Sephora Direct Analysis
Introduction
Sephora was started in France in 1969 as a single perfume shop. By 2010, Sephora had nearly 1000 stores in 23 countries, of which 450 were in the US and Canada. It has a retail presence in 36 states.
Sephora’s Marketing Objectives for 2011:
After looking into the case study of Sephora following marketing objectives can be analyzed for 2011:
- Increasing the product awareness among the targeted and potential customers
- Encouraging customers through attractive means to buy the product.
- The main objective of the company must be to focus on the social media platform and focus on increasing the sales promotion through several means. This mainly includes store window merchandising, print catalog to be sent to the portion of Sephora’s beauty insiders three times a year, major sales promotion in July and other during holiday season and distribution of free gifts for beauty insiders.
Sephora’s marketing budget for 2011on Media Video and Mobile:
Sephora’s spent millions on online search advertising (i.e. google ad-words) for buying thousand of keywords for brands, products and other beauty related products. Search advertising represented single largest component of Sephora’s marketing budget and was the largest source of new traffic to the Sepora website. Sephora is planning to double the investment in advertising media in 2011. In the year 2010 the total marketing budget of the company for media, video and mobile promotions is $1 million (just 5% of the total marketing budget). While, in the year 2011 the company is planning to double this investment due to the huge returns and response of the marketing budget that rewarded the company and has increased its revenues. Looking into the aspects of Sephora the breakdown of the total media spending should be 20% to beauty insider i.e. emails, gifts, events, etc. 35% to online i.e. search, affiliates, social media, etc. and 45% to retail i.e. print, catalog, store animation etc.
Sephora’s 2011 social media, video, and mobile budget be allocation:
Sephora is planning to double the investment in social media, video and mobile for 2011. Sephora began uploading videos to youtube in 2007 and found that tens of thousands of users were watching its videos. In 2008, the company entered in Facebook and online videos (Zarrella 83). On the other hand, social media played an important role in helping Sephora listen to its clients. While, with an increase in mobile apps and trends in 2009 it plans for mobile application. While, seeing the response in 2010 team added high quality, professionally produced videos.
After looking into the different media sources and the present trend, the budget allocation should be done in the order of video on the top as this is the fastest and easiest way and has large future potential. Mobile at mid option as it is the fastest growing field of promotion when compared to the rest two media’s and finally Social media because it is a little bit time consuming (Anderson 60).
“Winning”
The brand is currently running in the growth phase of life cycle. The most important or the key potency or the winning point of the company is its approach of self service for the consumers. This approach of Sephora is unique and different form the other departmental and drug stores, and thus influences a huge number of customers. Another point the constituted winning for Sephora is that it has the aptitude of identifying the fulfilling the needs and requirements of the present as well as potential customers. And last but not the least Sephora’s range of products along with its quality added a flavor in its success. All these factors together constitute Sephora’s winning.
Recommendations
Works Cited
Anderson, Eric. Social Media Marketing: Game Theory and the Emergence of Collaboration. USA: Springer, 2010.
Zarrella, Dan. The Social Media Marketing Book. Canada: O'Reilly Media, Inc. 2009.
