1565849 1572990

Information Management
Chris Scholten #1 Mar
1562088

International Communication & Media

Hogeschool Utrecht

1 Oktober 2010
In the following report, a strategy and implementation plan will be presented for the company
Van Bommel. This plan will be drawn up with the help of Van Bommel’s objectives, strategy,
implementation, web analytics and the maintenance process.

Objectives
The 5 S’s framework was developed by Smith & Chaffey1 and is useful since it presents a
widespread range of objectives for a company. According to this framework applied with the
SMART model2 there are five broad benefits, reasons or objectives which could strengthen the
e-marketing position of Van Bommel.

Sell – growing sales through wider distribution

Van Bommel should be able to increase sales by at least 10% by extending the online
distribution. In order to achieve this goal, they should start by converting most regular customers
in The Netherlands into online customers by offering an easy and accessible web shop on their
website. You can also think of conversion goals regarding acquisition and retention

Serve – adding value to the brand or products

Van Bommel has always been a loyal supplier for their loyal consumers. In order to add value to
this most appreciated group, Van Bommel will introduce a Van Bommel member card nice idea,
but focus on internet, this seems offline . Think more online like informing online about product
attributes of extra services or benefits especially for the most loyal customers. The card comes
with special extras, such as the privilege to receive a new shoe model before it is released,
updates by e-mail and other rewards like exclusive Van Bommel member accessories such as
belts or laces. It will be available on January 1st 2011 for customers who buy, bought or will buy
at least five pairs seems too much! of Van Bommel shoes online. With these examples your’re
already into the implementation phase

Speak – getting closer to customers

Being closer to customers by tracking them, asking them questions, conducting online
interviews/surveys, creating a dialogue and learning about them for at least three years. Doing
this will give valuable insight in the consumers thinking and behaviour related to the Van
Bommel brand. When all these aspects are put in perspective, Van Bommel can adjust their
strategy in order to perfectly adapt to its market and consumers needs.

Save – saving costs Also here focus on online, not on the phsycal production process, think for
e.g. about efficient shipping or outsourcing the shop by simply creating a link to an existing
shop?
Production costs must be reduced by at least five percent in the year 2014. Especially in today’s
current economic situation, Van Bommel must monitor and research its whole product and

1
http://www.marketing-insights.co.uk/wnim0402.htm
2
http://www.goal-setting-guide.com/goal-setting-tutorials/smart-goal-setting
production line, sales transactions and administration, print and post to double check if any cost
reduction is possible.

Sizzle – extending the brand online

By reinforcing brand values by a new medium such as social media, the brand awareness of
Van Bommel will increase rapidly. The web scores very highly as a medium for creating brand
awareness, recognition and involvement by consumers. Social media such as Facebook,
Twitter and MySpace are easy free gateways to consumers. = implementation Therefore brand
awareness must be increased by twenty percent in 2012.

Strategy Focus on Internet, not so much on existing distribution channels. Use a short
description of the 8 key decisions
Van Bommel is ever-growing company and recently, the owners Floris, Reinier and Pepijn van
Bommel have decided to expand internationally and thus to set up a more internationally-
oriented strategy. Even though in The Netherlands, there is not an actual Van Bommel shoe
store where people can buy the product ???, a flagship store was opened in Antwerp, Belgium
in 2008. In The Netherlands, Van Bommel sells approximately 415.000 shoes a year at 1.200
national sales points and this was the main reason to start thinking about international
expansion. In 2001, Van Bommel was the sponsor of the Belgian national soccer team and
since then, sales have gone up from 15.000 to 35.000 shoes a year.3

After the opening and success of the flagship store in Antwerp, Van Bommel is thinking of
creating an even more international strategy than only expanding to Belgium. This can be a part
of Van Bommel’s business and revenue model and multichannel distribution strategy and it can
be achieved by opening more flagship stores in, e.g., Great Britain, Scandinavia and Germany;
international, yet close to home. Another international strategy includes small-scale, yet
continuous migration of simple production work abroad.4 This strategy will eventually reduce
costs for Van Bommel if all production for a specific market is located in the expansion country,
since it will mostly reduce transportation costs in general. Also, it is easier for Van Bommel to
receive feedback on products from customers in foreign countries. Focus on internet!

