Direct to consumer retail and e-commerce marketing strategy case study: Warby Parker

Warby Parker is a glasses designer, manufacturer, and retailer taking the world by storm. Their direct to consumer (D2C) model allows this company to build relationships directly with customers and benefit from retaining them, without expensive intermediaries and partners. "By circumventing traditional channels, designing glasses in-house, and engaging with customers directly, we’re able to provide higher-quality, better-looking prescription eyewear at a fraction of the going price." - Warby Parker   In this post, I'll be exploring Warby Parker's marketing strategy and offering our recommendations to develop customer relationships within your retail e-commerce business. To do this succinctly, I'll be using the RACE Framework to highlight WP's strategy at 4 crucial stages in the customer journey - Reach, Interact, Convert, and Engage.

The RACE Framework for direct to…

Read up on our latest pharmaceutical marketing strategy recommendations to optimize your marketing plan and convert more customers over the next 12 months

Take stock heading into 2021 after what has been a challenging year for pharmaceutical marketers, healthcare, medical and high-science marketers, and all who work in the industry. The strategic evaluation and forecasting season that comes with year-end means many of you are scanning, benchmarking, and prioritizing to strengthen your pharmaceutical marketing strategies for the coming year. When getting ready for 2021, before even looking at your strategy it's essential to revisit your planning framework. So, let's quickly take a whistlestop tour of why the RACE Framework is the key to setting up your pharmaceutical marketing strategy for success.

Using the RACE Framework to plan your pharmaceutical marketing strategy

The RACE Framework is a practical framework to help manage and improve results from your digital marketing. When planning your overall marketing strategies,…

If you want to achieve success with your marketing campaign, you’ll have to ensure that your every marketing effort is measurable.

Goals for your marketing campaign can be improving lead generation, increasing brand awareness, boosting your ROI, or anything in between. Whatever the case, measuring and analyzing your marketing campaign data will provide you with insights that will help you thrive. This is, naturally, easier said than done. The following measurement and analysis practices will allow you to learn exactly what went right and what wrong with your marketing campaign. The knowledge you gain this way will improve your future marketing strategies.

KPI Identification for your marketing campaign

If you want to track the performance of your marketing campaign, you’ll first need to identify your key performance indicators (KPIs). Which indicators you’ll track will depend entirely on your own marketing goals. Over 54% of marketers have the goal of increasing sales leads generated. …

This tube map is a great way to summarise online marketing options to non-digital specialists or to check your digital media knowledge for skills gaps

You will know from our digital media infographics and success maps that we're big fans of using visuals to help simplify the understanding of the many opportunities in digital media. Here's a visual representation of online media options we wish we had thought of! It's from our friends over at agency Hallam Internet and needs no further explanation.

The 2020 digital marketing map

You can get a higher resolution version of the visual from Hallam Internet.

The 2013 digital marketing map

I originally shared this infographic back in 2013 and since then a lot has happened as digital platforms have developed. I'm prompted to update it since Susan Hallam…

These travel campaigns gained impressive ROI through creativity not big budgets

As a marketer, it often feels like you’re being asked to secure impressive results with very few resources. A small budget can make the desired engagement with a brand seem impossible to achieve, but a little bit of creativity can go a long way. Travel marketing is all about capturing the imagination of the audience and while this can be easily done with stunning images of a service or a product and big personalities, there is another way. Break from the norm and tap into an element of travel that has often been overlooked to get the greatest return on investment (ROI). [si_guide_block id="81120" title="Download our Premium Member Resource – Travel e-commerce marketing trends" description="Read our guide to the latest travel e-commerce marketing trends to learn how big data and visual technologies such as AR and VR are transforming the industry."/] If that seems…

Integrated campaigns are effective at balancing both short-term sales uplifts and long-term brand-building effects by combining a range of different channels

The advantages of creating a joined-up, integrated marketing communications (IMC) plan are well-documented and go back over twenty years. Even before the internet really took off businesses, brands and agencies were looking for ways to create consistency across content and media touchpoints. Although not all campaigns have to be fully integrated (e.g. short-term guerrilla campaigns or PR stunts), brands looking to make an impression and raise awareness as part of a product launch or seasonal sales push should consider how the different elements of a campaign come together as one. Integrated campaigns are effective at balancing both short-term sales uplifts and long-term brand-building effects by combining a range of different channels: [caption id="attachment_147672" align="aligncenter" width="640"]…

It’s not about digital or traditional, those don’t exist. It’s about integrated marketing communications. Different channels do different things and that’s the point

Lots of marketers will tell you that it’s possible to build a business using just online channels but that’s just not true and most of these people are selling tactical solutions, they may be good at what they do, but be careful. They reference examples such as Facebook, conveniently forgetting that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook were all over US national television, gaining free coverage to tens of millions of people.

[si_guide_block id="84595" title="Integrated marketing megatrends" description="Learn how to create insight-driven improvements and an aligned digital strategy, as well as future-proofing your business model with our guide to the integrated marketing megatrends."/]

Tie both shoelaces, not just one

Integrated marketing communications is all about linking these things together, recognizing that one media channel is not going to save the day and…

Practical guidance on engaging individual companies

Account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns can come in all shapes and sizes. Depending on the companies that make up the target list, the tactics can be an almost limitless blend of online and offline activity. Regardless of how that blend is, erm, blending for an individual company, 9 times out 10 you’re going to want the individuals who work at your target accounts to come to your website at some point soon. As learned readers of Smart Insights, no doubt you’re at least up to speed with the fundamentals of SEO and have consumed one of the dozens of articles on inbound. But ABM is different. We’re not trying to bring in as many visitors as possible, we’re trying to bring in as many as possible from our account list. This slight difference in the challenge brings its own blend of tactics that we’re going to explore in this…

"Self-indulgent, poorly written shite" that screams "me! me! me!" before the needs of the customer.

Over the last few years, Oasis has released campaign adverts that play on the advertising industry. Calling out the behind-the-scenes thinking of adverts in order to appeal to what seems to be an edgier and cooler new generation who it thinks are tired and bored of adverts. But has it gone too far with the release of its latest line of adverts, by promising to stop all advertising if the brand hits its sales targets? It seems like a cheap gimmick to me that neither inspires nor impresses me to buy Oasis' drinks. Also, let's not forget that it's also probably a lie just to get people engaging/talking about its ads - will the brand really stop advertising? Let's take a look at its full #refreshingstuff campaign and why it's not really that impressive, or creative.

Adverts that calls out…

How do you go viral without social media?

Lost was created by Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, was produced by Bad Robot Productions, and was filmed almost entirely on location in Hawaii. The show was produced by ABC Studios and aired on the ABC network in the US. The show was also distributed across the globe with the UK showing it on Channel 4, which is where I got my hands on it. On top of it's brilliantly intricate (and often convoluted) storytelling, Lost was also known for its innovative nontraditional marketing. This came as a world-spanning alternate reality game (ARG) in 2006 called The Lost Experience. [si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download FREE Resource – Digital marketing plan template" description="Our popular marketing planning template built on the Smart Insights RACE planning system."/] The game first began on May 2, 2006, in the United Kingdom, May 3, 2006, in…