Rimowa and Under Armour joined Vogue Business and Bolt in New York City for an evening of discussions on how to build a smarter brand online and beyond.
Winning over customers online and beyond — whether you’re a luxury brand or a sportswear company — requires smart loyalty strategies and investment in technologies that drive next-level customer experiences.
This was the topic of discussion at the recent Vogue Business event at Legacy Records in New York City, in partnership with Bolt. On the heels of the NRF Big Show, we invited Jim Dausch, Under Armour’s chief consumer officer, and Jerry Wang, Americas director of e-commerce at Rimowa, to share their approaches to building their respective brands, while Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla, addressed the crowd on how e-commerce is evolving in the year ahead. They were joined by executive Americas editor Hilary Milnes.
Photo: Paolo Verzani
For Dausch, who joined Under Armour last year after spending over two decades at Marriott, cracking customer loyalty is the key to success for the sports brand’s e-commerce strategy. At the centre of his plan to increase loyalty is the mobile app, which Dausch says will be the main touchpoint for the brand’s most-engaged customers. “It’s the most-direct relationship you can create with a customer. Even if you’re doing well [on the web], often that traffic is still coming in through an intermediary, like Google or somebody else,” Dausch says. “And so once you can take them out of the picture and build that direct relationship with the customer, on the same device where they’ve got their friends and their family and everything else, you’ve made it.”
Customers are then rewarded for their loyalty via product previews or tickets to the Super Bowl. Technology also plays a role: AI has promising use cases in the way Under Armour sets up its e-commerce pages, by using what the brand knows about the customer to deliver the most-relevant products to them first as they scroll the site.
Photo: Paolo Verzani
Wang, who joined Rimowa in February 2020, says that over the course of the pandemic the customer began to skew younger. The brand found that this new audience wanted to see pieces in person before buying them, so they hop from online touchpoints, to stores, back to online — meaning the brand has to be agile and consistent in how it shows up across these channels, as well as flexible in how it tracks conversions. The main selling point for online customers, Wang says, is the convenience. To get new customers in the door, the brand is experimenting with live chat and live streaming.
All of it amounts to a better customer experience, no matter how long you’ve been buying from the brand. “This is the year of ‘clientcare’,” says Wang, who notes that the brand doesn’t discount but offers 100-year warranties and high levels of customer service — all things she believes will be a competitive advantage this year.
For today’s rising ecommerce brands, going international is now one of the simplest and most affordable ways to catapult growth.
Not so long ago, expanding your brand internationally meant one of two things: building a brick and mortar presence in each new country, or navigating a labyrinth of fragmented trade regulations, carrier options, customs, duties, local taxes, currencies and languages to ship your products there through ecommerce. Plenty of large brands and retailers have tried and failed. For smaller, direct-to-consumer brands, the costs and challenges were insurmountable, but all of that has now changed.
Taking your ecommerce brand international can catapult growth — if you do it right. Rising ecommerce brands in the U.S. often find that there is name recognition and pent-up demand for their product overseas; what they lack is the ability to manage the financial side and the post-purchase piece of the puzzle — international payment processing, fulfilment, shipping and returns. The good news is that for today’s ecommerce brands, going international is simply a matter of finding the right apps and partners.
Cross-border solutions
In the past few years, technologies have emerged to make global fulfilment a real possibility for even the smallest D2C brands. Cross-border solutions and payment systems simplify the complexities of international shipping and returns. These apps and platforms are built to process payments in multiple currencies, expedite customs clearance and automate the collection of duties, fees and local taxes.
You don’t have to keep abreast of international shipping laws and customs regulations in each country, because they do it all for you. Even better, they integrate fully into the shopping cart checkout process, so there are no surprises. Customers know exactly what they’re going to pay before they checkout.
Global fulfilment
Such cross-border solutions make international expansion infinitely easier, but only if your fulfilment partner has global capabilities, the necessary systems and integrated technologies. A global 3PL can help you save on shipping and fulfilment costs while enabling rapid growth.
