As consumers continue to use social media to find and interact with new brands, the pressure for keeping content fresh and intriguing is high. Retailers need to find unique ways to reach shoppers this holiday season, and Independent Retailer has a few tricks up our sleeve to help you accomplish just that.
Interacting with Viewers Through Live Videos
Even though it is important to post pictures of your products on different social media platforms, plain old pictures can get pretty boring. Lion Brand Yarn Company, a leading supplier of premium knitting and craft yarn, discovered an interesting way to interact with their followers while also promoting their product — through live videos and talk shows.
“We thought about the kind of genuine brand messaging and activities we’d want to see during something as scary as a global pandemic, and that’s what we created for our customers,” said Shira Blumenthal, Lion Brand’s Yarn Company brand ambassador, who within weeks of quarantine launched a daily web series, “The Shi Show,” on Facebook Live, which directly linked her to Lion Brand’s clientele.
Since the first of the shows launched on March 19, the series has featured guests ranging from Vanna White and SNL star Melissa Villaseñor to UFC athlete Maurice Greene, all of whom shared their personal stories and passion for crafting with Blumenthal and her audience. Since the start of the show, Lion Brand announced a 75 percent increase in ecommerce sales, 25 percent of which consists of first-time online customers.
Slay With Email Marketing
Instead of purchasing ads on social media, which may seem like the right route to take in order to get noticed this holiday season, Blumental says the company still utilizes email marketing. “Our email marketing team is just awesome and they’re slaying it right now. We have a reach of over 2 million people and the email marketing is working perfectly.”
Email campaigns have an average ROI of 42:1, and if marketers drop five to eight emails a month, it gets even better. So, when companies, large or small, try to improve conversion rate, email marketing works. An Email Marketing Industry Census found some 19 percent of revenue alone is attributed to the customers that come from email marketing.
Influencers Help to Spread the Brand Name
Lion Brand Yarn Company works with a lot of different influencers on Instagram, who communicate the brand’s different yarns to their own followers. Influencers do this by knitting their own patterns and creations and show the results or process to their viewers, spreading the brand’s name and quality of their products to an even wider audience.
Given that 70 percent of teenagers trust influencers over celebrities, it’s safe to say that influencer marketing is going to be huge during the holidays. Influencers don’t have to cost retailers an arm and a leg, either. In fact, getting an influencer to showcase your products to their audience can even be cheaper than most other advertising options.
Influencer pricing all depends on how many followers they have. The more followers, the more they will charge a brand to market their product. According to recent reports, on average influencers on the following platforms will charge:
- Facebook Influencer pricing: $25 per 1000 followers
- Instagram Influencer pricing: $10 per 1000 followers
- Snapchat Influencer pricing: $10 per 1000 followers
- YouTube Influencer pricing: $20 per 1000 followers
Indie retailers can start small with influencers who only have a few thousand followers, and eventually work their way up to more popular influencers. No matter what type of marketing you can afford this holiday season, these are some creative ideas to help get your brand name out there for fairly cheap and get new customers. Don’t forget to be creative!