MKT653 DIGITAL MARKETING
Monsoon Semester 2021-22
SECTION 2
Case Study Analysis: Big Skinny
Date: 22nd September 2021
Submitted to Professor Bijal Mehta
Team 9
Names Enrollment no. Programme
GC: Honey Adtiya AU1910511 BBA(H)
Rashmi Ramchandani AU1910476 BBA(H)
Vardan Makhijani AU1910375 BBA(H)
Shravan Gugale AU1910293 BBA(H)
Badal Jain AU1910140 BBA(H)
Harsh Suyani AU1910489 BBA(H)
Moksh Shah AU1811422 BBA
Sahejaj Nurani AU1811422 BBA
Contents
Background .................................................................................................................................... 1
Analyzing the Pros and Cons of each Digital Marketing Strategy .............................................. 2
Answers to the questions asked ..................................................................................................... 3
1.Should Big Skinny concentrate on drawing new consumers to its website through search
engines, or should it focus on engaging existing customers through social and interactive
media? ......................................................................................................................................... 3
2.Should Big Skinny hand off more of its web marketing to retail portals like Amazon and
Buy.com? ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Recommendations .......................................................................................................................... 5
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)/Sponsored Search .................................................................. 5
Display Advertising ..................................................................................................................... 7
References ...................................................................................................................................... 8
Background
Kiril Stefan Alexandrov always hated the thick and heavy purses which felt like a brick in his
pocket. He wanted something which was convenient, easy to carry and stylish. Sensing an
opportunity, he started to work on thin wallets. For 2 years, he researched, tested many designs
with 75 natural and man-made materials to make the right combination for thinner wallets. At last,
he managed to develop a proprietary material which was perfect for this purpose. He started Big
Skinny in 2005 to sell his super thin wallets which would solve the five key problems customers
faced with existing ones: thick size, heavy weight, narrow card pocket size, slippery interior, and
lack of versatility.
Big Skinny’s first marketing strategy was in-person sales at street fairs and festivals. Selling of
these wallets was majorly done in these fairs where they demonstrated how efficiently these
wallets were able to carry 20+ credit cards in a very thin case.
Then the company expanded to wholesale and retail stores. For the next step in marketing, they
adopted traditional print advertising strategies such as billboard advertising, postcards in
restaurants, half-page print ads in motorcycle, car, and fashion magazines.
Now, Kiril wants to expand Big Skinny’s digital presence and use it to propel sales but he faces a
major challenge: attracting visitors to the company’s site and convincing them to buy wallets from
them online.
In this case study analysis, we have listed down the pros and cons of each type of digital marketing
strategy, answered the questions crucial to decide the next steps the company should take
(questions from the last section of case study: Next Steps), and added recommendations which
could help Big Skinny achieve its digital marketing goals.
Analyzing the Pros and Cons of each Digital
Marketing Strategy
Strategy Pros Cons
Display • Closed online equivalent of a • Extremely low click through
Advertising street fair booth. rates (CTR) at an average of
• Has a visual aspect. 0.1%.
• Risky because sold on a pay per
impressions basis, not pay per
click (PPC).
Algorithmic • Free of Cost • Propriety ranking
Search (or • Quality ranking system as it system/algorithm which can be
Search Engine prioritizes most relevant sites. changed at any time by the
Optimization) • Internet users tend to trust search engines, hence not steady.
organic results more than • High level of uncertainty in
adverts. results.
• Increased Traffic. • Time consuming.
• Product Feed section very
useful for online sellers.
• Experience-based knowledge
regarding ranking algorithm.
Sponsored • Tight control over advertising • Can get very expensive due to
Search (or allows effective targeting. high bidding on popular
Search Engine • Pay-per click pricing. keywords.
Marketing)
Social Media • Two-way engagement and • Can take a long time to yield
communication. substantial results (Time
• Useful for generating Brand consuming).
Awareness.
• Accessible for every brand.
• Relatively low cost.
Interactive • High Visitor Engagement. • May reduce accessibility of the
Content • High Conversion rates. site (especially in terms of
loading time).
• Need specialized personnel,
hence expensive.
Online • Distributor’s brand value can • Fixed Monthly Fee ($39.95)
Distributors boost sales. • High Rates of Commission (7-
• Large existing userbase. 15%).
• Can manage fulfillment of
orders.
• Can handle large volume of
transactions.
Answers to the questions asked
1. Should Big Skinny concentrate on drawing new consumers to its
website through search engines, or should it focus on engaging
existing customers through social and interactive media?
Ideally, Big Skinny should have a digital marketing plan which utilizes a number of
different strategies including Search Engines (both SEO and SEM) as well as Social and
Interactive Media, but if we are asked to select one out of the two, we would have to
compare these two strategies on a criterion based on the company’s goals and objectives
for digital marketing.
The main goals of Big Skinny for Digital Marketing (in exact words of the case) are:
a. Define and promote the Big Skinny brand,
b. Propel online direct sales,
c. Achieving Maximal Growth,
d. Bring in new webpage views.
As we can see from the company’s list of goals above, the main objective of the Big Skinny
brand from Digital Marketing is to acquire new customers. Hence, Big Skinny should
select the first alternative in the question and concentrate on drawing new customers to its
website through search engines.
Another reason why we suggest Big Skinny to go with the first option is because the brand
already has a good social media presence and it is doing a fabulous job in engaging its
existing customers which is evident from the fact that these customers are posting
testimonials about their experiences, “before” and “after” photos of their wallet and even
photos of them using the Big Skinny wallet in exotic locations. It is also performing well
in terms of its interactive content as it has organized several contests for its customers
including an essay and micropoetry competition.
