BOMBAY SHAVING COMPANY: DIGITAL CUSTOMER CONVERSION On a chilly winter day in January 2020, Shantanu Deshpande, founder and chief executive ofcer of Bombay Shaving Company (BSC), was in the middle of a sales review meeting in his South Delhi ofce. He was in a somber mood and was staring into space while Shanky Chauhan, head of sales and digital marketing, presented the yearend numbers. He was reporting on key sales performance indicators gross merchandise value (revenue gures), sales growth rate, sales of new products, and conversion rates, among many others. Interestingly, since its inception three years earlier, BSC had been growing consistently in the men's grooming category. However, Deshpande was worried about a glaring problem at hand: the analysis of online purchase indicated that out of every thousand customers who visited his company's website, only 13 ended upmaking a purchase. This problem of a mere 1.3 per cent customer conversion rate was signicant, consideringBSC's 85 per cent online and 15 per cent ofine sales mix. The alarming issue was that the company's conversion rate was nowhere close to the industry standard of 2 per cent. He wondered what BSC needed todo to ensure its conversion rate met the industry standard at optimum marketing spends. The birth and maturation of Bombay shaving company Due to thousands of years of sociocultural nurturing, \"beauty\" and \"looking good\" seemed exclusively a female domain. Brands such as L'Oreal, Maybelline, Ponds, Lakrne, and Fair & Lovely were predominantly women-oriented across age groups and economic classes. BSC's top management decided to use all existing consumer insights they had access to. Based on these, BSC's strategy was to rst create the brand digitally in the men's grooming category. A simple, no-frills method of storytelling via social media was used as a strategy for customer acquisition. From the very start,BSC focused on the directtocustomer model for selling its grooming products on the company website. With a focus on online selling, the company invested heavily in data analytics to establish replenishment- selling algorithms that could predict consumers' usage patterns. Initially, the company decided to enter theshaving category only because shaving comprised 70 per cent of the men's grooming market, with just oneplayer holding the largest market share and the rest making up a fragmented market. Thus, the co-founderssaw a clear opportunity for BSC to become the second player in the market rather than joining one of the more cluttered men's grooming categories. However, this was a footin the-door strategy, and BSC plannedto eventually expand to other categories in the men's grooming market. After its establishment, BSC undertook intensive market research, consumer surveys, and product testing. Detailed interviews were carried out with product formulations experts, shaving hardware manufacturers, research and development labs and scientists, dermatologists, and skin and sensorial experts. Based on research ndings, BSC developed a holistic shaving system, rather than just a simple shaving razor. CUSTOMER ACQUISITION The digital platform was leveraged differently along the consumer journey and entailed a process from customer acquisition and customer conversion to customer retention. In this customer funnel, the rst step d' customer acquisition meant driving trafc to the BSC website through digital advertisements. In the ofine world, the retail store was a crucial brand touchpoint, whereas in digital parlance it was the BSC website. In a retail environment, a cluttered shelf display could dissuade customers. Similarly, a digital website should offer ease of navigation and a less \"crowded\" website. The BSC digital team understood that its website was a place of selling and that using a relevant content strategy was a key factor to consider. This was possible through \"social listening,\" which helped gain the best consumer insights for suitable digital content as well as new product development and services. Social listening included the use of Google search analytics, which could help uncover the keywords used for searching and the questions consumers asked using these keywords. For example, analytics on the \"charcoal face wash\" keyword query cloud could reveal information TMEAyIurce was downloaded by 100000848939127 from Courselligitwl Marketing 10:23:02 GMT -05:00 Case Study https ://www. courschcro.corn/lc/1215 15 7 9 7/B ombay shaving-club-casc-studypdf/ associated with this keyword search in the form of how, what, when, who, will, why, where, which, and can. BSC conducted product-specific search analytics and monitored search trends and common dominant search themes customer segment-wise. The goldmine of information that it gathered was useful in curating differentiated and relevant pitches, proposals, digital content, digital public relations, and new product development. Using this strategy drove more trafc to the BSC website. The BSC digital team also undertook competitive analysis by studying the best-selling online brands in the market, specifically obtaining information on audience targeting, price, the discounts and features offered by competitors, customer reviews (positive and negative), and customer queries. BSC accordingly presented customized advertisements for the products searched based on the keywords used by customers in a Google search. For example, a Google search for \"charcoal face wash\" would result in a customized Facebook advertisement for the BSC charcoal facewash product. BSC's analysis indicated that clicks on banner advertisements on social media sites such as Facebook, which would open the BSC landing page, tended to have a high bounce rate. Further, the analysis revealeda direct correlation between the time it took for the BSC landing page to open and bounce