The surface level brand perception of a well established, consumer goods manufacturer appeared to be without fault.

The Problem.

With a vast product catalog that presented only highly technical specs online and in print, product differentiation was challenging except for within legacy, labor intensive business to business sales channels that required hand selling. The people who were actually using the product, were far removed from product information and the company incentive to create it. Over time, internal departments had become anchored in creating and managing highly specialized product information for a very small audience of retail buyers. With a mission to make the sport their product enabled easy and enjoyable for as many as possible, the company had a schism in their stated purpose and their day to day activity. The result was an often frustrated customer base, and an internal employee culture where the gap between stated job roles and actual function was sizable and often confusing for employees.

The Solution.

A CRM solution was attached to the company’s existing website, and combined with analytics tools. Measuring interaction and user search terms revealed the website was missing opportunities to capture inbound interest in a variety of ways. First and foremost, the product information was insufficient leading to an abnormally high bounce rate. Search terms revealed the type of information consumers were after, and it aligned with internal thought leadership regarding justifying the product in the market place. Describing the who, what, where, when and why of their product also aligned with the brand’s stated purpose and clarified previously siloed department roles around data management, saving low six figures per year on redundant employee activity. Further supporting end user needs, the company worked with Happy Chance to install a Knowledge Base for process based user self help online, a chat bot to qualify and distribute inbound messages efficiently, and a blog to further explain product use. In addition, a Product Information Management system was implemented to house the newly generated content, providing a logical framework for data ownership across several company stake holding departments.

The change in operation freed employee hours and resulted in found time for seeking further improvements toward ecommerce. Currently in development, leadership is expecting an additional sales channel to contribute to the bottom line with higher margins, and streamlined operations. Web traffic has increased 50%, and with measurement tools installed, the company is able to watch interactivity and adjust their content output to match user need.

So far, aligning the brand story with the operations of the company has resulted in clarity in department responsibilities, a drastic reduction in bounce rate on the company website, and a streamlined operation as data management changes implemented contribute to retail partner ability to describe and sell product. Just two months into only partial e-commerce roll out, the company has doubled the previous two years of web sales.