Digital marketing proposal for a small cigar company

This article is addressed to cigar companies’ owners and marketing managers to help them with their digital marketing strategies.

Cigar Company Request and Technology Proposal

Cigar Company requires the design and development of a new ecommerce website.

Cigar Company project goal is: “Our goal is to increase traffic to our website for data and ecommerce, increase the products that are found on our ecommerce site, and increase the amount of time that a user spends on our website, hopefully converting each visit to a sale”.

Cigar Company project scope is: “We wish to have individual products listed with background information and the ability to either purchase them directly from the site or visit a retailer near the consumer. We also wish to have informational pages describing the history of the company, the brands, and the foundation. Additionally, we want to have a SWAG shop, a blogging portal, and an event calendar. Finally, we would like to be able to incorporate a portion of the site to interact with our different social media outlets.”

We propose to design and develop a Shopify  ecommerce website, hosted at Shopify, and offered as a SaaS (Software as a Service). Shopify is the world leader in ecommerce hosted solutions for small and mid-size businesses, with more than 600.000 customers worldwide.  Ecommerce SaaS has many advantages over traditional ecommerce as a product, since ecommerce software upgrades and maintenance are included in the SaaS hosting service. ROI is higher for ecommerce SaaS than for ecommerce as a product. This is the main reason we recommend Shopify versus Magento. Magento is the number 2 ecommerce provider. Magento does not offer the ecommerce as a SaaS, because Magento does not offer hosting and upgrades services. Cigar Company will avoid technological obsolescence with Shopify SaaS ecommerce website.

Website and digital marketing campaigns will be optimized for mobile phones.

We will target the following audience with the content and advertising campaigns:

• Geography: USA
• Age: 20-35 “not-yet convertible” smoking people of legal age
• Age: 35-65 cigar smoking male
• Interest: Cigar Smokers and “not-yet/convertible” smoking people of legal age.

We will present to website visitors several ubiquitous engagement and conversion offers to warranty retention, conversion, and sales.

Primary project scope, delivery times, and price: Shopify ecommerce website design and development; digital media development; Google products, guidelines, and tests setup and compliance; Email marketing development, key phrases and key topics analysis.

Primary project scope includes the following tasks:

• Design, development, and launch a Shopify ecommerce website.
• Website will have ecommerce; retailer’s information; blog; SWAG shop; informational pages about company, brands, and foundation; event calendar; social media interaction, email marketing; advertising campaigns landing page; and several website visitors engagement/conversion opportunities.
• Website will comply with Google webmaster, SEO and links guidelines.
• Website will comply with Google website mobile performance tests.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) for each website page and for each product page.
• Project and website will comply with NAP consistency guidelines. Business Name, Business Address, and Business Phone will be the same in all digital media, blogs, and directories. This NAP consistency will help to the website search engine optimization (SEO)
• Setup and website integration with major Google marketing products: Gmail, Analytics, Search Console, MAPS, My Business, Tag Manager.
• Website directory listing at major online business directories. This will help SEO.
• Review, design, setup, and launch company business pages at LinkedIn, SlideShare, Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus, and Twitter. This will help SEO.
• Review, design, setup, and launch group business pages at LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Communities. This will help SEO.
• Create, setup, and launch business blogs at Medium, Quora, Reddit, and Merchant Circle. This will help SEO.
• Design and execute a key phrases and key topics analysis for website search engine optimization and content production.
• Product images retouching.

Primary project scope, delivery time, and prices summary:

Secondary project scope, delivery time, and price: Website traffic and sales strategy through advertising and content SEO campaigns.

Website qualified traffic generation and sales strategy will be accomplished by designing and executing two strategic digital advertising campaigns and one strategic content marketing search engine optimization campaign to position all Cigar Company brands and products at the first page of Google search results; social networks; Internet websites and Apps; and email marketing; to warranty website traffic, retention, conversion, and sales.

For short term results (days), we recommend a Google AdWords Search Advertising Campaign, and a Google AdWords Display Advertising Campaign. These two advertising campaigns will achieve website qualified traffic and sales through the first page of Google search results; and qualified Internet websites.

Using Google AdWords Search Advertising campaign, we will target the audience that is searching for cigars, either from a mobile, tablet, laptop, or PC. Since Google search is almost a monopoly (more than 94% of web searches), we will not propose Yahoo or Bing search advertising.

Using Google AdWords Display Advertising campaign, we will target the audience when they browse Internet websites and Apps, either from a mobile, tablet, laptop, or PC. Google does not know if the user is a cigar smoker, but Google knows what users have visited cigars websites; therefore, we can ask Google to display our banner ad to those users that have visited cigars websites. This is the main reason why we propose Google AdWords Display versus other display advertisers such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, which do not know users browsing pattern. We could not target our cigar smoking audience using their display advertising.

