Marketing
Marketing refers to all the processes through which the needs of the customer are identified, anticipated and satisfied. Marketing is crucial to the success of your business; you need to plan, innovate, and anticipate your customers’ needs in order to stay competitive in today’s increasingly competitive marketplace.
Planning
Successful marketing requires a plan. Objectives need to be identified and strategies implemented. Planning a marketing strategy for your diamond jewelry business is a process involving analysis, thought, and action and your entire team should be involved in creating this plan. The steps involved in creating your successful marketing plan include:
- Perform a SWOT analysis: Identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Your analysis should be specific, relevant and focused, and should consider both internal and external factors.
- Identify the role you currently occupy in the market. You need to understand how your customers perceive you and determine what they believe your business is about.
- Understand and define your business. This includes looking at your competition in order to determine what you can offer that is unique. This will be your selling point and will differentiate you from the competition. You need to recognize who your customer is and what their expectations are and then you will be in a stronger position to develop your distinct and unique business.
- Plan for your future market position. At this stage you can begin to shape and develop your business so that it will occupy a distinct and valued place in the minds of your target customers. You need to decide how to differentiate your jewelry business from others. Your ‘position’ will determine your store’s appearance, the products you carry and the way you present yourself to customers.
- Attract new customers. This is the time to communicate with potential customers so that they are aware of your business. You want to convey your distinct identity and value proposition to your target customers in a way that encourages a favorable attitude towards your business.
- Plan how to keep these customers. Once you have attracted a potential customer and turned them into a paying customer, you need to keep your customer coming back to your store. Establish relationships with your customers, provide service that exceeds their expectations and stimulate them to visit often.
Diamond Jewelry Marketing in Action
A great example of proactive marketing is Signet Jewelers, which owns both Kay Jewelers and Jared Galleria of Jewelry retail chains. A few years ago they partnered with IBM Interactive to conduct consumer segmentation analysis via surveys and in-store observations. Based on the newly gleaned understanding of their customers and their needs, Signet launched profiles on social channels, such as Facebook and Twitter to connect with their customer base. They also redesigned both the Kay Jewelers and Jared Galleria of Jewelry websites to be more interactive and intuitive, including live chats with sales associates. The results of these initiatives speak for themselves. Within a year, Signet’s online sales increased by a whopping 49%!
Online diamond jewelry retailer Brilliance.com is another example of a jewelry retailer using original ideas to get ahead. They’ve found an innovative way to handle an issue that has been affecting online sales of engagement rings for years – they’ve differentiated themselves from their competition by using 3D printing, a cutting-edge technology, to allow their customers to try on different diamond rings before purchasing in order to help them choose the perfect ring size, diamond shape, and carat size.
Conclusion
Marketing is essential to the success of your business. It is how you define your business and how you plan to attract and retain customers. All other operational and management plans are derived based on your marketing strategy. If you have a good marketing plan then you will have a business that is in control of itself, which will allow you to focus on increasing profits by doing what you do best.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Rapaport or any other Rapaport Group entity or service, its officers, directors or employees. Rapaport does not guarantee or warrant the accuracy or validity of any information presented by Rapaport or the views expressed therein.