Digital

Marketing
PROJECT PROPOSAL
Retrospective Club

Victor Bon - Sergi Romy - Jonas S. Schneider

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction …………………………………………………. 4

II. Past Marketing Strategy Analysis ………………… 6

III. New Marketing Campaign Implementation.…. 11

IV. Conclusion ……………………………………………………. 13

 I. Introduction
Retrospective Club is a French based online business which exclusively sells caps. The
company was created by 3 business school students from the world renowned university of
EM Lyon. It was entirely funded by the founders' savings, with the collected amount
reaching 6000 euros, which the founders invested equally. The team created their Limited
Liability Company (LLC) in May 2021 and became operational in August. As you can see
this still is an early-stage company. However, in the short amount of time that they have
been functional they have managed to sell over 300 caps. Considering that the business was
launched at the end of the seasonal period of this product (during the end of the summer),
those are very promising results.

Regarding the business model of the company their structure is very simple although it could
be easily expanded along with the business itself. Currently they only need to cover the
production costs that they pay to their supplier in China. Their manufacturer is called 4U
Sporting Goods and provides high quality product with all of the additional components
included (embroidered and ripped in the front part of the cap). They discovered the supplier
thanks to another player in the same market that was kind enough to get them in touch with
this vendor. The shipping costs are fully covered by the customer, and they deliver all
around the world. The advertising costs are non-existent because they promote entirely
through their social media (Tik Tok and Instagram) and with influencer’s posts who do not
ask for any type of compensation. That is due to the founders’ personal networks, so their
acquaintances help them without expecting anything in return. Through this lucrative
business model, the company generates profit margins in the range of 57% which is
incredibly high. They sell their caps at 35€ each, with a variable shipping cost based on the
client's location, and they only have production unit costs which amount to 15€ per cap.
 II. Past marketing strategy analysis

Marketing Strategy
To this day the brand is solely focused on digital marketing. As stated previously, they
generate content only on their social media and on their influencer’s account. To provide
high quality publications Retrospective Club provides a shooting service to their influencers.
The appearance they want to create with their publications combines the retro/vintage
approach with the more modern looks of today’s marketing with appealing components.

Brand Image
The brand associations are mainly connected to the “retro style”. This is a concept that has
been successfully implemented in the fashion industry to bring back or imitate past
tendencies in the music, fashion, movie, and photo industries. The 4 different colors of their
caps (Blue, green, pink, and yellow) are inspired by the clothing color trends of the 90s with
flashy and fluorescent colors that catch the eye. These behaviors are aligned with the period
of success for comic books and pop art. Finally, we have the kissing lips which are another
symbol of that time with the Rolling Stones symbol of the tong and lips logo known
worldwide from the 1970s onwards. The notion of club is purposely used to create the idea of
a restrictive group that everyone wants to join but only a privileged minority is allowed to.
This is opposed to the suggestion that a brand might be for everyone and accessible to the
masses.

Social Media posting strategy

The social media posting strategy Retrospective adopted in the first place is pretty basic but
very efficient. Before releasing the first drop of caps, they hired a photograph and shot in
many different stunning places to create an important photo gallery. They progressively
published some photos on their Instagram page teasing the audience. They divided the posts
in 3, according to the 3 environment they decided to shoot. First bundle of 3 post was
published 3 weeks before the release, and so on until the day of the drop where they
announced it throughout a released video. Retrospective was careful to publish at maximum
rush hours on the platform, also asking all of their relatives and friends to repost single post.
 Website SEO strategy
Retrospective always kept in mind that SEO was a big part of a marketing campaign and
thus realized very quickly that, to increase their visibility along as their sales they will have
to work on this specific aspect. Matteo BON one of the creators oversaw the SEO strategy, I
had the chance to discuss this last with him and here is their vision. According to Matteo, a
good SEO strategy rely on 3 main pillars, directly linked together, supporting the marketing
campaign as physical pillars would do so with a house.

 1st Pillar – Definition of the SEO strategy

As for every major step in a company’s life, there is a crucial need of reflection upstream.
This step consists in analyzing all the company’s needs liked to their marketing campaign,
their objectives in term of web-site visit, and how should they implement the existing tools.
To define the strategy as precisely as possible, Matteo broke down this pillar in four main
categories defining the five big actions to undertake:
- Definition of the SEO strategy objectives
- Key-word study
- Technical Audit of the existing website
- Creation of an optimized Site-Map
Without going into too many details, Retrospective used many different tools to reach these
implementation objectives. As an example, for the key-word study, Matteo presented me
Key-Word Magid Tool a powerful tool designed by SEMrush. Basically, it allows the
company to identify a huge number of keywords associated only with one word.

 2nd Pillar – Configuration of the SEO tools

The second crucial step of a good SEO strategy is the maintenance. In order to access easily
all the data needed to analyze the SEO strategy and whether the first steps worked or not,
companies use different Tools to measure and analyze the impact of their implementations.
In the world of web marketing, nothing is lost, everything is measured. The innumerable
data available make it possible to understand and quantify the impacts of each effort. SEO
tools organize this data so you can focus on what's important.
Retrospective used tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag
Manager, Google My Business. Via WordPress they downloaded Yost SEO a tool that assist
the company for web redaction and ensure the respects of fundamentals of a good SEO
content. Once these two pillars are settled, it is only about how good the company will use
the data to improve their strategy, the objective always being having the best visibility.
III. New marketing campaign implementation via
Instagram (with results)

The overall digital marketing strategy Retrospective Club had adopted in the past 3 months
was very successful and when it comes to a digital brand, we can proudly say they are a
great example of it. Despite the brand’s good results, we, On Track Agency, envisioned and
developed a strategy which hadn’t been implemented yet.

