Grow Your Brand on Instagram

Over the past four years Instagram has grown from an emerging social media platform to a powerful marketing tool for top brands.  From major global companies, such as Nike and Starbucks, to small mom-and-pop businesses, brands of all kinds are using Instagram to strengthen their brand identity and reach new customers. Here we have gathered some of the best tips to market your brand on Instagram.

1. Share noteworthy photos –Instagram allows brands to tell their story in a visual way. By posting personalized snapshots, brands can showcase their business through a more genuine approach. It is important to share not only product pictures, but also a wide range of content in order to appeal to your audience. According to Wishpond, customer-centric and employee related photos generate the most engagement.
2. Use #hashtags – Hashtags are a great way to expand your content reach and develop your brand. Creating a unique brand hashtag is a great way to get the message out about your company or a specific campaign. A great example of this is the Giorgio Armani #framesoflife campaign. The brand encouraged followers to share photos of themselves wearing Armani sunglasses with the hashtag #framesoflife to be selected for the Giorgio Armani “Frames of Life” website. This campaign engaged thousands of followers and increased website traffic.
3. Geotag your location – Geotagging is a way of attaching geographical information to media. Creating a geotag for your brand will not only allow you to attach your businesses location to your photos, but also allow customers to tag your location in their photos. For example, if you are a restaurant and a customer snaps a photo of their delicious lunch, they can tag themselves at your restaurant and allow their followers to see exactly where your restaurant is located.
4. Share videos - Short videos are now a digital marketing staple. Instagram allows brands to share 15-second video, about the same length as the average television commercial. Instagram’s editing tools are user-friendly and allow users to create multi-clip videos. Videos are an excellent channel to showcase products in a creative way. Take a look at how lululemon incorporates their apparel into a appealing branded video.
5. Share on other social media sites – Sharing your Instagram content on other sites expands your reach. Instagram allows you to share your photos and videos to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and foursquare. Not only will this increase the amount of impressions you get on your content, but also draw more awareness and followers to your brand’s Instagram account.
6. Run contests: Contests are one of the biggest engagement drivers on social media. Incentives and rewards are a great way to gain followers and keep your followers checking in with your page. Whole Foods asks followers to upload environmentally themed photos during Earth Month with the hashtag #WFMEarth. Each week they select a winner to receive a $100 gift card. Contest such as this allows the consumers to create the content and promote the brand at the same time. It’s not only major corporations that are finding success on Instagram. Many small businesses are increasing the social influence with the use of Instagram engagement and contests. Tender Greens, a small restaurant group, hosts a photo contest where customers post photos at their establishments with a contest specific hashtag. The weekly winner is sent a Tender Greens t-shirt. The brand is up to 1,822 followers.
7. Maintain a branded profile – Lastly, what might seem common sense, but is often overlooked, is to maintain a branded profile. A business’s Instagram profile should be consistent with all other marketing and social media. Your company logo should be used as a profile picture and the company slogan or mission statement should be used as the copy for the bio. It is also necessary to include a link to your website. Many businesses find it beneficial to include their company location in their profile.  

Key Elements of Effective Email Marketing

Along with social media and mobile marketing, email continues to be a significant portion of an effective virtual marketing strategy, especially for a small business. However, email marketing can run the risk of irritating subscribers and potentially tarnishing a brand’s image. Here are some essential tactics to running an effective email marketing campaign:

Strategic Timing and Frequency

In order to run a successful email marketing campaign, it is critical that your message reaches your reader at the right time. Ideal timing and frequency varies depending on the type of business you are in. The goal is to find the timing where you are most likely to generate the greatest response. Our office was recently enticed into ordering lunch from a local café after receiving email notification of their specials, including an image of a mouthwatering grilled cheese, conveniently at noon.

Your frequency also has a significant impact of the effectiveness your campaign. Sending emails too often is an annoyance and sending email too infrequently will result in losing your audience’s attention. According to the DMA National Client Email Marketing Report, the ideal frequency for the retail industry is 2-3 times a month.

Segmenting

According to farotech.com, 80% of email marketers send the same content to all of their subscribers. This is a colossal mistake! Segmenting your lists and dividing your content is a great way to avoid spamming your contacts and to prevent the fatal UNSUBSCRIBE TO ALL. Make sure to send subscribers content that is relevant to their relationship with your business.

Effective Content

One of the most common reasons a customer will subscribe to a business’s emails is to feel that they are being delivered exclusive information. Providing a first look at a new product or special promotion shows that their participation is valuable and appreciated.  

Keep in mind; your readers are just as busy as you are! If you do not have time to read a lengthy newsletter, neither do they. Keep your content short and to the point. Always include links to your website as well as your social media. This provides your subscribers with the opportunity to interact with you instead of just having a one-way conversation.

