Answer 1

Create an integrated Digital Marketing Plan to address the key Objectives from Digital Marketing.

Review of existing state of Digital Marketing at The Vanca

Digital marketing for The Vanca primarily revolved around search engine optimization, search engine
marketing, blogs, content building, display remarketing advertisements, affiliate marketing, email
marketing, text messages, paid ads (e.g., on Google, Facebook, and Twitter), app-based promotional
campaigns, and social networking sites. These basic tools had helped the brand sell to 1 million
customers so far. It was observed that these activities were not giving them the desired value
addition.

 Traditional Media : The Vanca recognized the relevance of traditional media (Television and
print advertisements) but due to the limitations of budget, they focused their resources on
digital marketing.

 Email Marketing: Email Marketing was primarily used for generating traffic. There were
many social media channels that were used for creating awareness, knowledge and
customer retention. Emailed flyers were sent twice a week: once on Mondays to announce
new launches, and again on Fridays to announce sales or discounts.

 Advertising: In terms of marketing, The Vanca used social media mailers, social media
branding ads, affiliate marketing, and Google Ads.

 Blogs: Blogs were used for creating brand knowledge and awareness about the product’s
quality, fabric, and styles. Content blogging was also used to link the brand to the customers
as relevant to their lifestyles.

 Remarketing: For customer retention purposes, remarketing advertisements were mainly

used. Site visitors were tagged and relevant advertisements, called “product listing
advertisements,” popped up later on other websites, after the visitor left the original site. In
this regard, Google picked up the specified product entered into the keyword search and
displayed the appropriate product, encouraging the viewer to purchase it.

 Analytical tools: Analytical tools and parameters were considered , including the bounce
rate, pages per visit, average session duration, traffic source, landing pages, and exit pages.
Google Analytics also provided real-time user data.

 Onsite customer experience: Chatroom on website to for on-spot advise or assistance to

customers before making purchase. An initiative that they intended to improve in its digital
focus in future. The Vanca also acquired official fashion bloggers, who(together with a chat
room expert) would give the customer a rich feel for the brand with very useful information
that would help the decision-making process. This approach was aimed at improving the
customer experience and leveraging it as a differentiator for the brand.

 Website optimization: Site optimization for The Vanca website was managed by
professionals. Their digital marketing agency focused on ascertaining the right high-ranking
keywords, and inserted them into the company’s website to enhance optimization. Like
 other companies, The Vanca also purchased certain keywords after determining that they
had an organic link to the website.

 Budget: Digital marketing accounted for 5–7 per cent of The Vanca’s marketing budget,
which was generally in the range of7–8 per cent of the total sales turnover. Sales turnover
was approximately ₹200million in 2015/16, which translates to ₹16 million as annual
marketing budget (7–8 per cent of sales). In2016, digital marketing spending has increased
to 10 per cent (from 5–7 per cent in 2015). This translates to ₹1.6 million (10 per cent of 16
million) with average monthly spending of ₹133,333 on digital marketing.

Strategy to address the key objectives

The Vanca had identified three core objectives for its digital marketing strategy:
 -Increasing traffic to the brand’s website and conversions
 -Building the brand through value addition
 -Generating brand loyalty at retail.

The strategy outlined by the Vanca to achieve these objectives

The ad spending strategy is to increase digital marketing spending to at least 20 per cent (from 10
per cent). With a 2016/17 sales plan of ₹300 million, the overall marketing budget (8per cent of
planned sales) becomes ₹24 million, giving an outlay of approximately ₹4.8 million (20 per cent of
marketing budget) for digital marketing, which in turn translates to ₹400,000 every month.

This fund would primarily be channeled into Google display ads, Google AdWords, PLA, Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Hence, discounts, channel ads, etc. constitute 80 per cent of
marketing, and about 20 per cent would be allocated to pure digital.

