Sears Launches Online Home-Repair Community Site
Retailer Sears is showing its “softer side” in more than its ad slogans: It’s getting into social marketing in a big way, first with two back-to-school initiatives designed to get high schoolers and incoming freshmen engaged with each other as much as with the brand, and now with a new community site for home and appliance repairs called ManageMyHome.com.
Sears Holdings (parent to the Sears retail chain) launched the site in August as a central stop for all home projects. But the site was for several years in what Jim Hilt, vice president of divisional holdings for Sears, calls a “public beta”, open and being used by selected groups of consumers. “We were learning the nuances of what people wanted to do online relating to taking care of their homes,” he says. “It was a way for us to experiment live in the marketplace.”
What Hilt and company came up with was a site that lets users register, then sort through and save information on fix-up projects rated by difficulty and accompanied by recipe-like steps. The entry on replacing a window, for example, lays out the eight steps involved, offers a shopping list of 15 items, and rates the degree of expertise needed. In this case, the site says, DIYers will practically need to be a pro.
Should they wish to hire that pro, ManageMyhome.com pops open a locator for a Sears Home Services contractor. But the sell factor is definitely soft, both there and for the products called for in the projects. Yes, the shopping lists offer descriptions from Sears’ inventory and a link to the main Web site.
The site also offers answers from a community of experts to specific user questions and a search of thousands of appliance manuals that extends far beyond the iconic Sears brands Kenmore and Craftsman.
Why the low-pressure sales pitch on ManageMyHome.com? “We are already really good at service and selling in our stores and on our Sears.com site,” Hilt says. “Here we wanted to help homeowners with information. If that helps them shop better at Lowe’s or Home Depot, well, we’ve still helped them, and they’ll come back.”