Analyze Your Results

Any form of marketing needs to be evaluated in terms of response and results. Many email marketing programs give you the tools to calculate how successful your emails are. If not, Google Analytics is an amazing free platform to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. Some important elements to track are open rates, click-through, bounces, response, lead tracking and website traffic (Mail Chimp offers some benchmarks, per industry, here). If you are not getting the results you desire, make some adjustments. Something as simple as changing your timing could have a radical impact on your results.

Luxury market and sales strong for savvy high-end brands

Today, like every day after New Years for the past decade, I started the work year by researching luxury holiday sales. After a 2011 that overflowed with mind-numbing negativity in the media and among many high-end companies, I’m thrilled to report to the luxury industry: the sky may be a different shade of blue than you’ve seen before, but it most certainly is not falling.

As you’ve probably already heard, retail sales for the 2011 holiday season increased more than analysts anticipated. While the final numbers aren’t yet in, the increase is expected to be around 3.5% over the 2010 holiday season.

One of the strongest categories cited again and again in media reports? Luxury goods. Indeed, affluent American consumers (those with the top 10% of household incomes), who represent 35 percent of overall retail sales, are spending.

• According to ABC News, luxury is on fire. They quote Howard Davidowitz, chairman of retail consulting and investment banking firm Davidowitz & Associates: "When we look at luxury sales on a national level, we see they're doing just fantastic. Saks and Neiman's, they're terrific. Coach is fine, Nordstrom is fine. Bulgari and Tiffany, tremendous." 
• MSN, meanwhile reports: "'Twas the season when wealthy people unscrewed the vice clamps that had been on their wallets and decided to stimulate the economy. Tiffany and Coach were among the winners this holiday season, according to Jason Asaeda, retail analyst at S&P Capital IQ. He rates both as "strong buys" and points out that wealthy consumers are attracted to the exclusive merchandise being sold by department stores.”
• NBC reports that luxury retailers like Chanel and Gucci reported better than brisk business this holiday season; Neiman Marcus sold out of the ten 2012 Ferrari sports cars it offered in its Christmas book of fantasy gifts for a whopping $395,000 each; and Saks Fifth Avenue reported a resurgence in full-priced selling. 
• In a post holiday report, National Jeweler says that, for some independent fine jewelers, the end of the holiday season was strong enough to draw comparisons with post-recession seasons, while others reported that they saw fewer customers but that those who did come in made bigger purchases. 
• In November, high-end department store sales rose 6.5 percent over the same period in 2010, compared to a 0.3 percent loss for mid-tier department stores, according to Bloomberg data.
• According to Reuters, Wall Street analysts expect higher-end chains like Saks and Nordstrom to report strong seasonal sales, helped by the continued recovery of high end spending and a stock market that rebounded after swooning earlier in the fall.

So, while luxury shoppers are clearly not in hibernation, they are shopping differently than they traditionally have. For starters, online shopping hit a record a record $35.27 billion this holiday season, up 15 percent versus the corresponding period last year, according to comScore. This season also saw 10 days in which online sales surpassed $1 billion in one day. And, according to USA Today successful luxury goods firms are utilizing social media and digital marketing techniques to drive traffic and, ultimately, sales. 

Weekly round up: August 19, 2011

Make your Tweets stand out; digital marketing tips for luxury firms; a Google+ primer, and tips on writing press releases. Here’s our summary of this week’s top news in the world of PR and social media.

Sweet Tweets

The biggest complaint I hear about Twitter is the deafening “noise” of tweets that people don’t care about. But are your own tweets contributing to that meaningless chatter, or rising above it? The key to Twitter (as with all social media) is to engage. This is the best summary I’ve seen on how to sweeten your tweeting.

The luxury market’s digital lag

Too many luxury firms are still too focused on digital bells and whistles, rather than engaging content. Here are some of the struggles, and some of the success stories.

Google+ for beginners (and intermediates)

I’m the first to confess: I’ve dabbled on Google+, but haven’t found the time yet to immerse myself and really figure it out. If you’re like me, or if you’re a few steps ahead, here are a couple instructional videos to help you master this booming new social media tool.

PR 101: press releases

Whether you’re trying to write your own press releases, or providing a quote to your agency for a release, this is a must read. Love this quote: “A common problem with press release quotes is that they’re full of lazy corporate verbs such as synergize, utilize, leverage, or facilitate. 'We are leveraging cutting-edge technology to meet our customer’s needs.' What does that even mean?”

Oxford’s new dictionary additions

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary added 400 new words this year. If you aren’t retweeting or sexting or cyberbullying, check out this article. Woot! Woot!