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Business owners used to invest a significant portion of their budget on advertising to drive site traffic as a mean to make more revenue from their website. Faced with a recession, however, many small business owners were forced to scrutinize every nickel and dime of their spending, and resorting to aggressive advertising as the main vehicle to drive growth has become an unwise strategy to apply. In this article we will share a case study of a small business who achieved a remarkable growth while cutting the spend in half by being innovative.
A case study – Web Pointe Mall
Web Pointe Mall, a premium online shopping site, offers a wide range of products form clothes to computers and video games. Like many small businesses in today's slumping economy, Web Pointe Mall has been negatively affected by the current economic downturn. Due to a decrease in consumer spending, the company was forced to cut its marketing budget by 50% and fine tune its strategy for attracting new customers in a cost-effective way while continuing to provide premium quality of customer service, which was what set the company apart from competitors.
While developing its new strategy, the folks at Web Pointe Mall did quite a bit of research to find adequate ways to achieve its goals. The company tried everything from using the extensive power of social networks to increase its visibility among consumers, to developing and executing direct mail and advertising campaigns, the latter of which proved to carry a fairly lofty pricing tag.
As Web Pointe Mall continued to investigate new ways, the company recognized two areas of opportunity. One was an internal mailing list. Web Pointe Mall had been collecting emails of customers on its website to offer them opt-in newsletters with promotional and marketing messages. The internal mailing list would provide qualified leads which the company could market to for little cost. The other was an "interactive information desk" service. The company recognized that this was one of the most cost-effective resources provided by brick-and-mortar malls as a way to educate visitors about the products, so Web Pointe Mall decided to follow suit.
Web Ponte Mall used an innovative technology provided by a product called Sitepal to achieve the goals. Sitepal allowed the company to create an animated speaking character that was added as a virtual representative to its website. Sitepal also offered a built-in lead generator feature, which integrates the speaking character into a customizable email collecting form.
With a little help from Sitepal, Web Pointe Mall could set up a a virtual information desk kiosk on its homepage, where the speaking character helped customers learn about Web Pointe Mall's offering and also urge them to fill in the email form. The collected emails were sent to Web Pointe Mall's inbox as well as Sitepal online report, so the company could download the list later.
Once the company added the virtual information desk to it's Web page, visitor stats from October to December increased from approximately 2,000 visitors a month to nearly 50,000 visitors per month. The number of email leads also skyrocketed from a couple of leads a month to five or ten leads a day.
Web Pointe Mall contributes this success to the innovative approach it took to give a 'professional edge over the competition'
"The technology has definitely helped us during this economic crisis. Not only has it provided us a way to continue to offer quality customer service it also makes it simple for us to allow customers to opt-in to our email distribution list. This lead generator feature saved us money because we don't have to hire a web developer to create an online optin form – Sitepal does it all for us and at a mere $19.95 a month." says Mr. Browner, CEO of Web Pointe Mall. |
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