS’ sites as a way to build and interact

with a community interested in “pretty things”.

I believe that social marketing must be synergistic with REEDS other marketing

channels and activities. For example, Tactic #2 is about merchandising – improving

the product mix depth and breadth. Doing that gives the Community Manager

something to talk about – fresh content. For example, as the buyers add a gifting

category and gift products, they can team up to talk about workmanship,

collectability, and so on, rather than just “Here it is, it’s available, it’s on sale.”

Social can also be used for education. For example, REEDS.com has an engagement

ring builder, which can be talked about on Facebook; a video could be posted there

and on YouTube, showing someone going through the process. In addition, social can

18

be great for consumer education. For example, Pinterest could be used to educate

potential REEDS customers about the “4 Cs”, and a Pinterest board could be made

that shows 13 diamonds, all in a row, each with a slightly different color grade, as a

way to compare “color”. In other words, social will be an integral part of REEDS’

content strategy.

Another part of the social strategy will be about engaging with interesting content.

It’s not enough to simply talk about new products, popular products, and promotions,

or even the company’s good deeds. For example, I believe that a large proportion of

REEDS’ potential customers are young women interesting in getting married within a

few years. These women are probably then interested in trends relating to that topic.

What are popular honeymoon destinations? How much are people paying for dresses

these days? How does that 2-month rule work – is that still a rule? The Community

Manager for REEDS needs to be a relevant content curator, not just a mouthpiece for

the merchandising team. These ideas are reflected in the sample Editorial Content

Planning Calendar, shown in a subsequent slide.

18

One of the first things that the REEDS DMM and Community Manager need to do is

research and settle on a set of tools. One of the biggest needs I see is something that

can provide better analytics than what comes with each platform. For example, in

order to track our social media effectiveness, we would need a state-by-state view of

Facebook engagement metrics, but this type of reporting does not exist in Facebook

Insights. It may exist somewhere else, but I haven’t found it yet if it does. For Twitter,

one recently-discovered tool that may work is DemographicsPro

(http://www.demographicspro.com/).

One other metric I’d like to see is a standard sentiment analysis metric and tool;

however, again, I haven’t found one yet that can break this metric down by state.

19

20

I believe that REEDS is too product-focused on their social platforms, which isn’t

inviting much engagement or virality. What I’d like to see is more Sweepstakes and

user generated content (“tell us your story”).

If REEDS wants to improve its business in “non-stored” states, one thing it should do

is focus its Facebook strategy on those states. Utilize Facebook ads to target the

population in those states or particular cities, and coordinate that with interesting

content that is relevant to events, people, or places in those areas. Finally, coordinate

the Facebook content and ads with Google AdWords and Amazon PPC programs.

21

This is a modified version of an actual content planning calendar I used in a past life,

showing what it might look like to support REEDS.

This would be maintained by the Community Manager, with input from a variety of

people. This shows “scheduled” content to be posted by the Community Manager,

but is not intended to show ALL posted content. In addition to scheduled content,

other content would be posted. This calendar ensures that something is posted every

day on all social channels, even in case of sickness or vacations. It also ensures that

themes are maintained and that the content doesn’t “fall into a rut”, as well as

ensuring that content doesn’t become too product & promotionally themed, thus

turning off followers. For example, even though Social Sundays’ content will be “pre-

formed” and scheduled, Sundays can also have posts that support current

promotional events. The Email calendar is integrated here as well (Thursdays), and

this content will also be supported on the social channels. The Trivia Tuesdays

content is intended to get customers to answer trivia quiz questions, and then drive

them to the REEDS.com website to see the answers and possibly obtain promotional

codes or loyalty points.

Much of this content will be mematic content – memes – especially Motivational

22

Mondays and Funny Fridays.

In the case of REEDS, I would further focus content themes on local events. For

example, if Wisconsin was a focus of the main business objective, in July, I might have

several posts on that include interesting content regarding Summerfest in Milwaukee.

It’s got nothing to do with Jewelry at all, but it may add interest in the REEDS brand as

followers like and share the content.

22

23

Screen capture from Reeds.com homepage, on 11/11/2016.

I conducted a fairly extensive site review (in real life) of the REEDS website. It

compares favorably to many jeweler sites, but it has significant opportunities for

improvement. Most of those opportunities are outside the scope of this assignment.

The point is, for REEDS to improve its share of business from non-stored states, it

would need to implement my recommendations.

One significant example: This site currently does not utilize product ratings and

reviews, which is a major miss not only from a customer experience perspective, but

also from an SEO perspective.

