Jewellery Box Company - Social Media Marketing and SMART Objectives of the Strategic Plan - Case Study Example

Jewellery Box

Introduction

Jewellery Box Company (Jewellerybox.co.uk) is a company based in the United Kingdom that deals with the retail of jewellery such as rings, necklaces, earrings and other types of products. The company started in 2014 with only five employees. However, the current number of employees is sixteen. This shows that the company is increasing, with up to 8,000 products being sold. There is a huge gap especially in the market, with many clients having the need to purchase fine jewellery which goes for a low price. Therefore, the company has the opportunity of filling this gap by providing quality products at affordable prices. Jewellery Box Company’s major products consists of sterling silver and also 9ct gold products. However, it has products that are sterling silver dipped in 18ct gold.

SMART Objectives of the Strategic Plan

The first objective of the company is to be a leading jewellery retailer in the country and also on the online platform. Jewellery Box Company has focused on increasing its business both offline and online while dealing with the improvement of the business deals.

The second objective is offering different selectable pieces of jewels that can be donned on multipurpose occasions and some for specific occasions. The company therefore has the opportunity of reaching its target by guaranteeing customer satisfaction and ensuring that their products are affordable and can be delivered according to the clients’ wish.

The third objective concerns the production of quality products as far as jewellery brands are concerned. These products have to be excellent in terms of quality; the company takes an interest in the sterling silver and 9ct gold jewellery which are of similar prices as those in the costume jewellery.

The fourth objective is to improve the sales of the products through marketing strategies. Promotion is very important in any business and therefore the company has the intention of creating more promotional services, both in the country and also online. The company focuses on various cultures such as the Black Friday in order to create awareness about their products.

The fifth objective of the company regarding this strategic plan is to ensure new clients are acquired and maintained for a huge expansion of the company from a local jewel store to an international company. The company has the ability of expanding its stores to other parts of the country and also have franchises in other countries.

Social Media Marketing: 1st May to 31st October

Social media marketing is a very important process in this strategy. The process began on the 1st of May and is expected to go on throughout until the 31st of October.

The company has designed a website and is already upgrading the website on a regular basis; 1st May to 31st October, so that it is customer friendly and attractive to them. While upgrading the website, the team has also began collecting the website statistics from the 15th to the 30th or 31st of every month; May to October. Direct marketing is equally important and will be done from May to October 2016 in a similar fashion as the collecting of the statistics.

Email marketing would also increase brand marketing and also the proper and satisfactory delivery of services to the clients (Rana 2009). Customers will understand that the company can do all it takes to ensure that the services being provided are for the benefit of the consumers. The dates for commencing this plan is from 1st to 14th of the month as from May to October. This will be done in a similar way as the time-limited e-mail offers which occur from 1st and 14th of every month over the same period of time. Another important platform is YouTube, which helps in creating awareness of the products to the customers on a virtual platform. The creation of this advertising campaign was done in the month of May although it required more follow ups in order to ensure the clip was exciting.

The company is actively marketed on Facebook and is taking the opportunity of testing the marketing platform on Twitter. Twitter is the best known platform for business advertisement and therefore most successful companies have taken advantage of this in marketing their brands to their consumers. Jewellery Box Company therefore has the strategy of updating Twitter campaigns from between 15th May to 14th June; 1st July to 31st July; 15th August to 14th September, and from 1st October to 31st October. The company further believes in using various social media campaigns in reaching out to their customers. After serious considerations, the company has looked into creating more attention in the market through increase in blogging. The number of bloggers; majorly the upcoming ones, can highly assist in introducing the different brands in the market. This started by the 1st of May and is expected to be done until the 21st of July 2016. Finally, the rebranding of the logo started on 1st June and will commence until 14th July; this process is important so that the customers can be attracted by the professional presence of this company.

SWOT Analysis

The company contains various talking points in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Strengths

The company has a variety of products that are already in the market and also launching new products to ensure that there is increase in the customer interests. The introduction of the sterling silver coated with the 18ct gold ensures that the clients have new varieties and attractive offers to select from.

The second strength is that the company posts fashionable photos of its products online. This creates attraction and reality, for the consumers to select their favorite products.

Apart from creating attraction through the images of the jewels, the company also offers specific products on a promotional basis. The company has used events or occasions such as the ‘Black Friday’ to ensure that it promotes its selected brands, including bangles and earrings which are sold at 1 sterling pound. According to Papp (2015), these promotions increase the attention of customers especially the new ones; it also works with the ones targeted for retention because most of them may go back and not only purchase the products on promotion but also other brands.

