Big Skinny Case

Answer 1: Pursuing sponsored search strategy has been proved beneficial for BigSkinny.To attract a large range of customers, 1Big Skinny is bidding for a variety of keywords. These keywords differ in value in terms of conversion rate but overall they have been effective in increasing brand awareness among internet surfers.1From Exhibit 4 it is very clear that total number of clicks were around 2063 (Total clicks= impressions * click through rate = 42,986 * .048) that means odds of an ad getting click are quite high. It also signifies that sponsored search is working as a good facilitator for Big Skinny to make customers visit its website.Considering average 1price $20 and conversion rate .05, Big Skinny was able to generate the good revenue of $2063 (Assuming total sale=total clicks* conversion rate* average price)from sponsored search method. We believe that overall sponsored search strategy has been fruitful for Big Skinny. We would encourage Big Skinny to increase its bid for Big Skinny because its number of impression is 2,452 which should be more considering its conversion rate, which is highest among all keywords.

Also, cost per conversion is not too high for this key word. Another keywords for which Big Skinny could bid higher is ultra-thin wallets. Seeing its total no of impressions, CTR and conversion rates are pretty high. Higher bidding might help to make it easily visible and to attract more customers to Big Skinny’s site.Big Skinny should lower its bid for leather wallet for two reasons. First, even though number of impressions for this keyword is high its CTR & conversion rate are comparatively too low and cost per conversion is highest among all other keywords provided. Second, Big Skinny actually does not provide pure leather wallet but offers wallet with 1leather exterior with nylon microfiber interior. Answer 2: After analyzing the case we think that Big Skinny should stay with existing distributors and focus their effort on building and improving a brand image.1Big Skinny already has partnership with the most popular online distributors like Amazon, eBay, Buy.com and staples.com. Internet shopping is trending these days- a product catches our attention, we find a way to buy it and the easiest way to locate the product is to browse it on trusted online retailer’s website.

But despite the popularity of internet shopping, users are still skeptical about making purchases from unknown sales sites. To make purchases customers would any day prefer an established name over a newly visited site.To build that trust and raise awareness of the product it is best to stick to customer trusted retail distributors like Amazon, eBay etc. Big Skinny should make efforts to strength the existing relationships with already established distributors which will ultimately bring brand security to customers. Expanding the partnership with new distributors will also decrease the revenue earned by Big Skinny for, more partnerships would mean more payments in terms of fees and commissions. New distributors which do not have their own brand awareness among customers will charge fix fee irrespective of sales. We do not think Big Skinny should take this risk. The next option for big skinny at the moment is to follow its very own strategy of creative promotions & interactive marketing and at the same time it should try to advertise on sites with huge user base such as fatwallet.com, slickdeals.com etc.

This will redirect users to Big Skinny’s site or its distributor’s sites with insurances of already trusted third party. Good thing is that they already have big happy customer base and a lot of consumer testify how good their product is. Answer 3: The use of technologies in terms of Algorithm search, sponsored links, distributors and social media sites are quicker ways to attract new traffic in online marketing. 1The erroneous number of orders (4000) received signifies that the online advertising was attracting new traffic to Big Skinny’s sites. But creating new traffic through social media technologies is comparatively a slower process. 2The idea behind using social media techniques is to create brand awareness and motivate customers to use social media to engage in the marketer’s brand. Big Skinny added an AddThis applet on its website so that customers could share the website on various social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Myspace and Delicious. Big Skinny had a large loyal customer base who would buy the skinny wallets with a blink of an eye. Some of these customers posted testimonial and pictures of skinny wallets on social media, which ultimately increased Big Skinny’s brand awareness among other prospective customers. Social media relationship pays off in the long-term.

As the awareness grows so will the new traffic. 2The social media environment is largely consumer- not marketer- controlled. 1Contests like Save The Cow and Wallet Haiku were implemented to ensure brand engagement. Big Skinny via regular uploads of videos, interactive wallet selection guide and contests tried keeping “the street fair sensation” alive on social media. The consumer involvement (behavior) in the form of comments, testimonials, tweets, contests etc. was a thumbs up for Big Skinny and is a measure of the right flow of the use of social media for advertising. Social media does not increase traffic directly or immediately as online distributors and sponsored search might tend to do. Social media builds a meaningful relationship with its customers alongside attracting new traffic via marketing outcomes like brand awareness and word of mouth. To comment on the quantitative evaluation of the flow of new traffic via social media at an initial stage is difficult.

References:

1Benjamin and Scott Duke (2012). “Online Marketing at Big Skinny”, Harvard Business School.2 Donna L Hoffman and MarekFodor. “Can you measure the ROI of your Social Media Marketing?” MIT Sloan Management review