Van Bommel has tried to expand to Germany once before in 2002, but this did not result in a
huge success. As stated before, Van Bommel is planning to try expansion to Germany again,
but not on the short term. Rather, Van Bommel first wants to expand business to Germany with
Internet sales OK in order to see what the demand is and what the demographic opportunities
are for setting up a flagship store. Further on in this strategy and implementation plan, it will be
discussed how the latter can be achieved with the help of Google Analytics.

Van Bommel’s general strategy is extremely minimal. They do not make use of any market
research, or any expensive managers and they only have a promotional budget of three

3
http://www.molblog.nl/bericht/Van-Bommel-opent-flagshipstore-in-Antwerpen/
4
http://www.mt.nl/1/2751/home/bedrijfsportret-schoenenfabriek-van-bommel.html
percent.5 All these factors lead to the fact that Van Bommel also does not give much attention to
Internet marketing. That is what this plan is about. You advice VB on why and how to improve!
They could use the Internet to a fuller extent if their marketing strategy were broader. Van
Bommel focuses more on in-store sales (national and international) and, until recently, does not
fully embrace the possibilities of online Internet sales. The fact that Van Bommel only spends
three percent on a promotional budget means that most of this

percentage will go to offline promotion such as advertisements. However, it would be smart for
Van Bommel to use Google AdSense and Google AdWords for Internet related promotions =
implementation = digital media channel = SEO. These Google features make it possible for Van
Bommel to advertize even when Internet users are not specifically looking for Van Bommel
shoes.

Furthermore, Van Bommel could focus more on customer relationship management (CRM).
CRM is a marketing-led approach to building and sustaining long-term business with customers.
It develops relationships with particular customer segments or groups, rather than individuals.6
Again, due to the fact that Van Bommel does not have a well-implemented (Internet) strategy, a
lot can be improved CRM wise. It is particularly important to have good customer relationships
since this will create loyal customers for the brand. Even though Van Bommel already thrives on
loyal customers, on the Internet, the possibilities to feel connected with the brand are missing. A
way to use CRM in a more effective way for Van Bommel could be to engage in e-mail
marketing or using the website as a tool to promote and recommend the brand. It helps the
customer to provide feedback to the company and as a result, Van Bommel will understand the
customer’s needs better and will be able to put them in perspective in the future.

The lack of a clear web shop linked from the homepage = implementation of Van Bommel
makes is hard for the customer to understand the possible online value proposition (OVP) which
Van Bommel could offer. The OVP is a statement of the benefits of online services that
reinforces the core proposition and differentiates from an organization’s offline offering and
those of competitors.7 Basically, it gives the customer an idea why ordering Van Bommel shoes
in a web shop is easier and faster than buying Van Bommel shoes in-store/offline. First of all,
Van Bommel could start by adding an easy accessible web shop but what does this shop better
or more than the shops or competitors? Extra service, product information or a better price,
other? to their homepage to create a more customer-centric website.

Implementation Here explain how you are actually going to implement your strategy.
Describe the 4 p’s of the marketingmix
To enrich the awareness of Van Bommel, the owners have decided to expand internationally.
This strategy is already explained in detail on the paragraph ‘strategy’. If Van Bommel chooses
to use the multichannel distribution strategy they can reach more people. The goal is to let as
5
http://www.mt.nl/1/2751/home/bedrijfsportret-schoenenfabriek-van-bommel.html
6
Chaffey, D. (2009). Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson Education Limited. p. 330
7
Chaffey, D. (2009). Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson Education Limited. p. 246
much people know what, why, how, when and where too they are going to expand. By using
multi channels they can trigger their target group in different ways.

????There are two important strategies van Bommel could use. The push strategy is about the
traditional media; print, TV and radio. In contrast, the web is an example of a pull strategy. Both
strategies are not used very well by van Bommel. Yet, what can they change? First focus on
online/digital media channels, than additional the offline

1. Television commercials
Television is a very affordable = very expensive in production and buying airtime. Note that VB
has a very small budget. Consider viral marketing e.g. use Floris v Bommel and his music?
medium that can increase a company’s profit considerably. Van Bommel has no television
commercials whatsoever. On YouTube there are only unappealing and boring movies available
about how the shoes are made. They do not have a triggering promotion movie to attract more
customers or to let new customers become aware of the existing of the brand.