In the future, the overall digital marketing spend would be increased to an even higher percentage,
and at the same time, initiatives will be taken for things like awareness and brand building, seasonal
collection launch and preview teasers, sales and promotions and pushing sales at The Vanca’s site.
Aggressive digital marketing, public relations, high visibility, and a growth-oriented focus would help
to achieve the long-term objective to have The Vanca sell at least 30 per cent from its own channel.
This would need a very strong brand presence.

Other Perspectives on strategy to achieve key objectives

Channel focus: The Vanca seems to focus on increasing sales on its own website even though the
channel generates only 5% of the company sales. It can be argued that the margins are higher
through this channel but an extra marketing spending is required to attract customers to their
website. With this narrow focus, the brand might be neglecting the opportunities for building more
sales at other marketplaces which brought in more sales.

Segmentation and targeting: The customer journey is traced to make a brand persona, but the
target audience defined is very broad (18 to 40 years old in the country where the median age is
slightly above 25 years arguably mixes up several age cohorts) with generalized references to
lifestyle. The differentiated value proposition doesn’t get communicated to its target audience.

Top down planning: The company should identify factors that define important metrics of its web-
site, like conversion of visitors to sales (which it considers to be below competitive benchmarks. As
of now, they have not used hard data on competitive benchmarking. Generally, the company’s site
gave no strong reason either through prices or through enhancement of shopping experience to be
preferred by the customers to shopping for The Vanca products elsewhere. It has to be deduced that
the mismatch between site visits and conversions was due to pricing, quality, or availability of size
and fits

Tactics and Action Plan as per the defined strategy

Developing strategies and tactics to promote online sales outlined in the job description requires
developing first an overall integrated approach to marketing communications for the brand.

The key strategic dilemma is

 Whether it should spend its resources in brand building, or should it focus first on selling in
products in more opportunistic markets with wide consumer base looking for western wear?
 Should the company turn its own website into its major sales channel or use it more as an
image driving vehicle, relying on the third- party sites for sales ?
 Will the resulting additional profit margins compensate for the costs of marketing spend and
improvement innovations like the one which aims to offer on-spot pre-purchase advise to
customers?

At the current stage, the “fast mover” focussing on selling rather than brand building route may be a
more realistic strategy for the Vanca, allowing it to accumulate over time necessary resources to
move to a higher league of “fashion operators”.

Website Content

Aspirational Situational
Customers Customers

The website can be restructured targeting two sub groups of customers under their target market of
18-40 years. The aspirational customers, the site should show the trendiest items in the collection
accompanied with fashion-related content. content (e. g. a brief overview of the current trends as
seen by company designers; it can be presented in a form of short video clip). This content should be
made easily “sharable” on social media so that the customers could work as enthusiastic brand
evangelists through their personal accounts. This content will help to boost of its presence in social
media.

For the situational customers the start page should focus on the most attractive deals. If shopping at
the third-party marketplaces after visiting thevanca.com proves through data analysis to be a
significant trend, it may be worth addressing the issue through either dynamic pricing (providing
additional discounts in real time if the customer browses only discounted items).
In any case the “cookie” file should be sent to the customer’s browser in order to identify them
during further visits. This will allow following the “known customer” journey during the future visits
to The Vanca site, and, in certain cases, will improve the possibilities for customizing marketing
messages at the third-party sites. The customers should also be encouraged to subscribe to the
company’s accounts at social media, e-newsletter or to download the mobile app; developing one
should be a top priority for the company.

The repeat customers should be targeted through:

 Mailings
 Mobile app offers
 Social media posts
 Offers on reviewing any product purchased on the website
 Coupons

This goal will be to target customers by building a system for increasing the personalization of
content of the messages based on purchase records. Automated systems to deliver different
messages to different customers should be used.

