USCUTTER: BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CASE STUDY
The Problem:
When I took on the role of Director of Marketing in early 2018, USCutter realized it had a problem. Though the company was doing well in terms of revenue, it was loosing a lot in terms of profit. Since USCutter is a profit shared based company, this was an issue for the share holders. By dropping prices to try and stay competitive, USCutter was losing profit at an alarming rate. Amazon fees hurt even more, cutting into margin so much that USCutter was losing money on a lot of Amazon order.
THE SOLUTION:
We needed change, and fast. The goal was to raise prices, but still find ways to stay competitive. We would need to market smarter, not harder, and without going over the allotted marketing budget. Using the data we had at our fingertips, we would need to make better decisions that made sense for the business as a whole. We would also need to take a deep dive into our listings on Amazon and the customer base.
HOW WE GOT THERE:
• Changed our sales and promotion strategy from putting lots of items on sale at deep discounts, to utilizing coupons to send to specific groups of engaged customers through email and social media. This also made tracking better, so we could see where our sales were coming from and what motivated our different customer groups to buy.
• Took listings off of Amazon and eBay that weren’t profitable, or increased our prices. This drove customers to our website to buy items exclusive to us.
• Updated our shipping deals to offering free shipping at a certain threshold. This encouraged customers to place larger orders, increasing our average order value.
• Added a pop-up to the website with an offer for customers that sign up for our newsletter.
• Took a deep dive into who are customers are; looked at sales data, demographic information, and more to learn more about what motives our customers to buy and what their cadence is.
• Created more content to push through various marketing channels that was relevant to what our customer’s needs were.
• Optimized advertising channels to perform better based on KPIs, as opposed to spending more money.
• Adopted a Lean Culture of continuous improvement.
• Focused on better reputation control to listen and help our customers.
