Millennial Marketing Strategy

Available for the past 15 years at Canada’s iconic Hudson’s Bay department store, GlucksteinHome is a mature brand with a loyal following in the gen X and boomer demographics. Millennials are a driving force in Canadian retail and we recognize this demographic has distinct attitudes and values towards shopping, brands, home ownership, and home design. While we want to continue to resonate with our current customer base, we also want to connect with this new important demographic of millennial consumers. Through this project, you will analyze our current communications approach, recommend changes relevant to the millennial audience, and discover new opportunities for us to engage with the millennial consumer. Analyze our current marketing and communications approach (our brand managed communications include: website, social media, public relations, product packaging, in-store merchandising and collateral; take into consideration the use of Brian Gluckstein as design expert and face of the brand)Gain insight into the best way to engage and resonate with the millennial consumer around home design and home decor product purchases Provide recommendations surrounding:How can we best engage the millennial consumer?How can we improve our current marketing and communications to better connect with millennials? (consider visual creative, photography, written communication, social media, PR)Which Canadian media outlets (traditional and new PR) should we focus on and target to reach millennials? How can we leverage Canadian influencers in the home space? Which influencers are a good fit for our brand? How can we better leverage Brian Gluckstein as a personality and design expert within the millennial market? What can we learn from our competitors in this area? Final deliverables include:A written report (approximately five pages or 15 slides) on your research findings and recommendations. Recommendations should be creative, specific, measurable and actionable.

SEO Strategy & Recommendations

As a consumer product brand carried at a third-party retailer, we know that our digital platforms are vital to our marketing success. Our website is designed to share product information, educate and inspire home design enthusiasts, and drive consumers to our retail partner (ecomm or in-store). We know that we need a stronger SEO strategy. We would like to collaborate with students to understand what we need to do to generate more traffic through search engines. Students should be prepared to:Complete an SEO analysis on our websiteConduct competitive keyword researchUpdate our website with the best structure and elements for SEODevelop an on-page and off-page SEO planIdentify key metrics to track for successFinal deliverables include:A written report (approximately five pages or 15 slides) on your research findings and recommendations. Recommendations should be creative, specific, measurable and actionable.

Target Market and Competitive Analysis

It’s important for us to have a better understanding of our customers, our competitors, and how our target audience perceives our brand and competitors. We want to develop clarity on our competitive advantages and optimize our marketing communication strategy.This project will involve:A customer analysis, including our current customers and potential new target customers.A brand and competitor analysis, including identifying our current and future competitors and their market share.Building a competition portfolio of our competitors, their features, services, price, and communication strategy.Conducting empirical interviews and/or questionnaires for feedback on our brand compared to competitors.Questions to answer:What do you see as our biggest weaknesses, relative to our competitors?What are our biggest strengths?Is there anything you would change about our marketing or branding to better differentiate ourselves from our competitors?How do our customers view our brand? How is this different from how we position the brand?How can we better leverage Brian Gluckstein as a personality, design expert and brand ambassador?Review consumer-facing communications from our brand and our key competitors including:WebsitesSocial mediaPhotographyWritten communication (tone and subject matter)We hope to gain a comprehensive understanding of the competitors in our space and how we can differentiate.