Recommended strategic measures

 The data available on customer behaviour should be used to make decisions on what
instruments and channels of marketing should be used. Instead of number of conversions,
the company should look at customer acquisition costs and customer lifetime values in their
analysis.
 Content management of the website through the use of cookies in order to better target
customers.
 Development of a mobile app
 Creating staff for the regular development of fashion-related content for the use on the
company site, in social media and in press relations with fashion bloggers/vloggers. The aim
should be daily updates to social media like Facebook or Twitter and weekly video clips to be
used on the company’s YouTube channel (the quality and style of video should be on par
with professional vlogging content). Some of the tasks can be outsourced, yet the company
has to have internal system of managing the quantity and quality of the content
 Instalment of highly versatile CRM platform, capable of managing the transactions history of
each known customer, delivering marketing messages both through personal (mail, mobile
app) and mass channels (display ads, ads in social media, search engines, etc.) with analytic
monitoring of CAC. placement, the price per impression appeared to be still lower, leading to
the very attractive CAC
Comprehensive Digital Media Plan for the available budgets

The Vanca should focus on below digital marketing tools

 Measurement: Web analytics tools to measure consumer behavior on the website as well as
other marketplaces. If there is a gap between hits and conversions – It has to be identified
what made the customer not make a purchase. Subsequently a decision on Pricing, Product
quality, Product display, Product information, Or absence of correct sizes and fits. The Vanca
only uses Store hippo which gives insights into how a brand and its competitors have
performed in a time period. However it does not give any analysis of what and what not is
working for the brand.

 Building traffic: As we know from the case that the brand can target 30 million users but is
only able to reach 1 million users. To drive traffic following channels must be considered –
Search Marketing - SEO, Paid search, PPC
o Online PR – Social media blogs, feeds, communities
o Online partnerships – Affiliate marketing, Co-branding, Link-building, widget
marketing
o Interactive ads – behavioral targeting
o Viral Marketing – Generating media mentions, Buzz marketing

 Targeted landing pages (Website Customization) – Since we are suggesting the brand to
have different landing pages for situational and aspirational users, it becomes important to
align the content of the website accordingly.

 Display ads : Since we need to build brand awareness, Audience targeting through display
ads is recommended. Affinity, in-market, and demographic all three kinds of audience to be
targeted through display ads.
o Remarketing – To reach out to users who have already visited the website is
important.

 Video Marketing:
o Paid – YouTube ads ( Non skippable in stream ads) , Videos on other sites, Social
media, Influencer videos
o Owned – Website/App , Owned social media
o Earned – User generated reviews, and feedback
 Mobile marketing – The Vanca has not utilized this channel. It is recommended to have a
app based shopping format.

 Email Marketing: Primarily to be used for existing users with personalized offers for more
traffic. The landing and transaction pages are linked to the email marketing for easy
customer experience.

 Social Media Marketing:

o Paid social , Influencer marketing
o Owned – Own social media, blogs
o Earned – User reviews and feedbacks
o Content marketing plan across channels – Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Instagram
Key Metrics and Control Plan to measure progress and identify optimization areas

1. Key metrics for measuring website analytics -

 Visitor information, behavioural information, marketing information
2. Key metrics for paid search include -
 Impressions, Click, Cost, Conversion, Avg position
 CTR, CPC, Conversion rate, ROI, ROAS
 Quality score
 Impression share
3. Key metrics of landing pages -
 Page views, traffic, Bounce rate , Conversion rate

4. Key metrics to track display ads -

 Cost ( cpc/cpm), conversion, performance ctr
5. Key metrics for video ads -
 Brand awareness, Ad recall, Impressions, Views, view rate, watch time,
 Brand interest lift, consideration lift, favourability lift
6. Key metrics for email marketing -
 Open rate, Click rates,
7. Key metrics for social media
 Social listening tools and share matrix,
 New visits, mentions (For measuring brand awareness)
 Visits, shares, likes, comments ( For measuring customer engagement)
 Number of leads, and quality of leads ( For measuring lead generation)
 Sales, conversions, page value ( For measuring sales)
 Repeat visits/sales, email opens/sales ( For measuring customer retention)