Digital Marketing Specialization – Capstone Project

Prepared By: Praveen Sinha

January 2017

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Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary ....................................................................................... 3 2 Business Model and Growth Strategy ............................................................ 4

2.1 Growth Strategy ................................................................................................... 4 2.2 Grainger’s Online Presence .................................................................................. 4

2.3 Grainger’s Customers ........................................................................................... 5 2.4 Trends ................................................................................................................... 5

3 MRO Industries and Distribution .................................................................... 6 4 Bosch Power Tool .......................................................................................... 7

4.1 Power Tool Customers21

...................................................................................... 7

4.2 Social Media Presence ......................................................................................... 9

5 Consumer Decision Journey ........................................................................ 11 5.1 Business Objectives (scenario based) ................................................................ 13 5.2 Key Question to Answer .................................................................................... 13

5.3 Key Data Collection Sources and Analysis........................................................ 15 5.4 KPI’s mapping to business objectives ................................................................ 18 5.5 Biases in Data Collection ................................................................................... 19

5.6 Steps to Avoid Bias ............................................................................................ 19 5.7 Data Analysis and their Category....................................................................... 19

6 Channel and Content Strategy ..................................................................... 22 6.1 Audience Category 1 .......................................................................................... 23

6.1.1 Content Marketing: ..................................................................................... 23

6.1.2 Email Marketing: ........................................................................................ 23

6.2 Audience Category 2 .......................................................................................... 24 6.2.1 Content Marketing: ..................................................................................... 24 6.2.2 Email Marketing: ........................................................................................ 24

6.2.3 Integration of Channels: .............................................................................. 25

7 Marketing Plan ............................................................................................. 25 7.1 Content Marketing Plan ..................................................................................... 25

7.2 Email Marketing Plan......................................................................................... 28 7.3 Grainger Branding .............................................................................................. 29

8 Test and Control Plan .................................................................................. 31 8.1 Research Objectives ........................................................................................... 32 8.2 Measures to avoid impact on user experience:................................................... 33

8.3 Testing Content Marketing Campaign68

: ........................................................... 33

9 Bibliography ................................................................................................. 35

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1 Executive Summary This document is the final outcome of Capstone project on Digital Marketing Specialization for University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign through Coursera. This project is designed for students of this specialization to apply digital marketing principles and various concepts they have learned during previous courses and construct a workable digital marketing campaign plan for client Grainger to increase sales of Bosch power tool by 10% on Grainger.com. In this capstone project we started with analysis of Grainger’s existing business model and their customers along with presence in the market. Based on problem statement and given customers scenarios we have identified and analyze following and this document is arranged accordingly:

business objectives for each scenarios,

key questions to answer,

kind of data for analysis and their source,

KPIs for business objectives,

Channel and Content Strategy

Content Marketing Plan

Email Marketing Plan

Test Strategy

This Consolidated Digital Marketing Plan describes in details about business objectives i.e. Build Brand Awareness, Improve Sales Process, Reposition the Brand and Grow Loyalty. For data analysis and to measure various KPIs described in this document different analytical tools can be utilized which includes Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google Webmaster tools, Google Customer Surveys etc. This document also talks about how the outcome from these tools can give powerful insights into various planning and strategic options for content and email marketing and how to make them successful to achieve the objective of this project. At the end we also discussed how to measure the success and tweak the plan to make outcome better.

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2 Business Model and Growth Strategy

W.W. Grainger, Inc. is a business-to-business distributor of products used to maintain, repair and operate facilities

1. Grainger uses a multichannel business model to serve more than 1.6 million customers of all

sizes with multiple ways to find and purchase products through a network of branches, field sales forces, direct marketing through catalogs and Internet channels

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2.1 Growth Strategy

Grainger primary strategy for growth is to use e-commerce channel to increase levels of integration with customers, making it easy to do business and build customer loyalty and stickiness

5. In addition to

investing in traditional e-commerce platforms, they are also focusing on adopting mobile technologies and innovating newer approaches for reaching smaller customers.