Proper packaging, labelling and shipping help qualified brands take advantage of de minimis thresholds and avoid or reduce import duties wherever possible. Automation and robotics ensure that fulfilment operations can quickly ramp up to meet sudden peaks in demand or rapid growth. Experience and accuracy in picking, packing and labelling can prevent costly customs delays, reduce losses and increase your success rate in certain countries.
Lastly, multiple fulfilment centre locations give you the option to move inventory closer to your customers to take advantage of lower shipping costs and faster delivery times. As order volume grows, they may even be able to add international locations to meet local demand, saving you even more on import duties and fees.
Multiple shipping options
A global fulfilment partner, in tandem with cross-border shipping solutions, gives your ecommerce brand access to a large network of global shipping carriers, as well as local carriers in each country. By pooling volume and negotiating freight discounts, they can help lower your cross-border shipping costs. Sophisticated systems route your packages the most efficient way, often using a hybrid of international and local carriers so you can also take advantage of local shipping rates, complete with real-time tracking and returns services. In addition, relationships with multiple carriers give you more options for expedited shipping, which improves the international shopping experience for your customers.
Injecting goods into the U.S. market
The same cross-border solutions, fulfilment partners and shipping networks that make it easy to export goods from the U.S. also make it easier and more affordable for international brands to expand into the U.S. market. Off-shore distribution centres can ease customs clearance and lower or eliminate import duties for qualified shipments.
The fact is, for today’s ecommerce brands, going international is now one of the simplest and most affordable ways to catapult growth. If you’ve been holding off because you thought it was too complicated, it’s time to take another look. International fulfilment will never be simple, but today’s cross-border solutions, shipping and fulfilment capabilities make it a realistic option for even the smallest brands.
Esther Kestenbaum Prozan is president of Ruby Has Fulfillment, a major ecommerce fulfilment provider for direct-to-consumer brands and retailers. During her tenure at Ruby Has, the company has experienced a period of unprecedented growth and become a leader in the 3PL industry.
‘About’ pages are the best opportunity to tell your story and humanize your company.
Consider this: Google and Facebook accounted for 20 percent of the world’s advertising budget in 2016, which is up 9 percent since 2011, according to a Zenith survey detailed on CNBC.com. If it isn’t already, your focus as an online marketer should primarily be on creating ads and building an online brand on these two platforms. But how much branding can you convey in a typical ad that’s fewer than 100 characters?
At a minimum, you’re conveying your brand values and driving clicks to your home page, a landing page or a product page where you’re further building your brand and reinforcing it through email marketing and retargeting. Logically, all of these tactics are perfect opportunities to reiterate your core values, but there’s one more opportunity where you can add additional value and give your audience another reason to care about you: on your “About Us” page.
It surprises me how often I see companies squander the opportunity to utilize this page when it comes to doing just that. It’s a crucial element of every company website because it’s the best opportunity to tell your story and humanize your company. It can even set the tone for a visitor’s online experience through your website.
When I was part of the marketing team at my company, we built a brand that revolved around two core values: quality content and a 100 percent guarantee. We reinforced these values with our marketing and throughout the site, including our “About Us” page. In the fall of 2016, I was looking for ways for us to improve our conversion rate, and I saw that our About Us page had about an $8 page value in Google Analytics, which was 33 percent lower than the site’s average page value (a good page to send paid traffic to).
Looking at just the traffic that visited our “About Us” page, which about one out of every eight of our new visitors did, I thought about how to increase the page value, and came up with the idea of including a video. We already had a recent video that was ready to go: It was professionally shot and featured our two founders telling the story of how BoardVitals came to be.
In this format, the brand’s core values aren’t written down; they’re spoken to the visitor from a human being. I hypothesized that adding this would drive up the page value while also increasing the online brand presence. In the month that followed, the “About Us” page rose to $9.67, about an 8 percent lift from the previous time period. Since then, it has steadily stayed around $9, and our video went from 37 views close to 1,000.
