Category: Marketing

Finding Your Head-Tilting Idea

Cherith AndesBlog, Marketing, Public Relations, , , , ,
You have it. You found your something, your showstopper, your Shark-tank-worthy product that you know will revamp your industry! You wouldn’t invest your time, talent and resources in an initiative if you didn’t believe in its revolutionary power.
Why, then, aren’t media inquiries flooding your inbox? Why aren’t eager customers beating down your doors and clearing your shelves? Why is your social media engagement fizzling to nothing?

Sound Familiar?

Alas, thus is the plight of many brands that come to us — a world-changing idea that hasn’t yielded the results they expected. Now notably, many elements of the business require honest evaluation in this situation, from the product production to the business model itself.
But at Clairemont, we’re in the business of transforming a company’s marketing and PR from “blah to Voila,” as we say. And one of our secret ingredients is what one of our friends – Sean Lilly Wilson of Fullsteam Brewery — once called “the head-tilting idea.”

The Head-Tilting Idea

A head-tilting idea is the element that makes you simply stop … and take a second glance — the “wait, what now?” factor. (That’s the technical term in our PR textbooks.) This twist of creativity swivels the spotlight to your company, placing your brand on centerstage. Whether based on humor, a bold CSR move or an unlikely partnership, the contrast where the expected meets the unexpected produces a magical magnetism, one that we’ve seen catch the attention of busy reporters and create a vibrant buzz amidst consumers.

Ideas in Action

Here are just a few we cooked up in the Clairemont creative kitchen:

Hoedown Showdown: A master-planned community threw a barn-raising themed event to celebrate its first anniversary. To transform this internal milestone into a media-worthy moment, Clairemont concocted the ultimate “dancing with the stars” competition. Media were invited to compete in the square-dance competition dubbed “the hoedown showdown” for a chance to win $1,000 to donate to charity of their choice. This unexpected boot-scootin’ bonanza captured the attention of busy media, landing coverage across the Triangle.

LEKKER’s 24 Hour Tour: Fans flocked to see North Carolina’s  newest star — one that made its debut for just 24 hours in Greensboro. The celebrity made appearances at everything from restaurants and boutiques to morning TV shows and even on stage at a live band performance. The guest celebrity? A Dutch fashion bicycle making its debut in the United States. Clairemont positioned the LEKKER bike as a celebrity that spent its first American day doing photo opps, “signing autographs” and meeting its new fans. Clairemont transformed a typical product launch into an anticipated debut, garnering fans, securing bold coverage and topping the season’s holiday shopping list.

Wrangler Dave Launches the Railinc CowParade: When Railinc, IT provider to the rail industry, asked Clairemont to give them some creative ideas to promote its sponsorship of CowParade North Carolina, we said we’ll do you one better and give you something no other sponsors have! We’ll give you a cowboy! Clairemont’s Wrangler Dave became the official cowboy of the Railinc cow. In full cowboy getup Wrangler Dave starred in videos and on the Clairemont-created landing page talking about how supporting mooovelous causes like the CowParade made Railinc an udderly amazing place to work. We collaborated with the 16-year-old artist selected by Railinc to paint their cow to include QR codes in the cow’s design, linked the landing page. Railinc employees were invited by Wrangler Dave to participate in a cow-naming contest, a photo contest and to join Wrangler Dave at CowParade events. During Raleigh’s First Fridays while Railinc’s cow as on parade, Wrangler Dave hosted “Chow Cow,” a promotional game that highlighted career opportunities and helped boost Railinc’s employment!
Are you looking for that new angle, a fresh pizzazz to bring your brand to life? Drop us a line to find your head-tilting idea!
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5 Steps to Successful Influencer Campaigns

Cherith AndesBlog, Marketing, Social Media + Influencer Engagement, , , , Leave a Comment on 5 Steps to Successful Influencer Campaigns

You’re done with your old mattress. Back pains, a weird lump, either too hard or too soft. Total Goldilocks moment. When you’re ready to seek your new, “just right” mattress, what do you do?

As it turns out, almost all of us would phone a friend. A research report by TapInfluence and Influitive indicates that 92 percent of consumers look to people they know as their leading source for recommendations.

That’s a hefty statistic that prompts any marketing strategist to consider tactics like influencer partnerships and influencer campaigns.

Quick marketing lingo crash course: In an influencer campaign, the company or brand partners with individuals who are considered leaders in their respective niches. Typically, these individuals have garnered a large following on social media and wield serious clout to sway behavior or opinion with their content. When done strategically, influencer marketing can move the needle in product visibility, positioning, desirability and sales.

But before you blow up the DM boxes of Instagram accounts, consider these five cornerstone elements to craft a successful influencer campaign.

The Right Platform

First and foremost, define your audience for your campaign or product. Don’t settle for generic buckets, like “women, ages 44-54 who have children.” Pinpoint several audiences or sub-audiences defined by behaviors, hobbies, seasonal wishes, websites they frequent and (here’s an interesting one) upcoming life stages. Future plans affect current decisions, my friends.

