During the COVID-19, many companies have affected more or less by this epidemic. Toys as things that bring joy and happiness to people, a lot of people started to buy toys as a hobby to collect. It is worth mentioning that POPMART as one of the largest Chinese toy companies has launched in Canada, this company provides many kinds of attractive toys and sells them like capsule toys in Japan. These kinds of toys are called blind boxes which make a huge profit during the epidemic in China. Since this company has launched in Canada, it may give some inspiration to the toy business in Canada.
A Digital Marketing Plan for Toy Business
When you are operating a small toy business in Canada, this digital marketing strategy plan may give you some suggestions to operate successfully.
1. Identify your brand’s vision and mission
The toy business is the same as other businesses which need a brand’s vision and mission. The toy business can state the vision as “To provide happiness for everyone.”
The mission for the toy business can be “We try to create more attractive toys for everyone, so people can feel happiness.
2. Identify your goals
Goals are really important to every business, setting great goals can be easier to operate your business successfully. And goals can be achieved step by step, they not only can be short-term goals that can achieve within 6 months but also can be long-term goals that use more than 6 months to achieve. SMART goals are much more beneficial for the business, they should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.
Short-Term Goals:
- Within 2 months, I want to sell 500 toys per month.
- Within 6 months, I want to have at least 1000 followers on Instagram.
- Within 6 months, I want to cooperate with at least 3 artists to design new toys.
Long-Term Goals:
- Within 8 months, I want to collaborate with 10 retail stores.
- Within 9 months, I want to sell 5000 best-sellers.
- Within one year, I want to have enough money to contribute to environmental protection, in order to gain brand awareness and value.
3. Design a Digital Fingerprint
The toy business can not only launch retail stores but also launch an online shop. There is a lot of software helping businesses create an official website, such as GoDaddy. Especially during the epidemic, people prefer E-commerce because it is more convenient than offline shopping.
Google My Business is one of the greatest and simplest ways to increase your E-exposure commerce’s so that it can be found online.
You can set it up for free in a few clicks, display your company location on Google Maps and local search results, and collect reviews from consumers who have already purchased your product/service.
POPMART’s official website can be a great example for the toy business, it provides an online shop that has its own IPs’ toys, blog, and information about the company.
4. Define your Unique Selling Position
Some people may think that the toy business’s audience is only under 18 years old children and their parents. However, the generation has changed, nowadays, people from Generation Z started to pay attention to their psychological needs, collecting toys can achieve their needs. Therefore, people from 16 years old to 35 years old can be the target audience for the toy business.
At the same time, as a toy business, you are satisfying people’s psychological needs, focusing on creating attractive toys will become your unique selling point.
Moreover, you need to find what is something unique that you offer that no one does. It is difficult to be unique in the toy business because of the innovation part, however, you can still find your unique selling points by using these ways.
- Offer blind boxes. Since blind boxes are popular toys recently, you can offer blind boxes by using your own IPs. These kinds of toys can attract more audiences to have a surprising experience by opening a blind box.
- Pay attention to your branding. The design of the toys’ package, logo, and figures are really important for attracting more consumers. You can gain more attention by designing different attractive toys at every festival.
- Offer discount coupons. This will help your business build customer loyalty and gain more customers.
- Provide free delivery. Since online shopping is more and more popular, providing free delivery can be more convenient for consumers.
5. Search your competitors
With the development of the internet, most businesses started to build online shops and provide many ways to sell products. Understanding your competitors helps your business’s development. You can learn from them and promote your business by searching their reviews and finding consumers’ preferences. Checking their SEO, are their web pages the first result on Google? Are their web pages loading fast? Checking their social media, such as official Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. Which contents did they post on their social media? All of them are important to research so that you can know what your business should promote.
6. Promote your content
Content is king, if you create great content for your business, it means that you bring value to your consumers and make them willing to like, follow, and share your content.
First, the content should be creative. Creative contents have large possibilities to attract more consumers and bring value to them. POPMART is really good at creating creative content, they use many attractive pictures and videos as the main content, and make more consumers get interested.
Secondly, upload your content actively. Recently, consumers’ interests changed quickly. Active posting of content is essential to retain existing customers and attract new ones. At the same time, replying to your comments actively is also important. It can also help build brand loyalty for your business.
In conclusion, if you want to start a toy business, we hope that you can get some inspiration from this digital marketing plan.