Question

Topic: Strategy

Eco-product Company Seeking Help

Posted by Anonymous on 6/4/2009 at 12:37 PM ET 125 Points
My company is EverQuest Design; an eco-marketing agency specialized in the design and marketing of products made from recycled textiles. We have been offering original bags and accessories since 2004 while marketing our own collections and developing products for Cirque du Soleil.

Our positioning is simple: we design and market bags and accessories made from original recycled textiles… such as Cirque du Soleil tents, space mission landing parachutes (authentic and certified), Mt Everest expedition material etc. In the past 2 years we have also been selling products made from advertising billboards directly to corporate clients such as CBS. We design eco products with a story that are original, promote recycling, and made in Canada(never in China!).

When we started in 2004 we were only selling online and were successful in marketing our Soyuz Space Parachute messenger bags, America’s Cup and Mt Everest bags. We stopped actively promoting online as our business with Cirque du Soleil increased and multiplied our revenues five-fold. We always had orders online but we would like to jump start our online sales and rebalance our consumer-to-corporate client revenues.

We have been promoting our site and products but we do not seem to be able to ramp up traffic and converting sales. Our site design is “old” but we have no budget to redesign it now. We need help and advice as to how we can re-launch our business. We have had a lot success on the corporate side with our ad billboard products and I would like to better sell these bags online.

We have used blogs, approached green retailers, looked for distribution partners and listed our products on directories. We have used PPC in the past but the Keyword competitiveness is making campaigns with niche products ineffective.

We need help to better market a company with a profitable and original eco product concept. I am looking for fresh ideas, partners and an “outside the box” approach.

You can see our products at www.everquestdesign.com.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 6/4/2009 at 9:24 PM Moderator
    If you don't have the budget to update your website, maybe you need to start using simple landing pages. Of more concern, it's not clear that you can really create any positive marketing impact without adequate budget. Marketing isn't free.

    Maybe you need to step back and determine more specifically what your objective is and what it would be worth to accomplish it. Then at least you'll know how much you should be willing to invest in marketing to achieve the objective. If you can't afford the cost, then you really shouldn't be playing. You'll just spin your wheels and spend your money for nothing.

    A lot of companies have failed because they didn't have sufficient marketing budget to really achieve their objectives. So they spent what they could, didn't achieve the objective and eventually went away. Don't let that happen to you.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 6/5/2009 at 12:56 PM Accepted
    As a minimum, you want people who visit your site to opt-in for your newsletter (do you still publish a regular e-newsletter)? If they visited once, then they may be a potential customer. Once they've left, odds are they're not going to remember you and return. Improve your opt-in conversions: make the opt-in form more prominent and test placement/wording to build your email list.

    Your products have a number of tie-ins: for fans of the places you get your fabrics from, hipsters looking for something new (esp. with recycled fabric), and people who simply like the style. If you haven't created tie-ins with these various communities (online), do so.

    You will probably need to improve your website to reinforce the message you're putting out, otherwise they'll visit but won't see message congruence.
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