rate. BSC calculated that it took 11 seconds for the BSC web page to load. Thus, it changed the core technology stackand brought the load time down to six secondsiat par with the benchmark Google web-page load time. Interestingly, BSC also found that mobile phones, in comparison to desktop or laptop computers, contributed a disproportionately greater share of e-commerce transactions. This was driven by the proliferation of low- cost smartphones and affordable mobile Internet service charges. The company thus created a mobile- friendly, quick-loading website. Customer conversion The next step in the customer journey was customer conversion. BSC used data analytics to analyze consumer journeys on the BSC website, helping to create assetsstatic or video advertisements found on the BSC websitethat were tailored to creating better consumer experiences. BSC'S analysis of F acebook algorithms had indicated that if the assets were not changed continuously, customer fatigue could result. In turn, this resulted in poor conversion and click-through rates (CTR), leading to wastage of advertising money. This insight prompted BSC to revolutionize its digital strategy: rather than work with external agencies, the company decided to create an in-house digital analytics and data science team responsible for hour-level tracking and generating a much greater number of assets to target customers more effectively. The inhouse digital team soon started tracking all of those parameters that mattered after customers visited websites, such as bounce rate, how many pages they were browsing, how much time they spent on the website, and the conversion rates. Contextualized Moment Marketing The assets were also contextualized based on the interests of the target group. For example, young male consumers who listened to music online would receive music imagery and content, or automobile enthusiasts would receive automotive imagery and content. This was achieved through automation by which F acebook audiences were created based on the interest groups and BSC advertisements delivered accordingly. Further, the campaign was highly contextualized. For example, on a rainy day in Delhi, the advertisement banner would show a raining background and related content. In this moment marketing, it was crucial to get the right message across at the right time instead of expressing a generic message. This strategy created a seamless connection in the users' ofine and online worlds and included everything from sports events to changes in weather, all competing for the consumer'sattention. It was essential to remain competitive in the digital world, where power lay in the hands of the consumer. As BSC made it imperative for the brand to use moment marketing to foster deeper relationships with the customers, its team created 50-60 advertisements daily for this purpose, which resulted in marked TMEAyIurce was downloaded by 100000848939127 from Courselligitwl Marketing 10:23:02 GMT -05:00 Case Study https :// WWW. courschcro.com/lc/1215 15 7 9 7/B ombay shaving-club-casc-studypdf/ improvements in CTR and cost per action. BSC also created a greater value proposition for customers, to gain a longterm and sustainable competitiveadvantage. This included personalized gift options, which resonated with Indian customers in general and millennials in particular. India was a land of festivals, and gifting was a major part of the festival traditionTherefore, BSC created gift options specically meant to be gifted at festivals. Millennials loved the idea of personalized gifting as a trend in the personal care category. With BSC's efforts to personalize razors with initials and create customized messages for the packages, it was able to increase customer engagementFurthermore, Facebook and Instagram advertisements tended to look very similar to users; hence, advertisements with messages on product customization and personalization created better traction. Heatmaps and Click Pattern Analysis The BSC digital marketing team also worked on company website heatrnaps to analyze consumers through their browsing behaviors on the website. For example, the company observed that the advertisement for its discount campaign (i.e., the Broke Bank campaign offering a buy-one-get-one deal) was previously placed on the left-hand side of the page. However, heatmap analysis pointed out that the right side was themost- often visited part of the website. Therefore, the Broke Bank campaign advertisement was shifted fromleft to right for easy thumb tapping. The team then refreshed the deals every 15 days and created rich mediaweb pages with enhanced product photos, a how-to-use section; frequently asked questions; and urgency factors such as inventory sold, last bought information, and a single call to action. BSC also used a website click-tracking tool to perform granular analysis on website trafc. Instead of lookingat macro-l evel metrics, this analytical tool drilled down to the basic tracking of website clicks and how customers used the BSC web page. For example, click pattern analysis indicated that B SC customers usually browsed their mobile phone using their right thumb. Based on this insight, BSC moved the beard campaign advertisementom the left side to the right side of the web page in line with such click behaviour. This method was also used to analyze whether different channels were paid or organic, as well as to compare engagement from differentsources, redesign the site, direct visitors' attention, and remove distractions. Influencer Marketing With the company's strong digital presence on social media platforms, churning assets for continuous engagement became the core focus of the marketing team. BSC understood that the key to its success was to generate content as fast as possible. BSC's target group consisted of young adults who were typically