The Business Plan 193and its offerings. We will also explore the use of other conventional online advertising methods
like banner ads on popular parenting sites. Note that the advertising and promotions budget is
higher in the first year in order to quickly build our brand awareness and capture as many cus-
tomers as possible. Our team has significant marketing experience, so we will closely monitor the
effectiveness of our marketing spend and quickly reallocate advertising and promotion resources
to the most effective areas.
The second component of our advertising and promotion strategy is to collect customer and
site visitor information so we can build a customer and prospect database that can be targeted
via email for ongoing promotions. We will collect email addresses and distribute targeted mes-
saging to build our brand with customers and may also offer them loyalty savings with emailed
coupons.
Packaging. We want our packaging to be unique. As noted in our Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal,
we want our customers to see our packaging and quickly connect with the joy associated with
our products. Furthermore, we want the first-time parents’ recognition of their first babyyour-
way.com package to be a rite of passage. To generate the buzz and emotion necessary to build
this powerful association, we will have to create a truly unique and identifiable package. We
believe that the most effective packaging would be mint green boxes with soft yellow polka dots
(unisex colors) and with our logo prominently displayed on the lid of each box. These colors can
be used for all gifts, and the polka dots are a fun and quickly recognizable pattern. We want par-
ents to notice our packaging from across the room at Christmas, birthdays, baby showers, etc.,
so that they know right away that their baby is the recipient of a very special and unique gift
from babyyourway.com. This packaging will be highly visible on our Web site and in all our
advertising.
Competitor Strengths. Many of the brick-and-mortar competitors we’ve mentioned have estab-
lished their online presence and appear to be committed for the long haul. These firms have sig-
nificantly larger marketing budgets than ours, and this will certainly make them very tough com-
petition. The rapid expansion of mass merchants like Wal-Mart and Target has pressured all cloth-
ing retailers at the lower end of the market. These mass merchants sell other products besides
clothing and are often a one-stop destination for customers. From 1999 to 2003 mass merchants’
total sales increased 80 percent while clothing store sales increased only 13 percent. Paramount
to the success of the mass merchants is their ability to offer lower prices because they buy in larg-
er quantities and at lower prices than their smaller competitors. This market domination by large
retailers is why we are considering pushing into traditional retail channels only after proven suc-
cess with the Babyyourway.com site.
But although these mass merchants dominate traditional retailing, they have not emerged as
dominant e-tailers. More savvy competitors like Amazon.com have done a better job of market-
ing to online shoppers. The retail landscape is littered with many successful small specialty retail-
ers with smaller budgets that compete very effectively with large retailers by targeting their prod-
ucts at specific customers, by offering products too distinct or specialized for big-box retailers to
carry, or by providing a higher level of service. The explosive success of eBay has proven that in
the online marketplace there is insatiable demand for unique items from boutique operations
with low resources and no brick-and-mortar presence.