The name Van Bommel is already quite familiar in the Netherlands but they could do quite a lot
more to make their target group aware about their (online) shops, products, image, brand, etc. A
short, triggering television commercial which focuses on their target group and shown on
television and the Internet, can be an extremely strong sales tool. If they show their logo and
link to their website in digital media, people are who are interested in more information could
visit the website.

2. Internet OKE
‘Creating a dialogue through interactivity is the next important feature of the web and digital
media such as mobile and interactive TV which provide the opportunity for two-way interactions
with the customer.’8 It does not stop at two-way communication. According to Mr. Walmsley
(2007), the impact of digital media has not been to find new ways to connect brands to
consumers as originally anticipated, but in connecting the consumers to each other.9 If Van
Bommel were to do this, not only the brand would get more awareness, also people could share
their experiences of the products and perhaps persuade each other to buy more products.

Social media: Van Bommel shoes are not familiar on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Connect or other
social media websites. The Internet is an extremely strong way of communicating with the target
group and sharing information about a product. Since Van Bommel is a brand with class,
customers are able to let everybody know they own Van Bommel shoes through the social
media websites.
Informational media: Digital media is intense and lean-forward media. This means that the
website needs to grasp the visitor’s attention. The customer has to find what they are looking for
on the webpage, otherwise they will move on and probably never come back. The website of
van Bommel has a lot of defects and things that can be done much better. The website only
8
Chaffey, D. (2009). Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson Education Limited. p. 445
9
Chaffey, D. (2009). Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson Education Limited. p. 450
shares little information about the owners themselves, what has happened from the day they
started the company until now, how they make shoes and some pictures of the shoes. There is
no information about the mission, vision, identity, image, objectives, future plans, the way of
managing the company, employees etc. Is this really what a customer is looking for? I would be
far more interested in photo’s, productinformation like the shoe shot in different angles, people
wearing the shoe, a movie about the production process or the real Italian leather: It should be
more about adding experience This is very useful information which should be found on the
webpage.

Van Bommel has no online shop part for their customers. Only dealers are able to buy online if
they have a username and password. Their sales could increase immensely if they started a
direct web shop on their website. The layout and the house style of Van Bommel are classic and
suit the brand, but when they add more information and possibilities to their website, for
example to make it interactive with a blog, it would attract more customers even as the brand
awareness would grow.
You could also think of Online PR (e.g. about the person Floris and his music) and online
partnerships (with already existing partners!)

A magazine (also relatively expensive…) to show all your products, billboards with your logo
and link to the website, posters with your products and discounts are all kind of offline
media/promotion techniques to attract more people. Research has proven that when using
offline media, for example magazines, billboards etc. one can push people to visit the website
by showing them a little bit about your product to make them interested in receiving more
information.
Van Bommel has not only a lack of online media but also their offline media is scarce (a
budgetthing..).
The stores Van Bommel sells their shoes in are just mentioned on the website, but nowhere
else is explained that they only have two Van Bommel webshops and that every other shop they
sell their shoes are of different retailers. It would be a good idea to integrate offline media to
guide the future customer to the website where is explained that the shops they sell their shoes
are of the same quality and class. It is also very important to link a webpage to popular search
engines. When you type in at Google search engine: ‘nette schoenen’ or ‘classic schoenen’ you
will find Van Bommel’s competitors like Dolcis.10 You could include your results from the
exercise on GoogleAdwords

Planning Should be more about the implementation of your dig. Mediachannel e.g.
design, build en launch of new website, e-pr-planning, seo etc. Make it more specific
What to do Deadline
Growing sales through wider
distribution 2012
Adding value to the brand or
products 2012
10
Chaffey, D. (2009). Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson Education Limited. p. 506
 Getting closer to
customers 2013
Saving costs 2010
Extending the brand
online 2011

Evaluation OK
When a company like Van Bommel would have a proper website, this would contribute a lot to
their business; web analytics could help in that case. It is the assessment of a variety of data,
including web traffic, web-based transactions, web server performance, usability studies, user
submitted information and related sources to help create a generalized understanding of the
visitor experience online.11 But in addition to that, it also include customers’ views through
surveys.