To best assess the brand, we introduced ourselves, explained the project and the reason for
conducting our work. The founder and his associate agreed to hear us out which led to a first
meeting. Following the meeting we circled back with a detailed project proposal, which was
immediately overviewed and accepted with no changes nor comments given. From then, we
were given 100% control over the account and the decision making in relevance our
strategy. The project proposal can be found in our Annexes p.6.

The marketing campaign implemented resulted in 3 independent Instagram posts published

on the @retrospective.club account. The final goal of this series was to increase follower
count, increase product sales and improve brand visibility, loyalty, image, and reputation.
Each posts have their own independent goals. The content was posted with a one-week
interval between each post, on a three-week time frame.

1. Giveaway
The first post of the series was a giveaway which was posted on Thursday October 28 th.
Retrospective Club gave away 3 caps to its follower’s in a goal to increase visibility and
loyalty of the brand. The visibility was expected to be gained via the mentioning and tagging
of friends and family in order to participate. The loyalty was expected to be attained by
giving back to the supporters of the brand. The follower increase was expected to grow by
5% and the post interactions by 100%.

To participate, users had to follow the @retrospective.club account, tag 3 friends in the
comment section and like the post. The giveaway ended on November 1 st and winners were
contacted by private message and had the chance to choose the desired color.
 II. Sponsored post
The second post of the series was posted on Thursday November 4th and is a classic
Instagram posts of Retrospectives’ previous photoshoots which was meant to increase page
visibility, increase follower count and improve brand image and reputation. The post was
promoted with a budget of 5€ per day during 6 days and was targeted towards a specific
audience.

The target audience we used for the specific market segment promotion was the following.
We predicted an estimated 4,500 people reached over the 6 days.

 Male and female

 16 to 26 years old

 Interested in pop-culture and streetwear

 Paris – Marseille - Nice

 From nov.-05 to nov.-10

III. “Shop feature”

The final post of the series, posted on Thursday, November 11th, was meant to allow
followers who’ve missed the giveaway or new followers who’ve just jumped on board to
purchase the product directly via Instagram. To do so, we added the in-app shopping
feature. The IG shop feature is a small bubble placed on the desired product in the post,
which could redirect the viewer to the product description page with a link to the
retrospective-club.com website. In addition, the brand was interested in investing in the
promotion of the post again which participated in boosting the marketing campaign.
Thanks to the previous post, trial and error was possible and the target audience was better
determined.
 IV. Conclusion
- Impact, impressions, metrics, etc.

The first post, the Instagram contest, that we posted for Retrospective Club was
significantly successful. The goal was to let the followers know that the brand was still
active even if it had not shared any content for over a month and a half. The contest did not
go unnoticed, the average number of likes per post of the account was 128 and this one
reached 144 likes. Similarly, the number of comments per post had on average about 3
comments and the give away post received 108 comments. Thereby, the total number of
interactions amounted to 252 (likes + comments). At a different level, what motivated the
users to comment was that it was a requirement to have the opportunity to win the prize and
they were asked to identify 3 other users. Therefore, the reach of the likes expanded to 4
times the number of comments so about 324 people being tagged excluding the people who
could have been tagged more than once. This is what we could get from a personal analysis.
However, there is a tool on Instagram that allows professional account users to get
additional information called Post Insights. This analytical instrument allowed us to confirm
some of our hypothesis and get real data on the reach of the contest. Besides the content
interactions there were other activities on the account which are not specified. We also
gathered some additional information such as the number of accounts reached, and we saw
that almost 800 accounts saw the post. Therefore, the view-interaction ratio is 31.5% which
is a pretty solid percentage. In addition, out of the total amount of views for the post 338
(42%) were from non-followers. A last insight that we had which is relatively important is
the number of additional followers thanks to the post which resulted in 14 new followers.
What we learned from this last factor is that we should have sponsored this post in order to
increase the number of participants and new followers, so this is a mistake from which we
have learnt.

The second post we posted with the Retrospective Club team was sponsored. The second
post had an allocated budget of 30€ which were divided into 6 days of ads. In other words,
we sponsored the post on a 5€ per day basis. We decided to have the target audience
defined by Instagram. Instagram analytics were able to target a specific market segment
according to Retrospectives’ current follower “type” and their potential interests. At the end
of the 6 day sponsor, 8.4% of the money that went into the ad was directed towards users
older then 35 years old, 0.7% to user from 25-34 years old and 70.5% on users from 18-24
years old. The campaign resulted in 205 people interacting with the post with 125 likes, no
comments and the remaining 80 interactions were from users visiting the account. In terms
of reach, there were 10,400 impressions from which 6,500 people were exposed to the post.
In relation to conversion rates, outside factors from the current strategy of the Retrospective
club team made our data inaccurate but we estimated that around 50 new followers were
obtained.

3rd post:

To sum up, the marketing strategy that we executed for the social media account of the
Retrospective Club’s business had a moderate success. However, considering the past
results of the account is quite consistent with what they had achieved until now. In addition,
the fact that they were absent from their social media for a significant time did not help our
cause. Furthermore, through this initiative we gave the Retrospective team a trial to
understand prepare new way of generating advertising. This should be helpful when the
expansion plan that they have in mind is implemented.