The company also offers shorter period for money back guarantee which helps in convincing the clients concerning the lower risk of purchasing the products.Weaknesses

One major weakness of the strategy is that the company targets only women, meaning that it does not tap the potential attraction to the male consumers; male products are few and yet they are considered a potential lot.

Similar to the first point, the company has not taken into consideration the promotion of watches, which is a popular brand to both males and females. Male and female watches are trendy and fashionable at the moment.

The company also does not possess a marketing unit which focuses on the designing of the marketing strategies that are specifically tailored to cater for the products, promotions, price and location.

Opportunities

Through this strategy, the company has a number of opportunities. The first one is that it can offer more jewellery choices especially for men; male watches can also fit into the strategy (Hodgkinson 215, p. 201).

Another opportunity is that it can offer personalised jewellery that are tailored to the specific demands of the customers.

The company can also opt to create some partnerships with other local jewellery stores in other geographic regions.

Threats

The economic challenges facing Britain after Brexit is becoming unpredictable as the value of the pound fluctuates (Dhingra 2015a, p. 22; Dhingra et al. 2016; Driffiled & Karoglou 2016; Begg & Mushövel 2016). Therefore, the company would face harsh economic times especially with the consumers also feeling the pinch of Britain leaving the EU.

PESTEL Analysis

When analyzing the marketing strategy of the company, it is also important to evaluate the environmental, geographical, and legal aspects that help them in reaching out to many customers.

Political Factors

There are various political factors affecting the jewel industry in Britain. The country has recently concluded a referendum on leaving the European Union (Capital Economics, 2016). With Britain taking the option of leaving the European Union, it means that the business relations between the country and other states in Europe are adversely affected (Buckle et al. 2015, p. 67; Coulter & Hancke 2016, p. 149). This is considered bearing in mind that the social media platform is not only created for the people in the United Kingdom but also other countries, especially across Europe.

The issues surrounding the political alignment of the country such as the stand to leave the European Union also affect trading of the raw materials for the products such as gold and sterling silver (Dagnis & Snaith 2016, p. 5). One opportunity is that the country has had a stable political environment, which has increased the chances of higher investments and stable business premises (Featherstone 2016, p. 66). Therefore, Jewellery Box Company has the strategy of taking its business ventures a notch higher by increased sales within the country and also abroad through shipment.

Economic Factors

There are various economic factors affecting the jewellery industry especially for the Jewellery Box. The first point is the fluctuation of the sterling pound. The British currency has been stable for a long time although with the current trends, following Brexit, the prices of products will have to fluctuate too (Charter 2012; Purdue et al. 2015). The bank lending rate may also reduce due to the Bank of England taking its time to regulate the currency (Cadman 2016, p. 9). Many companies have lost billions of pounds due to these challenges and therefore the company will also have top brace itself for these harsh economic times (Ram & Lewin 2016; Crafts 2016). In addition, the customers are also affected in terms of some being retrenched and the bills going higher, some would consider jewelleries as luxuries and therefore would focus on the recurrent expenditure.

Social Factors

The Company has also ventured in the social aspects of its market. The major buyers of the products are ladies ranging from the age of 20 to 45 years old. Britain contains a lot of social history especially on her customs and royalty (Otnes & Maclaran 2015, p. 86; Cooper 2015). The Britons are known for being ornamental. The aspect of monarchy tells it all, with various traditions upheld by the queen (Otnes & Maclaran 2015, p. 89). These functions can help the company in conducting the best marketing possibilities. In addition, there is other events such as the Black Friday which occurs during every last Friday of November (Sandhu 2015, p. 6). This year, the company has advanced in preparations for this special day that is celebrated across the United Kingdom.

Technological Factors

Technology is very crucial for any company to improve on its sales and business deals. Jewellery Box Company therefore has to focus on information technology. The presence of the company in the online platforms ensures that it constantly communicates with its clients. The company focuses on online advertisement as a way of attracting the different types of customers.

Environmental Factors

There are different environmental factors affecting Jewellerybox Company. The main factor consists of the competitors. Some of the major competitors include Top Shop, New Look, H & M, Joy, Primark, Accessoriez, and River Island. It also faces competition from F. Hinds and Ernest Jones for the retail of fine jewelleries (Brun & Moretto 2012, p. 610). The major advantage is that Jewellery Box has the opportunity of improving its marketing strategy ahead of its competitors.