2. Should Big Skinny hand off more of its web marketing to retail
portals like Amazon and Buy.com?
Yes, we suggest that Big Skinny should indeed hand over some more of its web marketing
to online distributers like Amazon, Buy.com and eBay. We say this because:
a. The recent online promotion glitch that led to 4000 wallets being sold for zero or
near-zero prices shows that Big Skinny’s online sales platform and digital
promotions strategy still has some problems which need to be solved before it
initiates another major online campaign. If sales of the wallet happen on the website
of an online distributer like Amazon or eBay, the possibility of a major problem
like the glitch occurring would be much lower.
b. One of the most important factors that influences customer’s purchases online is
trust. Since we aim to acquire new customers, the trust factor is even more
important (because these customers are likely to be unaware and uncertain about
our brand) and this is where the strong brand value of retail portals like Amazon
could help us. This brand value can inspire confidence in customers to try out new
brands like ours because there are a number of features like free replacement within
10 days of delivery, pick-up of product that needs to be returned, money-back
guarantee etc on these platforms that are difficult for us to replicate on our own
website.
c. Online customers are more likely to be familiar with the websites of these
distributors which would make the entire process of online purchase much easier
for the buyer.
d. Websites of digital retailers like Amazon and eBay are generally more accessible
with better loading time and are more user-friendly as compared to the sites of small
businesses like Big Skinny and hence they would provide a better user experience
to customers.
e. These platforms can also manage fulfillment and product delivery which would
eliminate the need for Big Skinny to find a courier service company to partner with
or deliver it themselves. This will allow Big Skinny to give more focus to its core
function of manufacturing wallets and create better products.
f. The websites of these online distributers can handle a large volume of visitors at
the same time while the website of a small business like Big Skinny might crash at
a similar volume.
Though we suggest Big Skinny to expand its operations on retail portals like Amazon,
Buy.com and eBay, this exercise should run parallel to the improvement of its own website,
sales platform and digital marketing strategy so that the company does not become
completely dependent on the distributor for its sales. Big Skinny needs to be cautious
because if it become overly reliant on a retail portal (in the sense that an overwhelming
majority of the company’s sales comes from one site only), a small change in the algorithm
of the platform which does not go its way can lead to severe repercussions for the company.
Recommendations
In this section, we will provide recommendations and suggestions for the company to
improve their online marketing plan.
First of all, the company needs to decide the few digital marketing strategies it would focus
on to achieve its digital goals. According to us, the strategies Big Skinny should focus on
to achieve its objective acquiring new customers online are Search Engine Marketing
(SEM) and Display Advertising.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)/Sponsored Search
SEM can play a key role in driving up growth for a business online and it is important to
utilize it optimally.
In this case, the company has bid high for keywords like “thin wallet” and “leather wallets”,
with most of the keywords being in broad-match. One of the problems with the company’s
SEM campaign is that it has a very high Cost per Conversion at $5.4125, considering that
the price of the wallet is just $20.
The table below shows the keywords that actually led to at least one conversion (keywords
with zero conversions have been filtered out to find out the actual average cost of a
conversion):
To solve this problem, we would suggest the company to bid on more specific, long-tail
keywords like “buy thin wallet” or “best thin wallets” or “best wallets to buy under” with
a broad-match option. We recommend this because in case of keywords like thin wallet or
leather wallet, there is a possibility that the user is searching the term for purposes other
than purchase like to get its pictures or find its characteristics and how it is different from
normal wallets. Long-tail keywords are more specific phrases that potential customers are
likely to use when they are close to a point-of-purchase. This will lead to clicks that have
a greater chance of leading to a conversion which means a lower Average Cost per Click
(CPC) and Cost per Conversion which means a greater Return on Investment (ROI) for
Big Skinny’s SEM campaign.
Another major problem in this SEM campaign is that there are several keywords that have
not led to any conversions at all, and are also performing poorly in terms of generating
impressions and click-through rate which indicates that these terms are not very relevant
and hence they must be discarded from the company’s campaign. These non-performing
keywords are shown in the table below:
Display Advertising
As the case mentions, Display Advertising is the closest online equivalent to a booth at a
street fair. Big Skinny already has a great animation ready to visually represent the best
feature of its wallet: thinness. There is a likelihood that this advertisement might get a high
click-through rate and drive traffic to the site because it replicates the “before” and “after”
visual that Big Skinny salesmen show in-person at street fairs and events which has proven
to be very successful in generating sales on the ground. This advertisement is posted
below.
To ensure that this “Hate Thick Wallets?” display advertising campaign is successful, it
needs to reach the right audience, and hence we suggest that Big Skinny should carefully
scrutinize and select websites where it wants its advertisement to be displayed. The
audiences and visitors of these websites should closely resemble the target market of Big
Skinny. Ideally the company should approach and purchase ad space directly from these
sites but if the websites that the company selects do not sell ad placements directly to the
advertisers and deal only through ad networks (which is possible if the company selects
niche, low-traffic sites) then it should consider purchasing from an ad network which
shows you the site lists where your ad would appear like Google Display Network. This is
suggested because display ads are generally sold on a CPM or per impression basis which
means that if the ads are displayed to an audience which is not interested and does not click,
we would still have to pay. Since our objective is to increase online direct sales, we should
ensure that our ads are displayed on the right websites to get visitors (high CTR) who would
convert into customers (high conversion percentage) and give us a great Return on
Investment (ROI). We would suggest that Big Skinny avoids purchasing placements
through ad exchanges.
References
https://www.bigskinny.net/info.html
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6270625?hl=en
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1704373?hl=en-GB