Another: Site and product imagery. We should remember that there are many means

of getting a potential customer’s attention. PPC, social media channels, even

traditional media – those are the beginning of the CDJ – the customer decision

journey. But it is the website that seals the deal. Among all the many requirements a

website has, it has to look good. It helps if it can invoke emotions.

24

I recommended adding BazaarVoice Ratings and Reviews to REEDS management.

There are many benefits to adding this feature to the site, but it does need to be

actively managed. Some of the benefits include:

1. Feedback to merchants about the product strengths and weaknesses;

2. Feedback to the company about its polices and execution;

3. Credibility brought about by transparency,

4. And of course, improved sales through the product testimonial aspect; i.e., “social

proof”.

When I think about social strategy, I always include ratings and reviews content in

that. This is user-generated content, and it must be monitored and moderated.

BazaarVoice can do some of that, but web merchandisers and Community Managers

must also be involved on a daily basis.

As for measuring and growing business in non-stored states, two things I would

probably want to track are the number of ratings by customers in each state over

time, and the average rating trends in each state over time.

25

Reviews should be monitored and moderated by Community Managers and Web

Merchandisers.

26

Both users and company representatives can answer questions; this information can

be used to improve product descriptions, and improve products.

They can also improve the user experience on the site by letting users filter search

results by product ratings.

27

Another site improvement is the overall look and feel of the site, and especially the

images. Jewelry is a very emotional purchase, especially expensive jewelry. There is a

famous quote that says: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what

you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” A website that

invokes a feeling will be remembered, referred to, and bookmarked. It’s like the old

trick of making popcorn or hot chocolate in a department store. To evoke emotions,

images need to be immersive. A healthy dose should be shot outdoors, as in lifestyle

images. You need to have people displaying a wide range of emotions, from love, to

joy and fun, to excitement, to awe, to gratitude. Jewelry is all about how it makes a

woman feel. So give her images that make her feel like she can be a princess.

Remember, if you leave the site and you didn’t feel something, you’re not going back.

But when I look at the REEDS.com website it seems to be devoid of emotion.

Compare to:

• https://www.aspca.org/

• www.rolex.com

• www.bigassfans.com

• http://www.coogi.com/

• http://www.johnstonscashmere.com/us.

28

In Tactic #3, Improve the PPC Program, I said that part of that strategy would be to

create more and better landing pages. Google sees a bounce – a bad experience – if a

user leaves a search results page and lands on a page on your site, only to click right

back off. Better imagery is ONE way to (help) keep them around a little bit longer. Of

course, the landing pages need to be relevant.

28

29

30

31

32

33

Yes, 3rd-Party Marketplaces are a digital New Customer Acquisition (NCA) strategy.

One of the things that make them unique though, is that instead of spending money

and hoping visitors come to your website and convert, they you can actually earn

money right on other sites, and still gain new customers.

During my time at Jewelry Television, we struggled with precious little budget for

actual advertising. That led to a monthly failure to meet our NCA goals. As part of the

management team and as part of the corporate strategy team, I looked for cheap

ways to improve our NCA. It finally occurred to me that Amazon and eBay could be

our solution. So, starting out as a “black ops”, or “proof-of-concept” project, I

developed stores on these sites and began selling. We grew successful stores on

these sites. I tracked our customers and segmented them into four distinct types. My

“C” customers were those that had no previous history in our files – they were “New-

to-File”. These ideal customers bought from us on our eBay or Amazon stores first,

and then later bought from our website, JTV.com. Merchandising mix and exceptional

customer service were the key to converting these A and B customers into C

customers.

I am certain that this strategy would work well for REEDS in states where they have

34

no stores; because, eBay and Amazon are trusted brands that will intervene on a

customers’ behalf; so Amazon and eBay users view these transactions as being less-

risky; they are more prone to trust you on your own site in subsequent transactions

after you have “proven” yourself.

34

REEDS sells on Amazon.com. This can be a very successful strategy as a revenue-

driver and for New Customer Acquisition, but REEDS is not executing very well. They

only have 88 of their 11,000+ SKUs on Amazon, and it is mostly their cheaper

product. This does not illustrate the depth and breadth of the product mix, does little

to build their brand, and it makes their product much harder to find. They also have

zero information about the company on Amazon. There is plenty here to fix. (Note –

In real life, I ran successful marketplace stores on Amazon and eBay…I could fix this!).

They do not have an eBay store or a Rakuten store – they should.

