Aaron Patterson

Proposal
for

Hey Bethel Music Team,

I am excited to be responding for a request for a proposal. I look forward to having a conversation about a working relationship. Any ideas built into this proposal can be used as a roadmap in a more detailed conversation. Without having an intimate understanding of our unique Bethel Music Store and the resources I will be working with, it will be hard to land on exact details in the beginning but we can land on some goals we would like to achieve and work out how we will achieve them. I hope what I offer in my services and in my proposal is what you are looking for.

Thanks!

What will I do?

While my short term goal will be to help facilitate day-to-day growth, my long term goal is to build a schedule and system that can scale with Bethel Music. I want to build a foundation of baseline practices that will grow the store and then start developing innovative strategies on top of those practices. This way, you know that we will have a marketing and engagement core rather than relying on shifting strategies for growth.

On top of a baseline strategy and operation, I want to help develop the innovations that the Bethel Music Store will come to be known for. I don’t want to just hit best practices; I want to exceed expectations and build a brand and system that is leading in ecommerce.

How will I do it?

When it comes to ecommerce, I look at 3 areas that are critical for effective ecommerce growth: Marketing, Shopping and Retention. Our customers’ interactions can be boiled down to how they hear about us, how they interact with us and how they return to us. I want to establish best practices for each of these areas. I want to make sure that we have solid growth strategies for every stage of our customers’ interaction. By looking at the “sales funnel” a customer goes through and coming up with a plan for perfecting each stage, we can reach a level of overall quality that will fit with the Bethel Music brand. Below are some ideas and possibilities for growing the overall Bethel Music store. I have boxed some of the aspects I feel are most important.

Area 1

Marketing

These are the methodologies and practices we use to acquire new customers. One of the most effective way to market your products is to use your community as your mouthpiece. I want to get people talking about our products in a way that will turn them into evangelists. We can intelligently generate traffic by getting our community to generate traffic for us.

Strategy Focus Points

We need to establish a sense of our perfect demographic and how we are going to communicate with them. I understand this is already built into Bethel Music but I want to modify it to fit how we present merch to those people.

All marketing will need to have integrated analytics to measure hard conversion to sales. I would be setting up reporting on all marketing platforms and their respective conversion rates.

We will need set up a consistent campaign schedule that also integrates album releases, important events, trending items and unique merch releases.

We need to integrate BMS into our social media schedule. With products, it may be easier to also leverage existing networks for merch promotion. If we can get other communities of people talking about our merch then that will grow our exposure.

If it fits with Bethel Music, I would like to find creative and high quality affiliate and referral marketing.

Advertising could be a key strategy if we can do it wisely. Obviously there is inherent risk with advertising incorrectly or having expensive placements but with some testing, it’s possible to get a good customer base from ads.

While Bethel appeals to a mainly Christian demographic, we will need to set up SEO in a way that will not only be able to capture a Christian demographic but a general fashion demographic. I would like to make it a goal to have SERPS for good apparel keywords.

Area 2

Shopping

This is the experience that customers have when they are on the site and interacting with all of Bethel Music’s products. We need to identify the biggest key factors that get our visitors to enjoy and convert. We want people to not only love the products – we want them to love the experience of purchasing the products.

Strategy Focus Points

I want to establish a baseline for UI and UX testing. I will rely on the expertise I have with increasing usability, but this will also need to be done by testing. I also want to establish a healthy habit of monitoring others who have amazing ecommerce for UI/UX patterns that will increase the use and design of our site.

We could increase sales by adding upsells and items for impulse buys at checkout.

I want to try to find a good balance of capitalizing on additional actions on the product pages. Actions could include sharing, wishlists, social interaction, etc.

I definitely want to capitalize more on social interactions on our product pages through Instagram or other sharing methods. I know star ratings are great, but I think we can find a way to make the interaction more personal.

I want to establish some foundational value props. These could be extras like free shipping, added value in orders or some form of quality promise.

I want to find a way to give added value to customers who have accounts and have agreed to get product updates. If we can recognize and reward people who purchase more, that would help us turn them into brand evangelists. We could even find a unique way to personalize an insert we put in with orders; that would help improve the UX.

A few ideas

Dedicated Community
Build a dedicated community for feedback and integrated community. We could give this community free merch in trade for Instagramming, sharing and giving us feedback. We can not only use them for usability and future feature feedback, but we can automatically build in community to each product we launch so there is more social interaction out of the gate.
Gamification
Someday, we could gamify our customers so you get bonus content or products the more you purchase, share our products or interact with the community on our products.
Superpages
For some of our products, superpages might be a good option. This is a product page that breaks the ecom format and introduces a more unique sales method to the product. Kinda like Harry’s (https://www.harrys.com/products/the-truman-set)
Segmented Products
It might be advantageous to segment off a set of products for worship leaders. These could be a set of items in the store or additional items that we can target to worship leaders in conferences, in Worship U, etc.
Unique Add-ons
It would be cool to suggest unique items that are low cost or could be added to a product for sharing. These could be simple items like adding pens to journals, bracelets to t-shirts, posters (or bonus content) to albums, etc.

Area 3

Retention

This is the system and practices we use to re-engage and turn our past customers into repurchasing customers. In this stage, we need to figure out what are the best ways to re-engage with our customers to get them to return. This also includes adding new merch to keep things fresh and moving.

Strategy Focus Points

We definitely need an email remarketing campaign. I would recommend having a separate newsletter for customers who want product releases and updates along with periodically including merch into our main emails.

When we choose to discontinue items, we could implement last chance sales. This might compel people who like that design to purchase before it’s gone. Any leftover merch could be sold or given away at Bethel.

We need to develop a general merch release schedule. This will keep us on track for keeping things fresh in the store. To keep browsing simple, I might also suggest discontinuing items that under perform or are older.

We can wildly capitalize on the fact that we are shipping physical items. We can use high quality print material to upsell and include people in the community.

I really really want a subscription model for T-shirts. I would like to sign people up for a subscription that sends them a unique T-shirt every month. People could also give a subscription as a gift.

Obviously adding forms of abandon cart engagement and ad retargeting are needed.

A few ideas

Testimony Shirt

To keep subscriptions unique, I would really like to do a “Testimony Shirt” model. Every month, we take a testimony from a church member, our community, etc and design an amazing graphic tee that represents the testimony. This way, every month, you are getting shirts that represent hope, life, love, etc. When you get the shirt, you get a small card that shares the testimony and story behind the shirt.

Contests

We could do “gifts and surprises” and run some contests. If we don’t run contests, we should at least find some random people that have commented on our Facebook, shared on Instagram, etc and randomly give them a free shirt or something for being awesome. Instead of a contest, we could also let people nominate others who they think could use a gift.

Why should you choose me?

i

I will document and train

During my time as a subcontractor, I will make sure to not only do the work we discuss; I will keep records of my processes and methods so you can use it as a “manual” for training people and operating the store.

You own everything

All of my work for Bethel Music during this time will be owned by Bethel Music. While I use processes that could be considered proprietary, those processes become yours to continue using when I apply them to you.

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Your communication style

I’m willing to adapt my communication style to yours. This means if you prefer updates weekly, daily or hourly, you can have them. Although I am remote, I go out of my way to feel as connected as possible.

Thank you