In other words, invest in alternative content that will keep the user on the page longer and spend more time understanding your brand. For us, it makes sense that a simple element like a video on our “About Us” page led to more purchases. When you think about the experience of buying something online versus buying something in the real world, the most obvious difference is the lack of human interaction with e-commerce, but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to trust who you’re buying from.
If you humanize your brand-building efforts by adding a real person’s face, you’re making the experience better because it’s more akin to the real world. Social media posts, retargeting ads, promotional emails: All of these campaigns are key to building an online brand, there’s no doubt about that. When it comes to your website, however, make sure to pay attention to your “About Us” page. Reinforce your core values, but more importantly, tell a story to humanize your brand. You may see an increase in your page value as well.
Feature Image Credit: Getty Image
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
By Dan Lambert, co-founder and CEO of BoardVitals.
Dan Lambert is the co-founder and CEO of BoardVitals, a healthcare education company, and is helping to start NursingCE.com, a new nursing continuing education provider.
Seth Godin said that – or maybe it was Winston Churchill? Whoever it was, they had a point. Dramatic? Definitely, but not any less true. If someone Google’s (it’s a verb now, right?) your business and it doesn’t show up, then you’re as good as dead.
But you already know this.
You’ve been doing the online branding thing for a while now and it’s not working! Your brand doesn’t have that many followers on social media or maybe it does, but they’re not converting. Or maybe you don’t know this stuff, and are just preparing to hop onto this whole online marketing train everyone keeps talking about.
Either way, you’ll be able to find some helpful tips in this post.
These tips are probably not going to be a magic cure for your branding problems (it’s not a 12 step program, after all), but are meant instead to refresh your online marketing strategy.
And if you’re a newbie then it should give you an idea of where you can start.
Here are 33 tips to refresh your online branding:
1. Be prepared to spend some money
If you want to make money, you need to spend money. A cliché, but it’s true. When it comes to online marketing that means investing in AdWords, social media campaigns, and content creation tools, among others.
2. Double check your mission and vision
Sometimes all it takes is going back to basics, revisit your brand’s mission and vision and make sure it translates to your online presence, including website and social media. This might be as simple as rewriting the bio section on your Twitter account or something a bit more complex like reconsidering the values you want to uphold through the content you produce.
The Skimm is a good example of a brand that knows how to translate their message into different platforms. The premise is simple enough, a daily newsletter with the skimmed version of the most important news of the day. What made them stand out was the witty and approachable voice in which they are written. With the simple tagline “theSkimm makes it easier to be smarter” the startup has successfully expanded through several channels and delivers the news to millions of people daily.
3. Revisit your target audience
Do you know who they are? If you do, then it wouldn’t hurt to revisit your buyer persona and make sure that your current online marketing efforts are aligned with her/him. If you don’t know who your target audience is, then it’s time to get crackin’!
4. Go over your SWOT
For the less marketing savvy, SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. They should be written down for every business and, in this market that is constantly changing, double checked every once in a while. They will help guide your online marketing strategy.
5. Strive for authenticity, not originality
They tend to get mixed up, but they are very different. Being original is about being different while being authentic is about being yourself. When brands are original for the sake of it, it can be seen as fake and that puts people off. This applies to everything you do.
Like any other high-end fashion house, Kate Spade cares a lot about its brand ambassadors. What makes the company stand out from the rest, though is its whimsical vision. For example, in their latest campaign they signed on Miss Piggy as a spokesperson. It is not the first time a clothing line hired a fictional character to model for them, but Miss Piggy is far more endearing than Lighting from Final Fantasy XIII. It ads a sense of humour that often lacks in that industry.
6. Make sure all of your visuals are on point
In order to have a cohesive online branding strategy, all of your graphics need to be coordinated. This is not just your logo, it also entails brand colour swatches, fonts and even the type of images you share. Hire a graphic designer if necessary. When you have visual continuity, it is easier for potential clients to identify you.
7. Grow your website traffic
Easier said than done, right? There are several ways to do this: invest in AdWords, update more often, optimize for SEO, publish a blog, link from your social media profiles, etc… Pick the tools that make sense to your industry and target audience.
