Week 3 Part B development of Brand

 

Company Business – Buymybees.com

                The business I want to brand is called buymybees.com, they are a start-up business focused on selling queen bees and established nuc bee colonies for commercial and hobby beekeepers. Based on research, the business is in demand as large suppliers of queen bees sell-out annually and cannot fill all orders due to the national volume needed. The primary requirement of this business is to have very high-quality queens that are bred to be mite resistant and generally, gently to work with. There are very well-established bee equipment manufacturers that also offer queens and bees for sale from suppliers, that have vendor agreements and sell to consumers, but they are more expensive. Most businesses that sell queens go direct to consumer, and market using search engine optimization, business blogs, and paid advertisement to establish their presence in the market. One key factor of this business may be to team-up with universities that have an established bee research program focused on genetics and breeding to ensure high-quality results. Additionally, the business may eventually offer “breeder queens” which are created using artificial insemination to control genetics and product high-quality queens used in other’s queen raising programs.

                The brand objective is to establish high-quality queen bees for sale by working with a university that has a good bee genetics program. This will help establish the brand because consumers will understand the science and research is being invested to product high quality queens. The brand will be supported by an online ordering system for ease-of-procurement by customers and will be developed by professionals with proper UX Design for the business. The business ships through all continental states using UPS overnight which makes it a competitive brand with other producers. Shipping dates will be three-times weekly, which is a more often that other businesses to help establish convenience which increase brand value. The business will have two queen bee lines, Italian for warmer states and
Carniolan’s for cold weather states. The brand will focus on marketing both lines to meet national geographical demand and would like to sell all queens produced. The business will be state inspected and certified to ensure that our bees do not have any illnesses and are of high-quality. The certification will help establish the brand as customers will see that the operation is professionally run and well-managed. Because the business is a start-up, we will need to focus our brand and marketing based on the college university program resulting in strong genetics.

The components needed to build the brand will consist of a professional website, well designed business logo, and a corporate online store. The design will take the business brand into account with a custom look and feel based on the owner’s input. Additionally, components will include using Cloud Software to communicate with customers, this may include Emailage, Mailchip, Twilio, and an imbedded chat. Other components will include a payment service to take credit cards, PayPal, and possibly crypto as it becomes more mainstream for ease of purchase. We will integrate with UPS for as an order tracking component so customers can see their order status along with delivery. Last, we will add training and product video’s so new beekeepers understand the proper way to install a new queen bee into their colony or replace an old queen.

                The brand strategy is to market to beekeepers nationally and present the high-quality genetics and university partnership resulting in strong queen bees. To market the business, we will join multiple beekeeping and pollination groups on Facebook and offer our queens for sale to start gaining business recognition. We will provide the website link to our which will allow the consumer to see a very professional business. Email marketing will take place by purchasing lists of pollination beekeepers from the Almond Board because nearly all commercial beekeepers come to California in February to pollinate the groves. By having this list, we will use a commercial email Cloud product and send our marketing solicitation and have the ability to track the results. We will optimize our Website for search engine optimization on search-terms and may consider paid advertising depending on the available budget. We’ll also write blogs with reference to the website in addition to posting many beekeeping training videos to drive organic traffic. Last, we’ll provide customer incentives for those leaving social media feedback and referring a fellow beekeeper who purchases from the business.

                Assuming the business will produce high-quality queen bees and nuc colonies, the analysis will focus on the Marketing dollars spent and lead conversion to sales. The goal is to spend Marketing dollars where strong sales took place by analyzing the data and profit results. When we have to spend Marketing dollars, we want to ensure they return the best results. As the business matures, we will want to send surveys to customers and understand what Marketing channel was used to find-us – Social Media, Email Marketing, Website search, etc., because organic traffic sales results will be hard to track. We’ll also analyze the overall market demand, and our demand, to determine if it is worth increasing production based to scale and meet market demand. At that time, we may need to add professional staff which may bring additional marketing value to the company especially if they have a strong academic background in genetics. We will then analyze if producing “breeder queens” has a strong demand in the market and potential sales opportunities.