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2.2 Grainger’s Online Presence

Based on below table the greatest revenues for Grainger were from power tools purchasers who visited the Bosch Power Tools Pages on Boschtools.com and Grainger.com

Source: Grainger, Targeting Tools Data,

Social Media7:

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2.3 Grainger’s Customers

As per Google Hangouts videos, Grainger’s best customers are mainly large, complex organizations which accounts for around 80% of their total volume. Grainger’s secondary customers are local medium/low end users and forepersons.

Demographically Grainger’s customers are as below 8

The client list is extremely diversified. Manufacturing (18% heavy, 11% light) is just 30% of revenue9.

2.4 Trends

Grainger are seeing changes in customers buying patterns, though web is still their primary source and

more and more users are shifting towards to mobile and mobile apps with total volume reaching around

70%. Customers can place order while working at site or off business time. The most significant impacting

online sales are demand for improved mobile applications 10

.

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3 MRO Industries and Distribution

MRO industry in North America is huge but very fragmented. Currently MRO market value is well above $150 billion and there are over a hundred different players of various sizes but none of these including W.W. Grainger, Fastenal Company and HD Supply etc hold greater than a single‐digit market share in their respective markets.

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Businesses are ordering more products online, utilizing inventory management solutions and opting to have orders shipped or made available immediately through onsite services

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Source : Grainger FactBook 2016

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Below are top 5 big players in MRO industries 17

: 1.Wolseley 2.Würth Group 3.W.W.Grainger 4. HD Supply 5. Sonepar NA

4 Bosch Power Tool Bosch Power tool is the part of Robert Bosch Tool Corporation (RBTC). Bosch designs, manufactures, and sells power tools, rotary tools, and accessories, as well as lawn and garden equipment

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4.1 Power Tool Customers21

Bosch Power Tools primary customers are procurement officers who buy the tools. The secondary customers include end users of these tools who search online for information on products they desire to use at work.

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Quality, performance and easy to use are the perceptions comes to mind after using Bosch tools. Bosch SWOT analysis we can derive the following results

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RBTC has following five other brands of tools available on Grainger.com: Skil (wide selection of power tools also sold on Zoro.com), Dremel (power tools), RotoZip (saws), Vermont American (hole drillers) and Gilmour (garden hoses, nozzles and sprinklers).

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4.2 Social Media Presence

Bosch Power Tools has presence on social media like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. YouTube has many videos for power tools starting with Bosch power tool story at(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBbOYd9cZVQ). Bosch also has an extensive presence on website-based “Bob Community,” which attracts 460,000 visitors with 35,000 registrations.

24 Bosch Power Tool on Twitter

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8 Bosch Power Tool on Facebook

25 Bosch Power Tool on YouTube

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5 Consumer Decision Journey Scenario 1 includes secondary customers and potential primary customers who visit Boschtools.com, look at power tools, but do not visit Grainger.com. In this particular scenario, primary customers may be involve in ‘active evaluation’ of the products by browsing through product information on ‘boschtools.com’ or may be already decided on product but wanted to revisit the specifications of the product before making final call to purchase from somewhere else. As suggested in different marketing research, buyers most often look at the company’s web site (80%) and conduct online research before buying product

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Secondary customers may be following an impulse for a need (Trigger), checking brand perception (Initial Consideration Set) or pinpointing the desired purchase option (Active Evaluation for initial Moment of Purchase). Following suggested analyses can be perform to builds brand awareness and redirect customers to Grainger’s web site:

1. Perform traffic analysis on the time spent on Bosch Power Tools Page. 2. Retarget a display ad indicating that Bosch Power Tools are sold on Grainger.com. 3. In response to time spent on Boschtools.com, retarget a display ad with an

invitation to join the email registry and upon registration, transmit email touting Grainger.com’s.

4. If found that visitor is not a current Bosch Power Tools customer on Grainger.com, sent an email to consider buying Bosch Power Tools through Grainger again.

