Dale Nitschke, president of Target.com, spoke Tuesday at the Fluno Center for Retail Career Fair 2005 highlighting different marketing strategies the company uses to stay competitive and to keep expanding.

Nitschke showed different advertisements used by Target for various products such as clothes and electronics, and then explained the exact strategy used to reach customers. He said the challenge is to make ordinary products stand out and appeal to the targeted audience.

Students from the University of Wisconsin School of Human Ecology composed most of the audience.

“It was pretty interesting. I never considered Target that progressive of a company, but after this it seems like they almost invented a market for themselves,” Eric Bjorling, a UW senior who attended the lecture, said.

The slogan “Expect More, Pay Less” is what the marketers have to communicate to sell their product. Nitschke said the “Expect More” is the challenge needing to be met by the advertisers. To stay competitive with other discount stores, he said Target had to come up with new ways to reach consumers, or “guests.”

Nitschke said one way to reach a wider audience and create a stronger connection with the consumers is to send out “Target Mail,” which delivers a variety of unique ads to the public. However, he said a better strategy to reach the consumers was creating a webpage where customers could not only shop the merchandise available at Target, but also tour the different sources the site has to offer, such as gift registry or guest reviews.

The guest reviews is where consumers can voice their opinion on different products and rank them, which have a great impact on sales, Nitschke said. An item with a rank of only one star can stop sales of that item altogether, he said. The webpage has aided in the expansion of consumers being reached by Target.

“This past December, Target.com was 18th in traffic on the entire Internet out of 50 million,” Nitschke said.

The site contains different sections for different groups of people, such as girls’ clothing or baby products. Nitschke said it was important for the design of the different sections to appeal to the specific group. The site is able to show a dramatic increase in merchandise available for a given product.

“Today, we have eight times more products than we did a year ago and by the end of this year we will have two times that,” Nitschke said.

Complaints on a lack of selection urged Target to post more items for potential buyers to browse, increasing sales and consumers who visit Target stores.

“The guest expects more, we’ll deliver,” said Nitschke at the closing of his speech.

UW junior Megan Feragher suggested students should see lectures during next year’s career fair.

“I actually found it very informative, the way he moved up. He started in-store and now he’s the president of Target.com,” Faragher said. “It was definitely well worth it and I recommend for other people to come check it out next year.”