There are many competent specialists in online marketing. Even outstanding ones. By the same token, there are plenty of ecommerce site builders around. Some are terrific technicians.
But we can safely say that none of them could have combined those two specialisms and then, as we did, add an entire suite of strategic online retailing skills to radically transform the business model of a long-established international brand.
For this reason, RB chose Summit to support them on their journey to sell Durex products online, directly to the consumer.
Very sensibly, they tested the ice before trying to skate on it. On their behalf, we established the wisdom of the move with a comprehensive research exercise, calculating whether the opportunity truly justified the investment necessary to launch an online sales channel.
We painstakingly built up a comprehensive picture of the marketplace – you could call it a blueprint for a successful online Durex business.
Once we, and they, were convinced that the strategy would fly, we built transactional ecommerce sites for the UK and US markets using Magento.
Since launch we’ve contributed rapidly to year-on-year growth and the acquisition of new customers by developing a multi-channel marketing strategy that included paid search, display, affiliate marketing, feed management, social media and email.
Indeed, we took responsibility for the management and trading of their online business in its entirety – from pricing, ranging, promotions and merchandising to returns, strategic trading recommendations and P&L management.
It may sound immodest but there’s no other way to put it: we helped master-mind the brand’s move to online retailing, right through from the original research to first-year results.
And still the story rolls on: through our continuous improvements to the creative content and functionality of the site, and to RB’s marketing, pricing and range extensions, we are attracting new customers to buy products and opening up new markets.