Scenario 2 reflects customers who enter Boschtools.com, scan power tools and then proceed to Grainger’s power tools section. These include end users in three different stages—Trigger, Initial Consideration Set and those preparing final selections for procurement. Customers might be in active evaluation process and getting close to finalize the products or may by assessing return on Loyalty Loop. Some of them might be looking at description, support and prices before making final call. Following suggested analysis can be done in these scenarios:

i. Use traffic analysis to monitor time spent on Boschtools.com and Grainger’s Bosch Power Tools Page, Builds Awareness.

ii. After analyzing time spent on the two pages, then send a display ad invitation to join the company’s email registry, following up with email content marketing touting Grainger’s advantages – Influence Consideration.

iii. For abandoned shopping cart, engage content marketing with necessary details to complete a buy order on Grainger.com’s. Research has suggested various options and methods for remarketing in case of abandoned carts while the shoppers are still online or once they left. These process are build to bring back customers to the site and buy.

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Scenario 3 deals with customers who go to Grainger.com but looking in plumbing Page instead of power tools. There can be multiple possibly scenarios like customer might need plumbing tools on top of power tools, they might be in mode of multiple procurement and ‘Initial Consideration’/’Active Evaluation’ is under process. Besides above mentioned below analysis can be done for better results:

a. Analysis on abandoned shopping cart and actions to send emails to complete the shopping – Improve Sales Process.

b. If recent Bosch Power Tools customer on Grainger.com, sending a questionnaire asking them about past experience to encourage future business – Reposition the Brand.

c. Building brad awareness through value driven digital content 31

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5.1 Business Objectives (scenario based)

In scenario 1 customer visits Boshtools.com, look at a power tool but do not visit Grainger.com. Business Objective: Build Brand Awareness.

Potential customers might not aware of Grainger selling Bosch power tool and at what price. Building awareness among customers about Grainger as possible option to buy power tools could be one of the business objective.

In scenario 2 customer visits Boshtools.com, look at a power tool and then log in to Grainger.com and visit the power tools category

Business Objective: Grow Loyalty. Potential customers aware of Grainger selling Bosch power tool and their price is

competitive in market. They might be on this site before and wish to advocate for this brand. Business objective should be to grow loyalty by providing some benefits to regular customer and make sure they do not abandon the shopping cart and buy power tool from here

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In scenario 3 customer visits Boshtools.com, look at a power tool and log into Grainger.com to visit the plumbing category not power tools

Business Objective: Reposition the Brand. The idea behind repositioning the brand is to keep potential customers aware of

Grainger selling Bosch power tool and satisfy their wants and need. It should able to increase customers engagement and identity as Bosch power tool supplier

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Business Objective: Improve Sales Process. How to win customers and convert visitors to buyers, does sales effort is converting to

5.2 Key Question to Answer

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Prof. Kevin Hartman lectures on data collection as part of Digital Marketing course, there are primarily four steps to perform analysis on any section of customer journey. For each business objectives, key question to answer should be defined and how to find answer for the question. :

1) Plan - define quantifiable objective

2) Collect – use data mining tools and data management programs for analysis

3) Analyze – Conduct analysis to recommend suggestions

4) Report - Generate easy to understand reports and communicate clearly35

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5.3 Key Data Collection Sources and Analysis

In order to satisfy selective business objectives from previous module, we can have following key data collection done via various data mining tools and have analysis done on them.

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http://www.analyzewords.com/index.php

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http://likealyzer.com/facebook/grainger

https://www.similarweb.com/website/boschtools.com#overview

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https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/bluecrew4

5.4 KPI’s mapping to business objectives

Digital Marketing Metrics and KPIs are values used by marketing teams to measure and track the performance of their marketing campaigns. By creating specific digital marketing KPIs, it’s easy to determine targets and goals and measure performance based on those values

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As per book ‘Marketing Metrics’ published by Wharton Publishing, following KPIs should be keep close eye on for any digital marketing strategy:

Awareness: the percentage of potential customers who recognize a brand

Attitudes: a measure of a potential customer’s belief or response to a brand

Usage: a measure of a customer’s behavior (purchase habits or loyalty) 43

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5.5 Biases in Data Collection

5.6 Steps to Avoid Bias

5.7 Data Analysis and their Category

There are many different ways to analyze data. Some forms are more complex than others, and some focus primarily on numbers, others center on observations.

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Basic Types of Data Analysis

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Source: Jeffery Leak on Data Science

Following data analysis planned for this activity:

While looking into different data points provided in this course, descriptive analysis can be done to extract results and KPIs. Like analyzing the behavior of clicking in the CTR KPI reveals that the customer has awareness of the brand.