Determine which social media platform your audience frequents. For example, if I’m selling a Waterpik targeted to ladies in their 40s, I wouldn’t partner with a Snapchat influencer. In addition to demographics, product type will influence your social media platform. Instagram’s visual nature works perfectly for something like a fashion handbag line, while Facebook or YouTube better suits food products with opportunities for popular step-by-step recipe videos.

The Right Goal

Wade through the plethora of marketing metrics to determine your ideal end game. What does campaign success look like for your product? Is it a sales goal or does it trend toward engagement, awareness and visibility?

Then define your influencer campaign benchmarks. Are you optimizing these influencer campaigns for metrics including likes and shares? Click-through rates? Product purchases? Video views? Are you creating a sales funnel that begins with the influencer and then allows you to retarget web traffic? Define this process with a fine-toothed comb to pinpoint a clear path to purchase.

The Right Influencer(s)

There’s no shortage of stars and wannabe-stars on social media. Determine your ideal influencer’s criteria, such as followership, industry (and micro-industry), activity, connections and — of course — compatibility with your product. Reference your initial campaign to ensure a strong fit.

You can use database tools to help the search for influencers, such as Inpowered and Little Bird. But keep in mind that you’ll need to vet their findings manually.

You can also manually search Google and social platforms using creative combos of keywords, brand terms and location. At Clairemont, we maintain a strong network of relationships with influencers across several industries and regions, and often word-of-mouth recommendations from this group lead us to our next influencer connection.

The Right Offer

What are you asking the influencers to do? If working toward a sales goal, consider asking your influencers to pair their content with a promotional offer or coupon. Forbes.com cited a case study in which influencer marketing increased in-store coupon redemptions by 44.8 percent as opposed to the typical 15 percent redemption rate.

The Right Execution

That devil … he’s in the details, as we all know. Timing can prove a pitfall in hasty influencer campaign. Many influencers book partnerships for seasons such as the holidays far in advance. Careful planning for a campaign should address timing and fee structures as well as clearly define the types and frequency of content posted by the influencer.

Looking for some advice on your own influencer campaign? Drop us a line!
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The Social Race: Paid vs. Organic Exposure

Clairemont InternBlog, Marketing, Social Media + Influencer Engagement, , , ,

It sometimes feels like social media is one big race; everyone’s trying to gain the most followers, likes and comments in the fastest time possible.

Social media provides an excellent opportunity to learn about your customers, expand your business and stay connected to the community. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an international corporation, a local business or a freelance artist. Taking advantage of the benefits of social media can be exceptionally rewarding.

Many people, though, can find it hard to grow their following and engagement. That’s where exposure comes in to play. Organic exposure is when you provide content on social media without paying for it, such as posts to your own feed, shares and comments. Paid exposure requires a monetary investment for items such as ads and sponsored posts.

In terms of our race, paid exposure is similar to a series of 100-meter dashes. You pay for an ad or sponsored content targeting specific audiences that, if done correctly, provides a quick boost to your numbers. Once that ad has accomplished its goal, a strong social media strategy will retarget the audience (another sprint) to move them along the sales funnel.

One benefit to paid exposure? Paid promotion helps to connect you with people that are already interested in your expertise but may not be following you yet. For example, if you’re a sports retailer, taking advantage of paid ads on social media means that sports fans (identified by their online activity) are more likely to see your ad than someone who doesn’t know that LeBron signed with the Lakers. This can drive an increase of traffic to your social media accounts and website. Paid promotion can also reach new customers and provide them with incentive to take action. With ad buys and strategic marketing, your customer base can grow exponentially.

Organic exposure is akin to the cross-country marathon. It takes time, effort and creativity. Posting creative, relevant content on a regular basis will help to build a relationship with your customers, further brand imaging and distribute information about your business. Organic engagement, however, often lacks a broad reach, especially in today’s social media climate. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin have all changed their newsfeed algorithms recently. This means that users’ feeds show content based on who they already follow and who they interact with using likes and comments. With this change, businesses can’t rely on just posting content regularly to drive traffic.

So what’s the best tactic to increase followers and engagement?

The short answer is both.

Paid and organic exposure work best when done together. It’s difficult to gain results by utilizing just one tactic. Start by establishing a reliable organic strategy. Post regularly, interact with followers (or non-followers relevant to your business) and follow others. Then try a paid strategy for a boost in followers and engagement. Make sure to research your target demographic and test varying ad durations, copy and target segments to find the right fit. But never forget to stay consistent with your postings and interaction.

Slow and steady (with a few well-placed paid slots) wins the race.

Are you looking for an award-winning social media campaign? Drop us a line!

Written by intern Yasmine Evans, a senior at NC State University.

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Making the Most of Your Hashtags

Clairemont InternBlog, Marketing, Social Media + Influencer Engagement, , , , , , , ,

Hashtag. It’s one of those words you keep hearing and the more you hear it, the weirder it sounds. In social media, you’re constantly reminded to “hashtag this” or “hashtag that.” But which hashtags should you really be using … and why?

Remember that a hashtag is merely an identifier that pools certain posts together and keeps relevant data connected. It is a way for communities to share, a way to gauge opinions on topics and most importantly, a way for users to sift through the millions of terabytes of content floating around on the internet.

