Overview
Arau Baby provides natural baby soaps. We are an industry leader in Japan and have grown into a cash cow in Russia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Korea. Our task was to launch the brand in the US and spread initial awareness in this market to kick off sales before using Lakanto distributors (our sister company) to get into Walmart, Kroger, and Albertsons. This project entailed adapting the branding to fit the US consumer and spreading our presence to a wide array of channels. Details on advertising platforms and campaigns can be seen separately on this page.
Customer Habits & Segmentation
We narrowed our target market down to four main segments:
Pregnant Mothers do the most pre-purchase research, are active in communities & easy to get messaging to. This segment is the most likely to convert into a long-term customer after their first purchase.
First-Time Mothers have a few new negative emotions guiding their purchasing behavior including mom-guilt and high stress. They are less active in communities, but spend plenty of time on social media. They make up the majority of our sales.
Veteran Parents are the hardest to convert. Many of the negative emotions of early-stage mothering have been replaced with confidence. They provide advice to others often when it comes to parenting. They don’t do nearly as much product research before purchasing and are much less willing to splurge on premium products for children. Converting this segment will have the highest impact with word of mouth marketing.
The final segment is the Gifting Consumer. These consumers will not research their gifts overly much and are much more likely to be swayed by product appearance. To them, cute products are king. They are the most diverse segment and the easiest to target through purchase-intent keyword campaigns.
Adapting Japanese Packaging
We started with a somewhat direct translation of our Japanese packaging, keeping the information placement and design roughly true to the Japanese creative. Soon we saw Amazon reviews of customers using the bottle wash as a bath soap. A brief round of competitor research and concept testing made it clear that product information needed to be rearranged on the label, and a simpler design would better convey messaging. Key insights for our label redesign:
When we hand a bottle to a customer, they first look for the product type, then secondary details which vary depending on customer preference (most often scent or flavor).
The highest metric correlated with a purchase is if a customer handles our bottle (in-store) or clicks on our listing (online). Our goal is to provide the essential information that customers first search for, then get them to pick up our bottle to turn it over, or click on our listing for more information.
Customers look to the colored bubble on our packaging to find the product’s scent.
Customers look to any centrally-placed bolded lettering to find product type and use.
Customers lean towards packaging renditions emphasizing art style and mascots as brand identifiers rather than our logo.
A Local Splash
We had three initiatives with the express purpose of creating a local splash. See an overview of each here:
We selected the most promising expos including ABC Kids (for its high traffic) and Prego Expo (for its targeted audience). We hired local Pivot Creative Solutions to develop and produce a modular booth for these expos. Our in-show strategy is focused on getting products into new homes, growing our email list, and discovering new partnerships.
We partner with local businesses to provide a free sample to new mothers interested in natural products. Key businesses we target include doulas, midwiferies, and child prep classes.
We designed a trailer that we sent to local farmers markets, craft shows, flea markets, and other trade shows. Our strategy at these shows is focused on product demos and sales.
Additional Projects & Insights
Social media- giveaways carried in the beginning stages of following growth. Collaborative posts performed extremely well and lent credibility to our page for first-time visitors. Combining those two types of posts really kicked off our following; it only took three collaborative giveaways to boost our following past a thousand, at which point we passed social management to a contractor.
Website launch- shipping price was a huge pain point for our customers. After experimenting with pricing adjustments, we found our best path to success would be keeping our website primarily as an informational hub, and directing customers to Amazon when they displayed purchase-ready behavior.
Amazon development- A key insight that inspired this development revolved around our products being low suds for an easy rinse. Many customers left reviews mentioning surprise or confusion connected to this attribute. We went through rounds of testing and optimization for everything from home page categories to A+ content variations.