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From above graph Tuesday is the best performing day for advertising spent, with Monday coming second, therefore we should focus our advertising efforts there and avoid promoting Bosch products on Sunday.

We can apply an exploratory analysis on our data regarding the overall outcome and the performance correlation to identify patterns inside the numbers or if not any to get direction on where we can optimize our purchase funnel.

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We can assume that these are loyal Bosch product fans therefore we should focus our next marketing efforts on them (display remarketing, email marketing, phone calls, print catalogues, etc)

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Exploratory analysis takes the descriptive data and forms patterns of customer activity. Causal relationships may be deduced from the exploratory analysis. However, this causal connection must be later verified through survey research. Then, predictions can be made about expected behavior of the market segment—when one variable exists, another variable will soon follow. If we had Conversion Data from each distinctive channel, social media, remarketing, PPC, display, email, etc, we could also perform a very trustworthy predictive analysis to optimize our performance across all channels. The final analysis that we would be doing if we had the relevant data would be an inferential analysis in which we would use Usability Studies, Voice of Customer Studies and other surveys to come to meaningful assumptions regarding the other two Business Objectives (Loyalty, Brand Reposition).

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6 Channel and Content Strategy As per ‘Joe Pulizzi’, author of “Get Content, Get Customers” content marketing: “How a brand creates, delivers and governs original or curated content to attract and retain customers, positioning the brand as a credible expert and, ultimately, motivating a change in behavior”.

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Content marketing involve around what is being created across channels, who it is intended for, and what purpose it serves. The sweet spot for content marketing lies in an intercept between the marketing goals of a brand, the brand personality as it guides and differentiates that brand in the marketplace, and the consumer motivation for paying any attention to a brand at all.

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6.1 Audience Category 1

(new or existing customers landing on Grainger.com directly):

6.1.1 Content Marketing:

1) New customers can be targeted with banner ads that promote Bosch tools and combined with A/B multivariate testing optimizes the outcome performance. Display Advertising can be used through the Grainger.com website showing banners with Bosch tools products or offers optimized with A/B testing.

2) Existing customers can be targeted by creating personalized display content based of customers prior purchasing or browsing history.

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6.1.2 Email Marketing:

1) For existing customers email advertising can be used as a great tool to leverage and increase sales performance. Grainger can target these customers that are more inclined to buy power tools or have shown interest in Bosch brand. A/B testing is again the key for performance here.

2) For existing customers email campaign is either on a. Initial Consideration Set or b. Post Purchase Experience

And following business objective should be able to satisfy:

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1) Voice of Customer (Do the experiences delivered fulfil consumer expectations?) Consumer Satisfaction Product Reviews Relevant Product Offers etc.

2) Loyalty Relationship (Am I part of the initial consideration set?) New Products Advertisement Promotional Offers

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6.2 Audience Category 2

(new or existing customers landing on Boschtools.com directly): There are various ways or options to track users of category 2 who is visiting Boschtools.com, i.e.:

Tracking Cookies and Scripts

Browser Fingerprinting

User Agent etc.

HTTP Referrer Using any of above mechanism, we do have option to display personalized content of BoschTools while the same customer is browsing Grainger site.

4 Also the Boschtools.com reference traffic should be set

individually as a segment in the Grainger analytics platform to quickly identify and analyze this traffic55

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6.2.1 Content Marketing:

Scenario 1: Customers who does not visit Grainger after visiting Bosch tools can be tracked and displayed banner ads from Grainger and drive them back to the site. Scenario 2: The specific cookie and reference analytics can be used to identify this audience and when they login into the website show them a relevant banner adds with new tools or promotional offers. Scenario 3: One of above techniques can be used to track this customer and the promotional banners can follow them across all Grainger website.

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Other search engines (i.e. Google) or advertising platforms (i.e. facebook, twitter etc) can be used to deliver banner ads with contextual targeting for keywords like “power tools” or “cordless tools” to drive more potential customers to the Grainger.com website.

6.2.2 Email Marketing:

Boschtools should promote options for user to join mailing list or register themselves for various future benefits. User’s email information can be used on Grainger’s side for various remarketing reasons in different ways.