8. Make your website mobile friendly
It goes without saying that nowadays smartphones are a big part of online marketing: those who don’t adapt their content to this platform could be missing out on potential leads. And don’t worry, thanks to pre-designed mobile friendly templates, there’s no need to hire a web developer.
Square Space offers good looking, easy to use, mobile friendly templates for all kinds of businesses*.
* I swear to God, we’re not sponsored by them (I wished). I just know this from experience.
9. Include location-based keywords in your content
If you’re targeting or offering services in a specific location, make sure you sprinkle your content with words related to that area. It helps to rank whenever someone is looking for services near your site.
10. Make it easy for your clients to leave reviews
May them be in Trustpilot, Yelp, or any other platform that’s relevant to your business, reviews build trust in your brand for both Google and future customers.
11. Get into email marketing
If you haven’t done so already, of course. Platforms like Mailchimp (one of the best) offer free services until a certain number of contacts is reached. Some may consider email to be obsolete, but in 2016, 89% of marketers state that email is their first source for lead generation.
Nerd Fitness is a company with an email marketing strategy that’s on point. Their mission is to offer comprehensive fitness and nutrition tips to, well, nerds! In an industry where smugness tends to reign, their humorous and self-aware approach is very refreshing. Once you sign up with them, the academy will send you a weekly email to help you keep up with your training and diet. The content, while sometimes extensive, is easy to digest – and if you fall off the wagon, they’ve got your back.
12. Consider Remarketing
Some people find it annoying, while others think its downright stalking, but it’s undeniably effective. Remarketing is not for everyone, though. Depending on your brand and products it might even be detrimental. To find out if you should try it, here are some basics.
13. Blog
But only if you are willing to put in the work and update regularly. Little does it do to upload a poor article every three months, which leads us to our next tip…
14. (Good) content is king
Not too long ago in order to climb on Google, all you needed to do was publish content filled with related keywords, but not so much anymore. Algorithms notice and shun those practices. In order to be shared and found you’ll need to produce useful and engaging content.
Known for their beautiful covers and affordable prices, publishing company Penguin creates not just books, but also online content for bookworms. Standouts are its blog and a podcast where they interview some of the best contemporary authors.
15. And don’t forget about your website
Nothing says “I’m not serious about it” quite like a forgotten website. Make sure to review it at least once a month to make sure everything is up to date, from work hours to product offers.
16. Use proper grammar
It may sound like a no-brainer, but proper grammar and spelling are imperative for online marketing. If necessary, hire a copywriter or have someone else proofread everything before publishing. You’d be surprised by how many potential clients can be turned off by a typo.
TightsPlease, a British company that used to sell (you guessed it) tights online, saw its conversations rise by 80% once the typo “Tihgts” was changed to “Tights” on one of their landing pages. But apparently, it wasn’t enough to keep them afloat as the company is not in business anymore.
17. Consider video
According to this infographic, including a video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%. Producing video can be expensive and time consuming, but tools like Animoto make it easier.
18. Distribute, distribute, distribute
It doesn’t matter if you hire Stephen Covey to write for your blog, if you don’t distribute it, then nobody is going to read it. Share on your social media profiles (that one is obvious), but also approach other bloggers (guest blogging), contact influencers, comment on forums, relevant online groups and even YouTube videos.
19. Select your social media channels strategically
It may be tempting to jump on every social media platform and start posting away. After all, you want to be found, right? Yes and no. Open an account on every platform to secure your name and just focus on two or three. Pick only those that are relevant to your target audience.
20. By the way, it’s called social media and not sales media for a reason
Social media is a place to build a community and engage with your audience – not to sell. If you ignore this basic rule, you may find potential customers running away from your brand.
21. Tell the same story offline
If your business has a physical store and your employees are directly dealing with customers, consider branding them as well. A great work uniform can help to tell the story of your brand.
22. Engage, but don’t overdo it
While it is understandable that you may want to answer to as many people as possible, it is important to remember that not every situation deserves a reply.