swayed by social media inuencers. The company's research indicated that 68 per cent of this population group visited Instagram to interact with influencers. In addition, the online campaigns endorsed by influencers had a wider reach, were perceived to be trustworthy, and reached the relevant consumer group. BSC also found that inuencer endorsement had a good marketing return on investment, and that although inuencers increased marketing spending by 15 per cent, they delivered twice the effective reach. However, inuencer marketing had its downside as well. In particular, hiring the wrong inuencer could harm the brand image. Interestingly, the marketing team also found that social media was ooded with fake influencers who posted high- quality images and had numerous followers and many likes or comments who were not much differentfrom a real inuencer. However, upon closer inspection, one would see that most of their followers were fake- purchased followers, accounts, and bots, which meant they had no real inuence on the audience. These accounts and bots would even create awkward situations and post insensitive comments, because their engagement was often based on hashtags. To overcome this problem, BSC used technology tools to analyze and evaluate influencer marketing plans. The inuencer scoring algorithm, which was an importanttool in this monitoring task, analyzed any unusual follower-to-engagement ratio, engagement quality, sudden spikes in number of followers, numerous irrelevant or spam comments, and audience evaluation in terms of demographics to identify and spot the right influencers. TMEAyIurce was downloaded by 100000848939127 from Courseligitwl Marketing 10:23:02 GMT -05:00 Case Study https :// WWW. courschcro.com/lc/1215 15 7 9 7/B ombay shaving-club-casc-studypdf/ Digital Analytics The nal objective of BSC was to use data analytics to obtain relevant trafc at the lowest cost and increase conversion rates. Among various other metrics, bounce rates were used to measure the website's overall engagement. This was a measure to check whether consumers interacted with the website or just left after checking the landing page. BSC used Google Analytics, which tracked the session timing. Google started the timer when the session started; the timer stopped when the user ended the session by leaving the website or when the user had been inactive for 30 minutes. Google Analytics calculated the time spent by each web page visitor divided by several visitors to arrive at the average session duration. However, for this calculation purpose, the user had to take an action on that page (click a link, play a video, ll out a form, etc). Thus, the average session duration contributed to the understanding of user engagement by illustratinghow long users stayed on the BSC site. At the site level, this proved to be a helpful metric that indicated engagement in the true value of the site content. BSC also tracked pages per session or the average number of pages viewed during a session. A higher number of pages per session meant that users were more engaged while visiting the website. This helped to broadly gauge how compelling users found the content and the ease of access they experienced. Then, data on marketing spending were obtained using the CPC and cost-per-mile pricing models to analyzethe number of clicks and number of impressions, respectively, as the bases of measurement. Combining thetwo, CTRs were obtained to measure the number of clicks received per number of impressions. In turn, this tool was used to benchmark the performance of the assets and control the efciency of promotional spending CUSTOM ER RETENTION After customers purchased a product, BSC focused on changing conversion to retention. For this purpose, BSC invested in a customer relationship management (CRM) engine. In particular, it built a CRM engine consisting of 0.3 million registered users on the website, after which emails were sent to these users to generate repeat purchases. Ten automated emails for all four product categories were sent at different time intervals to customers after the purchase, mapping the consumer journey to encourage brand connection, repurchases, crossselling, up-selling, proactive feedback referrals, and subscription. These emails were sent at a specic period or time (t): at purchase (t0), dispatch of the product (t1), postorder dispatch (t1+2 days), category-level tips (t1+5 days), product feedback (t1+10 days), product longevity (t1+15 days), other product recommendations (t1+20 days), introduction of a newly launched complementary product (t1+25 days), gift or refer a friend (t1+28 days), and subscription mailer (t1+30 days). For customer retention, BSC conducted A/B testing of the email subject lines to check the open rates and see how many users opened the emails out of the total number of people who received them. It also found that emails with multiple links spread throughout the email drove fewer conversions than those with dedicated elements, such as a timer to induce a \"fear of missing out\" (FOMO) reaction. BSC also tracked the open rate (i.e., the number of users who opened the email divided by the total database to whom the email was sent). After analyzing these data, BSC found stark improvements in open and click rates when in-text lifestyle images were used in comparison to content that only featured product information. Similarly, different permutations and combinations of subject lines and unique selling propositions were tested to increase the open rates. :L ' 't \"we the nroblc... Lw..panuc "h, '\"" _..-r Q.2 Discuss "1e L'uswum MT\"- -'HlegV of BSC? 0 ' "" \"ALL\". alvnfnnxv u"... '-- . v A-Mw Vvuu uh V\">V' "I II nv Ill'l ' n A um\". :G Mr rncnl ijlzeting? \"I I; , \"1\"", \"f""m """:' \"T\" ' g '1, re. munance? 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