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Scenario 1: Customers who does not visit Grainger after visiting Bosch tools can be tracked and sent them remarketing emails with link to Grainger web site and some promotional offers. Scenario 2: Grainger can filter and send follow up emails to customers of this category with contents like:

• New tools advertisements, • Promotional offers, • Relative advantages of Grainger’s, • Future benefits of being Grainger’s customer etc. This will drag customers towards Grainger and will increase sales.

Scenario 3: Grainger can track customers of this particular category and offer some Bosch power tool advantages, combined promotional offers while buying others tools from Grainger etc.

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6.2.3 Integration of Channels:

While each of these channels will play a critical role in content strategy, the real power is when company can integrate two or more of the channels into one campaign or initiative. This is referred to as converged media or “native advertising.” Popular sites are as Buzzfeed, Crave and Forbes. To evaluate cross-channel integration, content audit is important and it's important to look at content marketing as a piece of the overall integrated marketing communications plan.

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7 Marketing Plan

7.1 Content Marketing Plan

Based on various analyses conducted in content and email marketing for different companies, following tips and techniques can be useful to make this content marketing campaign successful for Grainger.com:

1. Grainger should opt for Native ads which are viewed 53% more than banner ads. (Source: http://www.dedicatedmedia.com/articles/the-power-of-native-advertising)

2. Grainger should target campaign for customers visiting their site or BoschTool, users who are retargeted are 70% more likely to convert. (Source: http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2014/09/infographic-retargeting-advertising-statistics.html)

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3. Grainger should invest on rich media content marketing like Videos on ‘Youtube’ or ‘Facebook’, native ads that include rich media boost conversion rates by up to 60%. (Source: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/rich-media-native-advertising-infographic/147279?red=st)

4. Grainger should use Google Display Network to increase in conversions and impressions.(Source: Google)

5. Below are few incredible stats from Wishpond, displaying advantages of retargeting ads. 60

Content strategy used should be focused around the Bosch power tools products which is our main sales target and their unique characteristics, such as durability and quality of manufacturing along with Reviews that add to the overall estimate of the brand.

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7.2 Email Marketing Plan

Below are few tips and techniques for making email marketing successful for Grainger’s

Creating personalized, engaging content is key to a successful email strategy.

A strong subject line can enhance email open rate, but customers are more likely to read and engage if the message’s content is relevant to them.

Personalized emails create a more profound experience. With the Predictive Intelligence platform in Marketing Cloud, real-time messages to each customer highlight your focus on their specific needs and interests.

Grainger’s follow-up email to end users will emphasize how end users fulfill Grainger’s slogan, “for the ones who get it done” as one of the “Everyday Heroes” celebrated on Grainger’s YouTube feed.

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Email sample for improving Sales Process with Abandoned Shopping Carts: Those who abandoned a shopping cart or who have made a past purchase constitute sales leads for purchases. It is important to customize the information to uniquely address each buyer persona and the products they were already evaluated and in process of purchase

Email Sample for new registered User on Grainger’s site: Grainger should send personalized welcome email to all new registered users with the message of thanks for joining Grainger plus various advantages of joining Grainger along with 10%-15% coupon for first purchase. The goal is to make Grainger the ultimate choice in Active Evaluation/Reassessment phase of the CDJ. One best practice is to personalize the content to the individual buyer persona whenever possible.

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7.3 Grainger Branding

A successful content strategy creates a consistent online brand for audience, across all platforms. Grainger is very successful doing this over time. B2B online marketing expert Justin King refers to the “F-shape for usability”. Grainger uses a variation of the F-shape to great success. You can see how the top and left-hand side of the home page provide easy navigation to the product areas that are typically part of a new visitor’s initial search. Make sure Grainger’s home page offers multiple ways for visitors to get to product pages quickly (e.g..

via a left hand menu, a header menu and a search box). Show business customers what items are most often bought on Grainger’s website.

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The tone followed should be direct and accurate emphasizing to the fact that Boschtools are the tools to get the job done, with safety and ease which is what all the potential customers want. The visuals used should focus on the worker and the benefits that he acquires from these unique products. To make sure that the visual is aligned with the Brand Manual of Boschtools along with that of Grainger all the designs should be made with the collaboration the two creative departments. This is a hard task to accomplish but it is the one that will provide the best possible outcome.

