Mary Kay case

1. How would you evaluate Mary Kay's situation from the demand-side and the supply-side?
Mary Kay provides beauty consultants for customers through direct selling, building up a close relationship between consumers and consultants. Mary Kay had continuously grown about 20 years, and its share price raised over 650% during the 1970s and early 1980s. Although Direct Selling decreased from 8% to 6.8% of cosmetics and toiletries sold in United States, there is a potential consumer group: middle-class women, who have become more and more important for the whole industry. As information given, almost 60% women worked outside in 1998, which is much more than 1960, 37.7%. This trend has changed people’s lifestyle and buying habit s, and also represented there’s fewer and fewer casual time women can spend themselves. Not only were their customers less accessible than before but also those beauty consultants had less chances to market their products to consumers.

Mary Kay has launched a new “Direct Support” program, which promoted its sales representatives to send their clients a gift-with-purchase offer for little more than the cost of a stamp. By using this time-saving marketing tool to simplify the operation process, an independent sales member could easily sell their products in addition to their full-time job. An Independent Beauty Consultant was able to potentially earn between $10,000 and $15,000 while not giving up their full-time positions elsewhere. This program not only solved the problem to deal with demographic shift, but also encouraged their consultant to do business.

2. Does Mary Kay's channel design fit in its competition strategy?
Mary Kay used to provide products through the representatives that also consulted consumers who were not knowledgeable enough about beauty and cosmetic products. But nowadays, Direct Selling method must change for the big environment that is more competitive than before. Consumers have got more general knowledge about cosmetics that made the representative not important as before, how to provide some different and fresh things which is attractive to consumers becomes a new issue in cosmetics industry, and also harder to work it out in direct selling which used to sell products through independent consultants. Another, Mary Kay didn’t use internet as a selling and consulting channel that made it less competitive as other firms in this industry, but while they’re planning to change their channels, there’re still things that might be considered like their older consumers who are unfamiliar with internet and online surfing.

3.What's your suggestion for Mary Kay to go online?
We think that online business is a good perspective and Mary Kay should accept and become flexible with the trend on internet, for example, they should develop some advanced technology and attract new customers on internet. They can refresh their brand image to a younger brand to attract younger people on internet by invited some famous movie stars as representatives. By using the channel of internet, Mary Kay can also use network effect to promote their products by invited some famous blogger to use their products and make some comments on their blog to expand their brand awareness.

Pre-campaign strategy

Pre-Campaign Strategy
沈馨 林書羽 江宛勵 梁羽淳

●Client Overview

Client profile

We decided to collaborate with Chosen Co,.LTD to take this challenge. Chosen located in Chan-hua, Taiwan and its website is http://www.chosen-hubs.com/. Chosen is a professional manufacturer of bicycle components with about 50 employees and has run this company about 3 years.

Market Analysis

Chosen's main customers are bicycle players who are interested in road bike racing or mountain bike climbing. Chosen focuses on bicycle clubs where professionals will gather and share their experiences about bicycle tuning. Chosen's main competitors are bicycle components manufacturers such as Shimano, biggest bicycle components maker in the world. The USA and European countries are the main customers. As for the Europe, the population rate of the bicycle possession is higher than that in any other place in the world, and of which, Germany, France, Italy and Netherlands have the highest demand which is above 8 million. Its unique selling points are their main products "bicycle hub" which is very advanced technique and products to interest players.

Current Market

Website users are their customers or others who are interested in Chosen’s products. Its website is very simple and clear but lacks some modification to make it more fashion or professional. The page rank is 2 and the website doesn’t have any offline promotion of the website. Chosen’s promotion is based on B2B model.

● Proposed AdWords Strategy

Number of Ad Groups and the focus for each Ad Group.
Three Ad Groups:
1.Main products and main target products
2. Relevant products and bike model
3.Target customers' interest or need

Keywords and negative keywords
Accroding to three Ad groups:

1. bicycle hub/disk brake/quick release/chain wheel/road bike
MTB/mmountain bike/BMX(BICYCLE MOTOCROSS) /trandem/ATB
adapter/rotor/bike accessories/brake finger lever/V brake/U brake
brake pad/brake drum/cables

2. bicycle shop/bike shop/ bicycle part/bike part/bicycle accessories/road racing bike/racing bike/terkking bike/XC/Trail (Cross Country)/FREE RIDER/DOWN HILL RIDER/TECHNICAL RIDER/cyclo-cross/ off road/B.B.

3. cycling/ road bike review/bike Europe/shimano/campagnolo/ outdoor sports/extreme sports/ bicycle training/promax/joytech/tour de france/bicycle tour

Text for at least two AdWords versions for each Ad Group

1.For hubs:
Chosen Co.,LTD
Professional manufacturer for bicycle hubs including road bike, MTB, BMX, andTrandem. 120 pts. The best in the world.
http://www.chosen-hubs.com/

2. For disk brake:
Chosen Co.,LTD
Professional manufacturer for bicycle disk brakes including road bike, MTB, BMX, and Trandem.

3. For other group:
Chosen Co.,LTD
Professional manufacturers of bicycle components from whole world wide. Ourteam is trained and has experences more than 15 years; therefore, we areconfidents that we can provide you the best solution.

Daily and weekly plans for spending their campaign budget
Weekly plans--First week:$60 Second week:$70 Third week:$70
Daily plans—First week:$8.6 Second and third week:$10

Network(s) for their AdWords ads
We choose both Search and Content Network.

Keyword Bidding
For first Ad group:$0.18
For seond and third Ad group:$0.05

Geotargeting North America,Europe,Taiwan.

team leader's name

sorry for being late
Hsin Shen
email:alohahsin@gmail.com