Nour ElHouda Chaibi

Veneroo SARL
Supervised by: Gürsel Ilipinar

Second Progress Report

I. Results Analysis
During these seven weeks of my internship, I realized how far I have progressed on
my business problem and gotten familiar with the company’s environment. I got a good
understanding of how the prospecting works. By the end of this week, I saw that I have
developed many skills and earned new ones while researching different strategies for my
problem.
Starting with the models my supervisor and I used to help us understand Veneroo’s
competitive edge over its biggest competitor Jumia and analyze its brand positioning, here
are the results of PoD & PoP and SWOT analysis in the following tables:
 Points of Difference & Points of Parity
VENEROO JUMIA

POP Marketplace
Moroccan audience
Delivery within 2 days
Free for vendors to list their products
User-friendly platforms
Good customer service
 POD  No brand strategy
 Organic SEO only
 Listing some products new to
the Moroccan market
 Not all categories of products
are available
 Small profit margin
 No advertising strategy
 Random promotion
 Free shipping above 350DH
 Start-up
 Small customers
 Cash-on-delivery
 Worked for few months only
 Customer-oriented
 Social media ads
 Influencers
 Paid SEO
 Almost all kinds of products available
 Well-known brands listing their
products on the platform
 Regular ad campaigns
 Popular among Moroccans
 Related to low quality products
 Jumia Express feature
 Built social community
 Use of code promos
 Mobile app
 Different payment methods options
 Operating for 11 years

 SWOT analysis:
Strengths Weaknesses
 Young and dynamic vision  Young company on the market
 Website of good quality  No warehouses
 Owner is a developer  Lack of competent human resources
 Fast shipping  No brand management
 Buyers list their products for free  Low budget/profit
 Small commission = good prices  Lack of reputation
Opportunities Threats
 The need of consumers for products  Competitive market
on the internet is increasing sharply  Jumia has the biggest market share
 Selling on the internet makes it  Lots of e-marketplaces
possible to target a large number of
potential buyers
 Covid-19 pushed people to buy more
online and trust e-commerce.

Following the methodology in my first report, I would also like to share the
frameworks that helped me create a good marketing campaign strategy for social media since
most competitors are heavily advertising there. First, it was the RACE framework; in its first
phase Reach, the objective is to spread the awareness of Veneroo’s brand among future
customers, carrying out all kinds of marketing and social media. We can increase Veneroo’s
reach this by using its earned media, namely customers’ reviews and social shares, or paid
media (Pay-per-click, influencers, display ads), and owned media such as website, blog, and
emails. The second phase of this framework would be Act, in which we interact with
customers once our brand is disseminated and made known among them in order to increase
their attraction to us and thus generate a need for purchase. This phase is all about offering
something of value to prospects to encourage the start of a relationship. These leads can be
offering free shipping and discount codes as well as running social contests or giveaways
with relevant influencers and products, which would encourage current audience to share it
with others. There are also specific interactions we can track, that signal potential leads.
These are interactions like ‘viewed product’ and ‘added to basket’, which can easily be
tracked with Google Analytics. Third stage is Convert, which comes after generating the
need to buy and aims to materialize in sales for the company and transform our goal from
potential customer to buyer. The strategy for this phase may change diversely, so an effective
method for finding what would work best is to A/B test content and make minor changes to
each variation of our content and collect as much data as possible to identify which performs
best with our target audience. The last stage is Engage, that is also crucial for our customer’s
loyalty and retention and does not with the customer’s purchase process, since we are
interested in building lasting and stable relationships with them. This can be done through
social media platforms and email campaign as minimum, but also offering exclusive
products, advantages, or discounts for repeated purchases.

In addition, AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) model plays an important

role of a good marketing campaign. For these past three weeks, the campaign I was working
on mainly focused on the first phase of this model which is awareness and attention, since we
wanted to reach new audience after we narrowed down the persona in terms of age and
gender. This was through advertising posts of skin care products for summer on Instagram
and Facebook paid ads. This also requires making the next step into AIDA model to convert
the audience into customers by rising their interest about the product promoted. By linking
the website URL address to the post so it becomes easier to click on it and buy the product
right away.

II. Conclusion
After obtaining these results, I might conclude that Veneroo needs to work on their
brand to make it easier for them to reach more people and improve their SEO to win over
their main competitor Jumia by adding more backlinks and keywords, which is also
something I was working on during this internship. I also noticed that the website traffic is
100% organic, while we can certainly invest in paid traffic as a complementary element.
Also, the analysis helped me know more about the competition thus progress in my business
problem. I would also like to mention that the company is working on a new project, which is
developing a mobile app for Android and iOS users for a more comfortable user experience,
which would also help in increasing the customer’s satisfaction.

III. Recommendation:
Since my business problem is about standing out amongst the biggest competitor
Jumia and taking into consideration the financial constraints of the firm, I would recommend
focusing on creating engaging (visual) content on social media and using influencers not only
to gain trust of target audience but also help making more people aware of the brand. On the
same note, Veneroo should be close to their current customers by asking their feedback and
offer deals and discounts for relevant products depending on the customer’s preferences. As
for my second recommendation, knowing that e-commerce is a very competitive industry and
being a new marketplace, Veneroo should work on their SEO to generate website traffic and
consider creating Google My Business account, which will allow the business to show up on
the local section of Google Search and the right-side Knowledge Panel for branded searches.

IV. Difficulties and Personal Objectives:

This internship was a very insightful and enjoyable experience for me, it allowed me
to apply the theories I learned from my courses in real life and acquire new professional
skills, from communication to analytical thinking. I discovered new approaches to think
about things related to marketing that I have never thought would be interesting for me, as it
also helped me getting familiar with the professional setting.
As for my personal objectives, I feel very satisfied with what I’ve accomplished so far
with the company, and I am vey pleased to have successfully completed the missions
assigned to me for this internship and beyond. From creating content using digital tools to
design marketing campaigns, I am glad to have been an added value to this start-up and
helped make a change.