Legal Factors

The tax laws are also strict meaning that the pricing strategy is affected. There are various tax and processing regulations that various dealers handling jewellery have to ensure they possess (Brooks 2013, p. 66). Some of them are expensive when processing them. Some of them include the licensing and export certifications, especially on the money laundering, jewellery scandals, hallmarking, packaging and also labelling (Gov.UK 2013). These regulations highly affect the non-European Union members in terms of paying more for the products and having tougher restrictions (Gov.UK 2013; Stenholm, Acs, & Wuebker 2013, p. 180). It is important to note that since Britain has left the European Union, then there are challenges for business ventures in the United Kingdom in terms of meeting these restrictions (MacShane 2015).

The Target Market

The main target for this marketing strategy are females between the age of 22 and 40. These females have the potential of purchasing the products for their use or as gifts for their friends and relatives. The major reason for selecting this target group is that jewellery is highly appreciated by women who would like to increase their beauty by putting on ornaments (Raden 2015, p. 54). In addition, ladies always have a taste of what they want, meaning that they love trendy and classic products especially for various occasions including weddings (Yarwood-White 2008; Wang & Altinay 2012, p. 5). Therefore, they would not wish to miss the occasion of purchasing such products at affordable costs.

Still on the same target market, age of this group is very important because they are regarded as the persons who value fashion. Married women found in this age bracket not only buy their products but also for their husbands and children, particularly they purchase watches, bangles, rings and even earrings for their daughters. The same applies to the unmarried, who shop with their partners and purchase quality ornaments. From the above descriptions about culture, most of the customers found in the target market value culture and fashion in terms of various occasions, meaning the strategy will help satisfy the cultural and fashion of the customers.

Acquisition & Retention Proposals

The company has a favorable platform and strategy in the social media that can help it market its products to its potential customers. However, one main point is that there is need to acquire new clients and also maintaining them to ensure higher profits. Research conducted in the recent past has shown that an improvement of customer retention by a mere 5% can result to an improvement in profit by a margin of more than 25% (Beard 2013, p. 128). These statistics show that indeed the company has to come up with better strategies of maintaining the customers.

The first digital marketing strategy that can be used for the retention and acquisition of new clients is the improvement of customer care services online (Smith 2015, p. 71). The customer service of the company should be highly driven by checking on providing responses to questions and other concerns regarding the services being offered by the company (Süphan 2015, p. 44). This also entails the prediction of future problems and concerns from consumers even before they raise them (Heesen 2015, p. 73). In other words, a good customer service will ensure that it predicts the queries of the clients and improves on the best means of marketing the product especially on different social media platforms (Thompson 2014, p. 59).

Another strategy is surpassing the clients’ expectations. Most clients expect superb products that are attractive to them. However, the customer care and marketing team have the role of exceeding the customers’ expectations through the better delivery of products (Hennig-Thurau, & Hansen 2013, p. 66). For instance, the delivery of services can be done with a much more hyped strategy such as giving them a note of appreciation.

Financial Analysis and Forecasting

Looking at the data collected from the previous transactions, it is important to evaluate the budget and requirements that can be utilized in reaching the finality of the strategy. The analysis answers the questions regarding whether the strategy will be fruitful or not. There are six major platforms which are considered by the Jewellery Box Company; they include Facebook, Twitter, E-mailing, YouTube, Website, and Bloggers. Based on the discussions, then blogging would be the most favorite part of the strategy.

From the results found from Facebook, 98 percent of the fans who have liked the page are women while the rest are males. This explains the reason why this strategy will be able to sell. Most of the fans are from the United Kingdom, meaning higher promotion through Facebook will ensure that most products are sold locally. When estimating the budget required for the advertisements:

The Total number of days the adverts will take (May to October) = (31+30+31+31+30+31) = 184 days

Another option would be creating adverts that link up to the Jewellerybox.co.uk website, which would mean that the total amount of money will vary with the type of impression being made. For instance, the company will make a lifetime budget that can be used (Marshall, Krance, & Meloche 2015, p. 65). The total budget will be about £ 2,000 for the whole period of the campaign. From this discussion, it means that the company has the ability of increasing its promotions through the links from various social media platforms to its official website. In addition, for Facebook, the links can lead to its official page for others to refer to the current products or brands.

YouTube is also very crucial, although only one video will be used to show all the types of brands that Jewellery Box has in its stores. The 30 seconds video is enough to share the gallery of these products while directing them to the official website. The same case applies on Twitter, which is updated in half a month. Most updates made include the new products that are released and also the promotions that will enable the customers to focus on the products to be sold during the Black Friday event.