For long term results (6 months to 2 years) we recommend a Content Marketing SEO Campaign, based in the production, publication, and distribution of educational and recreational articles about the Cigar Company products; this includes a key phrases and key topics analysis. The Content Marketing SEO Campaign will achieve website qualified traffic and sales, through the Google search results; social networks; business blogs; and email marketing. Articles will be originally published at the website blog, and then the articles will be distributed at social network business pages, social network group and communities’ pages, business guess blogs, Quora, Reddit, Medium, Merchant Circle, and email marketing. Articles will also be send to Google Search Console. These article publishing and distribution is what will position Cigar Company brands and products at the first page of Google search results in a time frame that goes from 6 months to 2 years.

We will be permanently testing, adjusting, and optimizing all the channels that take the audience to the website. We will also be permanently testing, adjusting, and optimizing all the engagement and conversion offers at the website. This is key the first year, because we want to know what channels and what engagement and conversion offers are the most likable by the audience.

Project manager and responsibilities

Cigar Company must assign a project manager. The Marketing Manager will accomplish this role responsibility very well.

Cigar Company Project Manager responsibilities will be:

• Review and reply emails the same day they are sent and received.
• Deliver project materials and project information to MSalesLeads, as requested, if possible the same day they are requested.
• Review and approve the project deliverables, if possible the same day they are delivered.
• Manage project invoices and secure on time payments to MSalesLeads.

MSalesLeads project manager and responsibilities

Julio R. Sanoja, MSalesLeads CEO & Founder will be the project manager.

MSalesLeads Project Manager responsibilities will be:

• Send project emails to Cigar Company Project Manager
• Request company information and products description, prices, and images materials to Cigar Company Project Manager.
• Send project deliverables to Cigar Company Project Manager for review and approval.
• Prepare and send project invoices to Cigar Company Project Manager.
• Maintain website, advertising campaigns, and content campaigns.
• Prepare and send monthly reports to Cigar Company Project Manager about the website traffic metrics and advertising and content campaigns metrics.

MSalesLeads experience

MSalesLeads and its former mother agency Empresa Web sum up a total of 16 years of experience, helping small and mid-size businesses to go and grow their businesses online; position their brands, products, and services online; and getting new prospects and customers online. Both, MSalesLeads and Empresa Web have strategically design and execute more than 150 digital marketing projects, and digital marketing, advertising and content campaigns during the last 16 years. Some of our customers are:

Banco Mercantil, Banco Exterior, Banco Venezolano de Crédito, Laboratorios Farma, Casa Hellmund, CIC Harvard, IMG Academy, Hechoamanos, MLS Technologies, Uroavila Clínica El Avila, Hospital de Clínicas Caracas, Carolina Manrique, Lusa Supplier, Hidráulica Ebro, Dibombas, Edil, Herbalife, Mercedes Benz, Aura Quesos, Ananke, Avila Química, Global Price, GD Equipment, Flores de Mónaco, Gulf Oil, IPS, Lamilara, NutriWhite, PCG, Vidrio Protect, Tumateriaprima, Xcess, Wind Spirit Caribe, Ananke, Tuencomienda, ok2go Latam, ok2go Chile, Sumynca, Joanne Stone Design, among many others.

Julio R. Sanoja experience

Julio has 35 years of experience in business strategy, project management, marketing, and sales; and 16 years of experience in digital marketing strategy, projects and campaigns, as CEO and Founder of 2 digital marketing agencies, Empresa Web and MSalesLeads. You can see Julio´s LinkedIn profile here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliosanojarial

Julio has an engineering degree from Simon Bolivar University at Caracas, Venezuela; and a Master Degree in Engineering at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Julio is fully bilingual English-Spanish.

Price validity

Our agency agrees to keep the quoted pricing in this proposal for a minimum of 90 days after proposal submission.

Digital assets ownership

All digital assets will be created under Cigar Company accounts because they are business assets and must be under your company name. These include Shopify Website and Hosting account, Google marketing products, Social Networks business pages, Social Network business group pages, Guest Blogs business pages, Directory listings, Email Marketing Platform, Google AdWords Campaigns, and original articles for the content marketing SEO campaigns.

All digital assets login and passwords will be created under Cigar Company name and they all belong exclusively to Cigar Company. They will be used by MSalesLeads during project execution time and then they will be all be delivered to Cigar Company in a formal document as part of the project deliverables. Cigar Company has the right to change those passwords after final project delivery.

Project scopes

Cigar Company may request changes to the project scopes on this proposal.

This article was written on September 20, 2018.

You can read our previous article in the following link:

https://www.msalesleads.com/evergreen-articles-for-small-businesses-digital-marketing/

This article, and all our previous articles, are originally published at our Blog at https://www.msalesleads.com/category/articles/ , and then they are distributed in all our social network pages, and email marketing.

About the Author:

This article was written by Julio R. Sanoja, owner and founder at MSalesLeads, a digital marketing agency for small and mid-size businesses in Miami, Florida. We help small and mid-size businesses to go and grow their businesses online; position their brands, products and services online; and get qualified leads and new customers online. We have been doing this for the last 16 years. You can write me juliosanoja@msalesleads.com or you can call me 305-918-9793.