As part of the Google Online Marketing Challenge, Team Snapshot will be promoting Upstage Resume through an online paid search campaign. Below Team Snapshot provides background on the organization, its mission and products, a competitive analysis and a technical analysis. This information will be used to allow Team Snapshot to help grow Upstage Resume's business.
Background
Alysha Watson was updating her resume three months ago when she became inspired to show off both personality and creativity through the design of her resume. She realized that her document hadn't changed much in the last 5 years besides minor formatting changes. Lauren, who eventually became Alysha’s business partner, was a graphic designer that Alysha collaborated with to create her updated resume. The design was created to catch the eye of a potential employer, with a finished product that included a headshot and graph used to display Alysha’s skills in a visual way instaed of basic bullet points. Alysha received nothing but positive feedback on her new resume and found that a lot of her peers and friends were interested in having her help redesign their resumes. Alysha and Lauren began working on a website that would allow consumers to send in a basic Word document resume and select a template from over 20 designs for their new resume. The site launched on April 1, 2014 and because Alysha and Lauren both have full time jobs, they are fulfilling orders as they come in during their spare time.
To quote Alysha on her new company: “Upstage Resume's vision is to enhance the traditional resume with color, creativity and design. We want to help the every-day person "outshine the competition" with a resume that is unique and one of a kind.”
We (the members of Team Snapshot) chose Upstage Resume for the Google Online Marketing Challenge because they are a brand new company that has great potential for success. Because of their easy-to-use website and creative resume designs available, Upstage Resume taps into a currently un-pursued niche market. Upstage Resume is currently using basic marketing tools , which leaves a lot of ways Team Snapshot can help grow the business (they use Shopify to track click through rates and page views but have not pursued any further advertisements besides their pages on social media profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter).
Mission & Products: What the company seeks to do and how it does this through its product offerings.
Upstage Resume’s mission is to provide a product that will help their customers, primarily job seekers, stand out from their competition by providing customized resumes and cover letters that look and read very differently than typical boilerplate resumes. By enhancing their customer’s current resume through creativity and design, Upstage Resume delivers a product that is a more distinctive and eye-catching deviation from the normal tool of job seekers alike.
Upstage offers 15 different resume templates as well as custom resume and cover letter design. They also offer upgrades and revisions should your resume change or require editing. Upstage Resume commits to a 72 hour turnaround on resume deliveries, but offers expedited service for a premium. Upstage does not edit the content of their customer’s resumes, choosing to focus their business on design.
Competitive Analysis: What other companies out there could be substitutes, or offer similar services?
There are a lot of options out there as far as receiving some sort of assistance with writing your resume or creating a resume that is aesthetically pleasing. Upstage has determined that their two biggest competitors are Loft Resumes and Resume Launch.
Loft Resumes is very similar in that they take a basic structured word processing document and translate it into something that matches form with function. With that being said, Upstage’s costs are far lower and their designs are uniquely designed. Loft has a lot of options to choose from, but the costs average $99, which is considerably higher than the $35 charged by Upstage. Their website is also very similar looking to Upstage’s, but a person looking for a job might not always be able to rationalize the cost.
Resume Launch serves a different client base than Upstage Resume. Again, they offer unique resume product designs that translate boring structure into beautiful resumes but their designs are less interesting than those offered by Upstage. We suspect that a lot of their revenue is driven by their resume assistance offering, which is manned by one person (implying that turn around on purchases is either slow or not top of the line). Based on reading their twitter account, they are constantly looking to broaden their resume template offerings, advertising new templates on almost a weekly basis. This will make them more competitive going forward and might force Upstage, new to the market, to consider ways to differentiate themselves. Their costs are also lower for templates at $25.
Technical Abilities: how is Upstage Resume utilizing technology?
Upstage Resume is an entirely web-based service organization. Because its products are purchased, paid for and distributed via the website, Internet technology is a core functionality requirement. If the organization forgets to pay its web hosting fees, the website would go dark and there would be limited opportunity for the business.
Upstage Resume relies completely on social media and word of mouth to spread awareness. They are currently utilizing a website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter page, Google+ account and LinkedIn profile. Due to their recent launch, they do not have a large following yet on any of these sites. Their Facebook account has the largest audience, which consists of 305 “likes” for their page. One of their current strategies is too communicate flash sales and special offers via their social media sites. Because of the importance of an online audience going to these sites, one of Team Snapshot’s goals will be to increase social media site traffic.
There are a number of suggestions Team Snapshot has put together regarding Upstage Resume’s social media sites. First, because sales and special offers are only listed on sites like Facebook and Twitter, including direct links to these pages should be obvious on the company’s landing page. A site user currently has to scroll down below the fold to find links to these pages, and there is no call to action or benefits callout on why a user would want to follow Upstage Resume on social media. Second, it makes sense to have an Internet presence on multiple social media sites; however, defining what each will be used for is important. A critical aspect of social media for businesses is defining the purpose of that social media account. Should all social media sites be used to communicate special offers, or just a few? What type of audience is each social media site trying to attract and what does that actual audience look like? How can we incorporate analytical sites like Google Analytics or other platforms to gain insight into who is actually going to these sites?
All of these points will be addressed in how Team Snapshot helps Upstage Resume grow its business in the Google Online Marketing Challenge.
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