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1. Client Overview

· Client profile

Pro Racquets is a small starting up business located in Sydney with about five part-time employees. Pro Racquets sells products all about sports (e.g., shoes, clothing, bag and accessories) and focuses on professional tennis and badminton racquets. They also provide services with racquet multifilament string($25 per time), which is the important part of the company's profit. They also got a business license to sell Adidas, Asics, Lining, and other well-known sports brands.

Pro Racquets mainly targets badminton and table tennis players in Australia. Compared with online sales of about $30 a month, offline sales are much higher, at nearly $830.

The business also runs an online shopping website: https://proracquets.com.au/, which is the selling point; it is up-to-date and user-friendly that consumers can order and purchase goods online, and the company provides delivery service (over $150 free shipping).

Therefore, the company focus on promoting the operation and promotion of the website to help improve online sales.

Currently, they usually communicate with customers by traditionally sending text messages, and only have three social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, and WeChat) but do not obtain enough attention. For example, according to the data from the business, their Instagram account currently has only about 267 followers, 71 percent of whom are male and between the ages of 25 and 34. Pro Racquets‘s vision is for every badminton or tennis fan to use their racket and let as many people involved in sports as possible and love life.

· Market analysis

ProRacquet Sports current customers are the Badminton and Tennis fans. The chart shows the specific segmentation, targeting and positioning of these customers :

Source: Patrick, L.

· Current and potential competitors

Ezbox sport is a professional sporting goods store in Sydney Australia, which has over 10 years’ experience in selling and repairing badminton, tennis and table tennis. It has two shops in Eastwood and Chippendale. It also cooperates with well-known suppliers such as YONEX, Wilson, Lining and so on. It also has Certified Stringer/ Master Racquet Technicians.

Calibre sports is another competitor which sells Tennis, Soccer, Hockey as well as fitness equipment. It has its own website to sell its products online.

Mounting competition from discount department stores, particularly Kmart and Big W, has also hindered industry sales over the past five years. Weak discretionary income growth and volatile consumer sentiment have made consumers more price-savvy over the period. (IBIS, 2019)

· Overview of industry (technological, environmental, and competitive)

Technological: In the Sports Equipment Retailing industry, there is a low technological change. The main technology is point-of-sale (POS) systems that controls and records merchandising, distribution, inventory and sale processes.

Since customer’s behaviour is switching from offline shopping to online shopping, the demand for online store sites will be increasing in the future. It will require more and more e-commerce technology for the Sports equipment industry to security market share.

Environmental:

External environment

· Real household discretionary income

· Weak discretionary income growth has decreased consumer spending over the past five years.

· Consumer sentiment index

· Demand from online shopping

· Sport participation

· Australia’s sport participation rate has declined over the past five years, negatively affecting industry revenue.

· Average weekly hours worked: Average weekly hours worked have also declined over the past five years. This trend has benefited the industry by giving consumers more time to participate in sport and leisure activities(IBIS world, 2019)

Internal environment

In the sports equipment industry, price competition from online-only operators and discount department stores is the most concerned by all retailers.

Due to the weak discretionary income growth, customers are becoming more price sensitive when buying outdoor activity equipment. Strong discount department stores such as Kmart and BigW bring a strong impact on the traditional sport equipment retailers, causing them to join in the price war to attract price-savvy customers.

· Market position

The major customers can be divided into three age groups: people aged 15 to 34, people aged 35 to 54 and people aged 55 and over.

People aged 35 to 54 are the largest market in the sports equipment industry, accounted for 37.2% of industry revenue. They have a stable income, allowing them to spend more money than younger people aged 15 to 34.

· Unique selling points of goods/services offered

· Online shopping

· Post-purchase service (High margin)

· Points-of-parity and points-of-differentiation versus the competition

· Parity: strong suppliers (Lining, YONEX and Wilson). The same logic system (Australia Post)

· Difference: Social media(Facebook, Youtube and Instagram), post-purchase service (string, group match)

· Current marketing

Internet marketing

Regarding internet marketing, Pro Racquets has been running its website for one year when Patrick Luk took over the business. Most customers are badminton and tennis players in Sydney who browse for racquets, shoes, clothing, bag and accessories. Customers are youngers between 18-34 years old. About 70% of the customers are male, and 30% are female. The goal of the site is to showcase Pro Racquets products and online sales. People may find the website by following its Facebook, Instagram or Wechat. They may search the website address from google organic search base on some keywords. They have not yet paid marketing promotion fees to any search engine. Their eBay store has been running for almost a year, but just uploaded several products like grips. About the internet advertisement techniques, Pro racquets use display banner advertisement and pop-up window on its website. Pro Racquets has a good image of its website and eBay store as the listed products are specific for badminton and tennis players. They don't sell other non-sporty products online. But they are too passive about internet marketing as they don’t use various internet marketing methods, such as Google ads, to increase awareness and online sales.