• Step One of the 3PV Tactic (3rd Party Virtual marketplace) is to hire a full-time

merchandiser for Amazon and eBay. This person may already be in place, but I

don’t think it’s a full-time person yet.

• Step Two is to list products on Amazon and eBay via an API data feed. This can

probably be done from their own ecommerce platform, or, it can be done with the

help of a 3rd-party integrator such as Channel Advisor. I recommend the latter

route, as CA brings significant expertise and advice to the process. The

Merchandiser then manages the relationship, determines the merchandise mix,

manages the listings and pricing, manages customer service issues, etc. As the

business grows, more merchandisers will need to be hired, and for each of the

35

marketplaces.

• Step Three is to begin tracking the performance of these marketplaces, and

develop strategies to convert these marketplace customers into REEDS.com

customers.

• Step Four is to begin employing Amazon PPC, which is part of the PPC Tactic as

well (Tactic #2).

35

Marketplaces are terrific for New Customer Acquisition, and eBay is actually the best,

for a company like REEDS, for the following reasons.

1. It has enormous traffic.

2. 90% of eBay’s sales these days fixed-price, not auction, but if you want to capture

that auction crowd, you still can.

3. There is incredible consumer trust in eBay, because of longevity, but also because

of PayPal.

4. There is incredible consumer trust in eBay, because of the feedback system that is

extensively used. Shopping on eBay is an incredibly social experience, and the

eBay Merchandiser MUST be “part Community Manager”. This also happens on

Amazon, but not quite as much. There are routine conversations between buyers

and sellers on eBay, pre- and post-purchase. eBay provides sellers with an

opportunity to build their brands, not just by creating awareness, but by building

relationships. These same Merchandisers/Community Managers can be very

effective at getting new customers to visit the REEDS.com website later.

5. Ebay provides fairly decent reporting, and it’s easier to contact your customers on

eBay than it is on Amazon. In fact, it’s very difficult to contact Amazon customers

– the only ways are personal emails after the sale (which are monitored and

restricted), and via box collateral inserts.

36

Jet.com is a new marketplace that is quickly gaining in popularity. One important

point about marketplaces is that users often have their own favorites; for example,

most Amazon shoppers don’t go to any other marketplaces. So, it’s not enough to be

on just one marketplace because of the lack of customer crossover.

Staffing is part of the this strategy, as outlined in Tactic #1, building the e-commerce

team. The timeline includes improving the Amazon store, then re-opening the eBay

store, then hiring additional merchandisers in 2019 to manage the Jet.com and

Rakuten.com stores.

37

Rakuten is an older, established marketplace that has lower commissions, and is

stronger internationally than it is in the USA. If REEDS wants to establish global sales,

Rakuten can be a significant contributor to that distribution mix, and their

international programs help sellers deal with the complexities of selling across

borders. It’s a great way to begin selling internationally. Rakuten was formerly known

as Buy.com.

38

REEDS would maintain various reports as part of the 3PV NCA Tactic. One high-level

report would be similar to the one shown above, which shows time-series growth

rates across each marketplace by state, and gives visibility into successes or

challenges, which can then be leveraged by the other strategies (or even help identify

areas where new stores could be built).

Another significant report, not shown here, would be Customer Segmentation /

Conversion Reporting. This reporting would show customers acquired from each

channel (and could include PPC channels as well), and show their inclusion in

segments. For example, a “Type A” customer is one that purchased from the REEDS

store on Amazon, but never purchased from any REEDS channel again. A “Type B”

customer is one that purchased from any given channel, and then made a repeat

purchase from that same channel (bought from eBay twice, for example). A “Type C”

customer is the “holy grail”. This customer bought from Amazon, for example, and

subsequently purchased from REEDS.com. This behavior is desirable because no

commission is paid to Amazon. Finally, we would track “Type D” customers, who

initially bought from REEDS.com, and subsequently purchased from other channels.

This is the worst-case scenario, but it can inform REEDS about usability, pricing,

availability, or other issues with the REEDS.com experience.

39

The oft-used scorecard concept would be used for REEDS. I anticipate an evolving

scorecard, as we learn what can be tracked effectively, and what can be relied upon

to identify issues and predict future performance. Social analytics are particularly

difficult on a state-by-state level, but are available for a variety of metrics in Google

Analytics, AdWords, and internal database/reporting applications. The main focus of

the scorecard is to compare states with and without stores, and to measure the

growth of non-store’d states. We want to show that the market is becoming steadily

more aware of REEDS.

40

https://vimeo.com/114903891

41

42