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8 Test and Control Plan In order to verify and implement the recommendations from the previous module, we would like to use SMART research approach. SMART defines as

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To achieve these SMART objectives in integrated overall marketing strategies, Grainger should conduct primary research on their web site visitors using Google analytics and Google Customer surveys to get insights of following customer behavior and experience:

What customers are doing after visiting the web site,

What customers are searching for and how easily they find what they are looking for,

How well Bosch’s advertisement in capturing consumer’s attention

Which segment on various power tool categories are in demand

Analysis of customer satisfaction and their web site experience etc.

In order to verify and implement these objectives in Digital Marketing and Measurement Plan (DMMP) we need to conduct both Primary and Secondary research on both Quantitative and Qualitative Data.

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8.1 Research Objectives

Below are three research objectives for this project:

1) Improve Grainger’s sales process by increasing number of customers visiting Grainger web site. To help fulfill this objective, Grainger should have counts of customers visiting their web site in given different scenarios to identify KPIs:

1) Bounce rate 2) First Visit Matric 3) Return Visit Matric 4) Cart Abandon Rate etc.

Google Analytics tool can be use to get insight of above research objective before launching content and email campaigns. Getting these quantitative analysis (secondary research) done using data like numbers, figures and statistics and monitor specific KPI’s that are inherently connected with the sales process like ROI (Return On Investment), CPA (Cost per Acquisition) and ROAS (Return On Ad Spent ) and analyze the Conversion Funnel of the Grainger.com website

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2) Grow loyalty among Grainger’s customers should be next research objective. Google Survey

analytics tool, it can be used to get insights of customers satisfaction and web site experiences by analyzing their feedback, review, recommendation, complains etc. The data required for this is mostly qualitative (primary research) in nature which can be acquired from tools like Voice of Customer, Google Consumer Surveys, focus groups and other online monitoring tools like https://klout.com/home, https://www.google.com/trends, http://www.socialbakers.com/ etc. Results from this analysis can be used to identify KPIs:

1) Customer LifeTime Value (LTV) 2) Net Promoter Score (NPS) 3) Retention Rate

3) Building Brand Awareness of Grainger selling Bosch power tool would be third research

objective. The intent of this objective is to increase the number of customers who are aware that Grainger sells Bosch Power Tools, and convert a percentage into new sales. Data required for this analysis is both qualitative and quantitative. Display ads on various social sites, advertisement sites along with Boschtool.com and monitor user activities on these ads can provide vital insights of brand awareness. Sending emails to registered users with promotional offer, new products etc can drive customers to the site which can be easily measurable. Results from this analysis can be used to identify KPIs:

1) Online Conversion Rate 2) Traffic 3) Social Media Presence 4) Returning Visit Metric etc

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8.2 Measures to avoid impact on user experience:

Since all these research methodologies revolves around content management options like display ads, email, alerts etc. Various steps should be taken to make sure these activities should not make any negative impact to user experience when working on mobile or tablets. Few of these measures are

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1) Build responsive ads to display - it will make ads adjust to the available space

2) All banner ads should work well on smartphones or tablets.

3) Placement for banner ads: top of the page or left above the fold is best place to put banners

4) Size of banner ads: should not too big to cover the main content user is trying to view

5) Horizontal vs Vertical Ads: As per research, horizontal banners are less annoying

6) Avoid Pop ups

7) Frequency of emails: Limit to twice or thrice a week along with promotions

8) Clickable link within email should be in different color like blue and should take use to

appropriate page on Grainger web site

9) Video thumbnail is more appropriate then links.

8.3 Testing Content Marketing Campaign68:

A/B Testing: A/B tests involve testing two versions of a website with a single change against each other. The A version refers to the control and the B is the variation. By taking a look at live traffic, rankings, and conversions, A/B testing allows brands to measure a specific action or feature against another.

Multivariate Testing: Multivariate testing allows brands to test different balances of variances – including those listed above – while measuring traffic and drawing conclusions from the results.

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Total Word Count: 4562

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9 Bibliography 1Grainger Fact Book 2016 page 0 2http://csimarket.com/stocks/GWW-Business-Description.html

3Grainger Fact Book 2016 page 2 -3

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