Social media marketing

In social media, Pro Racquets is active on Instagram and Facebook. Most of the trackers are ball enthusiasts who use this two social software. They are between 18 and 45 years old. The audience on instagram is younger, while the audience on Facebook is mostly more mature. Because Pro racquets have physical stores, Patrick Luk encourages customers to track the store's social platform, and then publish information about products such as new products, discounts, and related services offered in the store, using Instagram and Facebook for marketing activities. The use of these social platforms can quickly build brand reputation and cost-effective, because there are many users of Instagram and Facebook, compared to the traditional advertising price and audience, this is a lot of money. In addition, such social media can independently conduct data analysis and measurement, such as brand exposure, customer participation and so on. The use of these two social platforms has also improved the reputation of Pro Racquets. On the contrary, there are many shops using social media to publicize, and the competition is fierce. For customers, they trust social media with more trackers, so Patrick Luk needs to spend more energy running social media stores to design more innovative content to attract customers, which is a long-term challenge.

Mobile marketing

In mobile marketing, Pro Racquets chose mobile applications and text messaging (SMS) as the main marketing tools. The purpose of these customer groups is to make them buy back again and enhance customer loyalty. Pro Racquets also provides racket threading services for customers. Customers can give rackets to shop assistants and wait for shop to inform them by text message that shop assistants have finished threading services and can pick up rackets from stores. At the same time, they will add online platforms and social accounts of stores, such as official websites, Facebook and Instagram. It is suggested that they follow up the account to get more store information, and add customer experience questionnaire to the message content to get customers satisfaction with the service in time. Pro Racquets also uses Wechat as an alternative way to accumulate customer resources. Patrick Luk publishes product information in Moment (a Wechat block). Let Wechat friends can see, at the same time, establish a group to centralize customers, in the group to release the latest store developments, such as new products, promotions and so on. Because Wechat is a chat application, customers can directly conduct one-to-one online consultation with stores through Wechat to improve the repurchase rate. As for the benefits of mobile marketing, because customers have their own mobile phones, mobile marketing can provide customers with product information anytime and anywhere, mass communication becomes simple, and direct marketing can be carried out for customers. On the contrary, because mobile devices belong to private goods, customers are likely to shield platforms that infringe their privacy, so that mobile marketing can not achieve the publicity effect, and the diversification of platforms makes more choices for customers, which is not conducive to improving customer loyalty.

· What is your goal and how does this align with their business strategy

The objective of the digital marketing program is to come up with recommendations that will primarily appeal to non-buyers who are genuinely active and continue to maintain the loyalty of existing buyers. The concentrated appeal to non-buyers is designed to increase Pro Racquets customer base and thus promote the competitiveness of the company in the market. The ultimate goal of this digital marketing plan is to improve the sales volume and awareness of Pro Racquets, which would have the highest commercial effect in three months.

2. Proposed Digital Marketing Strategy

· Overall goals of campaign

Target Audience: badminton and tennis players at different levels and participation in Australia

Currently, Pro Racquet is targeting badminton and tennis players, especially Intermediate and advanced players that positioning them as a reliable supplier of professional badminton/tennis gears including racquets, shoes and apparel. In Australian Bureau of Statistics survey of Participation in Sport and Physical Recreation in Australia in 2015, badminton placed 31st within the top 55 ranked sports with approximately 100,000 participants nationwide (ABS, 2015), which positions the market size achievable for Pro Racquets. Given the popularity of badminton in Asian and Indian regions, badminton players in the country have diverse cultural backgrounds that differ their online behaviours. For tennis, as a country holding one of the most prestigious tournaments over the world, Australian has 911,400 adult participation and a total of over $165.9 million per annum (AusPlay, 2019). Therefore, tailoring a digital marketing plan for these segments requires considering popular platforms that drive people’s interests.

The ultimate goal for business success sets to increase the overall sales of Pro Racquets, in which expect a significant growth of 20% website transactions in the campaign. At first step, the digital marketing is set solely attainable and concentrated to a steady increase of 30% in website traffic each month.