Tag: retail marketing

As a marketer, there are pros and cons to the online review. Because there are so many platforms designed to host them, customer reviews are tough to monitor and even more difficult to manage, since most of those apps and sites are not client-owned. Even the most positive of reviews are difficult to legitimize with the increasingly widespread practice of false-positive reports by invested stakeholders and, even, businesses paying customers to post about shining experiences… that may not have actually happened. So, what’s a retailer, restaurant or service provider to do? Lie sitting duck or spend countless hours scouring the internet for reviews – positive or negative – that may forever sit on a third party platform? Neither. Take control.

Healthcare has been a bit slower than other industries to respond to this new kind of engagement opportunity, but it’s catching up quickly.

Since 75% of social media users now use hashtags, it’s no wonder retailers are using them in social marketing efforts (check out 9 Ways Retailers Use Hashtags to Promote Branded Content). For example, at the core of Dick’s Sporting Goods’ (DSG) “Every Runner Has A Reason” campaign is the #RunFor hashtag.

The payments landscape is changing rapidly. While mobile banking apps and contactless payment methods get a lot of play, retailers and financial institutions are also figuring out how to make payments social. Here are some emerging and interesting ways to make purchases in our very social world.

I’ve been a blogger in my personal life for years, so I was hardly unbiased earlier this year when The New York Times announced that short-form social media, like Facebook and Twitter, were causing the rapid decline of blogs. Even though I fell into the, ahem, older age group for whom blogging was reported as increasing slightly, I bristled at my most beloved medium being labeled out of favor. In February, an impassioned debate followed The New York Times article, “Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter”), and the internet lit up with posts (blog posts, mainly) on both sides of the argument that everyone began to sum up as “The New York Times says blogs are dead.” Fast forward to yesterday when The New York Times’ Fashion & Style section published an article about the power of bloggers as influencers.

An increasingly popular aspect of Twitter is the velvet rope-less access it provides to celebrities: A- and D-listers alike. With an “@” symbol and verified (this is important!) account name, anyone with a keyboard can tweet to their favorite actor, artist or athlete. For the star-struck, a tweet back is like a digital autograph, the next best thing to rubbing elbows in person. (Hello, bragging rights!) For retail marketing, it’s a terrific tactic to gain the attention of millions of followers.

Learn the naked truth about one retailer’s social media promotions

VIEW THE RECORDING

It’s not every day you get to see a brand in the buff. Media Logic pulls back the curtain back on FYEGUY, its ongoing social media marketing effort on behalf of FYE, the largest specialty digital entertainment retailer in the United States.

Kirkland’s hit the jackpot to win the title of fastest growing brand on Facebook for the week of April 10th. Its “Cha --- Ching!” sweepstakes drove almost 29,000 people to like its page. That’s 17.5 percent growth in one week – versus an industry average of less than 2 percent.

All combined, the Jackass films produced by Johnny Knoxville and the gang have grossed more than $300 million worldwide. So with Jackass 3D (the most successful of the three pics) prepping for release on Blu-ray and DVD, Paramount and FYE turned to Media Logic to help them make a big, muddy, disgusting splash. Leveraging exclusive content from the DVD (hosted on FYE’s “fyeguy” Facebook page), contesting and targeted facebook advertising – as well as fyeguy’s regular twitter and Facebook streams – we helped to build momentum for the release. Then, when the DVD actually dropped, we followed that up with an additional foursquare promotion that closed the loop – driving customers directly to FYE stores nationwide.

Thirty-five thousand entries. One-hundred thousand store visits. Three-hundred thousand YouTube views. 10 million Facebook posts.* The numbers are impressive. They represent the level of customer engagement Wet Seal earned in its 2010 social media-driven model search. Wet Seal’s Chief Information Officer Jon Kubo related the brand’s online success to fellow retailers at a conference last month in San Francisco. The significant impact of the single promotion described above not only brings attention to Facebook, the platform that drove most of the engagement, but also entices previously-skeptical retailers to take another look at social media.