American Airlines learned it the hard way when they set up an automatic response to every single user that tweeted them. As you can imagine, things didn’t go that well.
23. Encourage user generated content (UGC)
UGC is a great and organic way to promote your brand through content without having to actually create it! This type of promotion builds trust in your brand and allows for a different type of interaction with followers. Here is a simple guide on how to dive in.
Starbucks is a great example of a brand that embraces UGC, their Twitter feed is filled with retweeted pictures of followers and they’ve also organised several contests where they ask customers to customize the famous cup.
24. Address problems as quickly as possible
Social media changed the customer service game completely. It allows brands to answer any inquiries and problems immediately – so do it! It you don’t address it, it might get worse or you could leave a customer feeling ignored.
Oreo is a perfect example of a brand that replies to their audience, even when most would just rather hit the “ban” button. On their Facebook page, you’ll find hordes of complaints from the flavour of the cookies to about how Nabisco moved their factories to Mexico. Whenever they reply, the person handling the account (who deserves an award) does not take the bait and answers politely and sensibly, which leads us to the next tip…
25. Don’t give into trolls
The Internet is a double edged sword. While it allows us to reach potential customers all over the globe, it also empowers anonymous troublemakers. Don’t let Gizmo get wet* and don’t feed the trolls – it will only make it worse. If it gets really bad you can always block them, or like feminine protection brand Bodyform did, use humor.
In a response to a rather unenlightened comment on its Facebook page, the company released the hilarious video above.
* If you get that reference then you’re old like me.
26. Don’t share just your content
Huffington Post is number one when it comes to Facebook, and unlike one might expect from an online news publisher like them, part of their social media strategy is sharing content from third party members.
It becomes obvious when you just promote your own content. Mix it up with other people’s stuff to make it more enjoyable for your followers and remember to always…
27. Post constantly, but don’t overwhelm
There’s a lot of competition out there, so in order to not get lost amongst the latest meme or political debate it is important to update often. How often? That’s more difficult to answer, it depends on the platform, but most people agree you should post at least once on all of them.
28. Consider teaming up with an influencer
We often associate them with video games and make up tutorials, but there are influencers in every industry. Approach a content creator that matches your brand. Tapping into this source allows your business to get exposure.
29. Use trends and hashtags, carefully
Using a trending hashtag or treating a popular subject may expose you to many users you wouldn’t have access to otherwise, but make sure you know what you’re talking about or you may get the wrong kind of attention. Most social media fails are caused by the incorrect use of a hashtag or subject. Don’t be part of the statistic.
American brand DiGiorno Pizza learned the hard way when it decided to sell frozen pizza on Twitter by using a hashtag meant to shed light on the stories of women who had survived abusive relationships. Oops…
30. Let your coworkers be a part of your online marketing campaign
This shouldn’t be an extra chore for them. Simply encourage them to add the company’s website to their social media profiles and tag them whenever you share content that’s relevant to their interests.
31. At least once a week, make some time to see what’s new
It may be doing research, listening to a podcast or taking a webinar. It is important to stay on top of marketing trends or you may run the risk of staying behind.
32. Leverage analytics
Analyzing data may be too abstract to some, but it is fundamental if you want to become better at what you do. Google analytics and the respective tools for each social media platform can be your best friends.
33. Humor sells
Everyone likes to laugh! Don’t be afraid to add some humor into your brand (if it applies), it will only make you look more human.1
If you don’t believe us, take a look at Innocent Drink’s Twitter account. It’s not “roll on the floor” type of humour, it’s more on the cute and quirky side, but we can’t stop ourselves from scrolling down.
Wrap
Ad there you have them, 33 actionable tips for online branding. Remember that it’s never too late to start your online branding strategy or to revamp the one you already have.
Harald is an aspiring author (and brunch enthusiast) that has worked on many different fields from publishing to illustration and nonprofit organisations. In his spare time he likes to read, do yoga and waste time watching Youtube videos. Read more of his thoughts at Printsome.
