Online Advertising.
Zenzu spends approximately ninety five percent of its marketing budget on online advertising. Of this ninety five percent nearly 60 percent is actually spent on advertising under the search terms Chinese furniture and oriental furniture. The origins of Zenzu, while based on the fact that it’s directors have a great deal of experience living in and doing business in China, also had a very strong influence in the company’s knowledge of search engine advertising and optimisation. In fact the whole premise of Zenzu as an online oriental furniture company is predicated on the statistics that were available from the big online search engines such as google, yahoo and microsoft.
By analysing data from these companies it was though the Chinese furniture would be a niche market ideally suited to be the first in our portfolio of online retail businesses. Coupled with the term oriental furniture, data suggested that there were just enough people searching under those terms to generate income and business, but not so many as to make the advertising budget unsustainable. It is by focusing on niche areas that small business such as ourselves can survive. By contrast if we were to try and market purely as a generic furniture supplier then we would have to carry a vast amount of stock, compete against a myriad of competitors and invest a huge monthly sum in online advertising. Thus a large initial investment to go with the inherent risk of a starting any new business.
It is the aim of Aston Holding Group Ltd and Rocombe Design Ltd to develop this search engine led advertising concept and to establish a wide range of businesses with specific niche orientations. This backwards engineering approach, so effectively used for the Chinese furniture business, firstly takes a retail idea or concept then runs statistics on whether it is a suitable online environment to be competing. Then Sund Sourcing Ltd our partner in China gets involved to ascertain whether products can be ethically and reliably sourced and whether they offer a margin which can sustain business from the projected consumer search volumes. oriental furniture proved to be an ideal model to follow in terms of quantity of impressions per month, quantity of click throughs, subsequent sales and ability to supply products with a reasonable margin.
On its own the Chinese furniture business just about generates a self-sustaining annual profit but large gains were not really as much the point as was the proof of concept. And, as a proof of concept exercise it was highly successful. Having evaluated many different products and products since we have decided on the launch of Domo Doors (working title) later this year. As with niche terms such as oriental furniture, the doors business will concentrate on a few specific keywords and we are safe in the knowledge that we will be able to compete highly effectively on this basis against the existing online retailers who don’t have quite as much niche focus. We shall see what happens in the near future, and the look out continues for the next retail opportunity, some of which are under investigation as we speak .