By selecting a web analytics tool, it is important to know what kind of measures are integrated in
the tool. The three most important measures are Operational data, Tactical data and Strategic
data.12
Operational data means that you need data from multiple sources and not only focus on one
part. This can be divided into four main groups: acquisition campaigns, site-centric data (visitor
volume and click stream behavior), customer response and profile data and, at last,
transactional data about leads and sales.
Tactical data is more about grouping the visitors. Demographical information and lifetime value
models are integrated in this part. It will tell you something more about the customer, which can
be handy for a business to capitalize on.
The strategic data is more about researching if the website has any additional value to the
organization in terms of sales, revenue and profitability of products. It is more meant as a
management system for people who want to oversee the whole marketing part of a company.

An example of a web analytics tool is Google Web Analytics. This program has many functions
and possibilities concerning analyzing a website and other additional values which can be
extremely useful when you have to see if a website has any additional value concerning your
marketing strategy.

Looking at the three measures that are required for a web analytics tool (Operational Data,
Tactical Data and Strategic data), the Google Web Analytics tool is a good way of researching
and analyzing your website. It has more simple measures like the amount of visitors, average
time the visitor spend on the website, what key words do they use most, what pages of the
website are visited most, what are the sources of visitor referrals and the time they stayed there,
where the visitor comes from (internet connection), so demographic data, etc. But there are also
more complex measures like benchmarking, e-commerce, the amount of people who returned,

11
Chaffey, D. (2006). Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson Education Limited. p. 416
12
Chaffey, D. (2006). Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson Education Limited. p. 427
network qualities (their providers, hostnames and connection speed) and Van Bommel as a
company can set certain goals and after a while the measure can show if this goal is reached or
not. An important goal could be to make people customer or a registered guest who is a
potential customer. Google Analytics Tool also offers the possibility to create a ‘funnel pad’. This
means you will let them follow a certain route through the website. In this way you can measure
how often people start the conversion process and how often they really finish this process.13

The e-commerce measure is also very interesting. You can see the amount of visitors, what
they have spend, the amount of transactions, the average value they spend and the conversion
percentage. This is the amount of people who became customer in relation to the total amount
of people who visited the website.

Maintenance process Should be about who is responsible for the content of the website,
the technology, the general process and other digital media
When a company, like Van Bommel, has a website that attracts people and raise potential
customers, it is important to keep up the quality of the website. A company may not neglect that
website, but they have to keep update the information to keep it interesting for a visitor, because
Van Bommel wants them to come back to their website. Therefore, the online data should be
up-to-date, interesting and sometimes a bit surprising for the customer to read. This will help the
visitor to remember the website as a good experience and this will increase the change that
they will return to the website. Another important aspect of maintaining the quality of your
website is by optimizing your search engine. = implementation = digital media channel = SEO
This can take place in a couple of ways.

All this is also implementation = dig. Media channels = good ideas! After researching what
visitors are looking for at a website, one could guide them to the website by using the right tag
words. What do you advice? Again check the exercise If people are looking for a certain subject
or word, one should not use a synonym of that word; it’s not useful. Another way to optimize the
search engine feature is to use many tag words to find relevant information on a website. For
example, there is also an option for search engines to accept spelling mistakes in a search
order on a website. This will increase the usability of the website and therefore it will leave
behind a more positive thought of the website. And that will consequently cause that people are
more willing to return to the website and become a potential customer. Yet another way to
promote a website is by Pay-Per-Click advertising.14 This method is able to say what keywords
for search orders are used most and what the conversion rate (percentage of people that visit
the site and become customer) for each keyword is. This will help the owner of the website to
adapt the information on the website more to keywords that have the highest conversion rate.

13
http://www.google.com/analytics/
14
http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/internet-marketing-process.shtml
After all, if appears that the website does not perform well or when it does not have the right
results, a company like Van Bommel should consider to rebuild their website. They should hire
can they pay outsourcing? some experienced and professional web editors to make a whole
new design of the website. This is definitely the case for Van Bommel. Their website does not
meet the requirements of the customer. There is not enough information to be found on the
organization itself, only (some information) about the shoes and the 9th generation, who now
own the company.
The information that is online does not meet the requirements of a person that is interested in
the company itself. It would be wise if Van Bommel would consider to rebuild their website and
make some large changes in their online marketing tool = this is what your whole plan is
about!!!.