If you’re looking to beef up your hashtag game, you have to first ask, “For which platform am I creating content?” There is a monumental difference in strategy and results among Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Let’s break down each one.

Twitter

Twitter is where hashtags started, and the platform still emulates the tried-and-true spirit of their original purpose. Hashtags siphon your post into an online conversation. These tagged posts are “connected” to a thread of posts with the same hashtag, linking all the posts together. They work wonders for discovering developing trends and tracking relevant news or your favorite topics.

© [Artistan] / Adobe Stock
Twitter’s timeline algorithm, much like Instagram and Facebook, organizes your feed based on what it thinks will be relevant to your interests. One of the easiest ways to utilize hashtags is to find a popular tag and make your brand a part of that conversation. By engaging with a popular tag, your post will attract much more eye traffic. Connecting with trends is a great way to keep your brand in the loop.

Due to the 280-character limit, using several hashtags in a post doesn’t work well, so the most effective route is to use only two. Believe it, or not, there is an aesthetic appeal to social media content and writing a well-composed, organized and “clean” post could make all the difference.

Instagram

While people log on to Instagram to see carefully framed and beautifully filtered pictures, it is often the hashtags on the caption of a post that generates likes and helps it reach star status.

Tags on this platform serve as buckets for posts. Once a certain tag is put on a post, Instagram will group that post with all the other posts with that tag, creating an enormous gallery. Users can search any hashtag with Instagram’s Discover tab and see all the buzz on that topic.

This has shaped a community feel on the platform, letting foodies and travel enthusiasts alike share their posts with specific niche communities. Any brand has the chance to reach out to an exact market and share content with people that are interested in a certain topic.

Over time, certain hashtags have developed into industry standards, generating millions of posts. If you are a travel enthusiast, it may seem like a good idea to throw “#adventure” on your post, but at the time I wrote this article, that hashtag had almost 64 million posts. Remember that if you decide to use the more popular hashtags, your post could be lost a lot quicker due to the amount of activity!

However, Instagram allows you to insert 30 hashtags in one post, so use as many as you like! Just as a friendly reminder, it’s a good idea to make your hashtags appear lower in your caption so your post does not look cluttered. This can be accomplished by burying them beneath your text with dots, line breaks or whatever symbols you prefer. People will only be able to see the hashtags if they click on your post to see the full caption. On the other hand, tags can also be put into the comment section after a post has been made.

Facebook

Many people aren’t sure if Facebook is the place for hashtags. The original social network has traditionally been a platform for people to connect with close friends or specific users, unlike Twitter which encourages conversation among non-connected users.

Many businesses on Facebook use hashtags and promote campaigns the same way they would on any other platform. However, according to a study done by BuzzSumo in which more than a billion posts from more than 30 million brand pages were analyzed, posts without hashtags garnered more reach than posts with hashtags.

© [momius] / Adobe Stock
The sheer volume of that study makes it hard to argue that one should be using tags, but if your team has created a killer campaign and has found a great way to market it with an inventive hashtag, do it! It is still a good idea to keep the number of tags low to make it more appealing to the eye. We recommend approximately two.

The most important facet of the hashtag process is research! Research your industry leaders, influencers and audience to gauge tags people are using and which ones are resonating with those communities. In order to come up with meaningful hashtags that stick out, you need to know who you are trying to reach. You want to make sure your tag is refreshing and different from another brand’s hashtag!

Do your #research, be #inventive and don’t forget to have fun!

Now that you’re in the groove, check out some other tips on social media strategy!

Cover Photo Credit: © [Michail Petrov] / Adobe Stock

Written by intern Nathan J. McDaniel, a senior at Western Carolina University.

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Burger King, the Humor King

Cherith AndesBlog, Marketing, Restaurant PR + Hospitality PR, , , , ,

If ever there was a prize for a bait-and-switch in the restaurant industry, IHOP just took home the gold.

The breakfast joint ditched its famous Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity pancake meal in favor of a different kind of combo — burgers and fries. And this wasn’t just a small tweak in the menu. The International House of Pancakes (IHOP) revamped its entire identity to become the International House of Burgers, or IHOB.

Twitter raved over Wendy’s classic response to a new player in this fast-food fight. Certainly, IHOB’s new focus might pose a threat to “the real OG,” as one Twitter user dubbed Wendy’s. But another franchise stood more to lose by simple virtue of its name.

Burger King.

In many circumstances, sheer interest in a new restaurant might have threatened Burger King’s brand recognition. But with a little quick thinking, Burger King’s marketing team leveraged a bold response to secure its market share. Well hello, humor.

What can you learn for your own business?

The Magic of Brand Humor

Your brand isn’t a logo or slogan. As we’ve mentioned in other blogs, a brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. It’s a feeling, an experience. And it springs from qualities resembling human characteristics, like “creative,” “tenacious,” “bold,” “playful” or “witty.” Just like people, every brand has a humorous streak in its “personality,”  albeit of different tones and varieties. And at the end of the day, people want to connect with people, not brands. So tap into your brand’s distinct flavor of wit to forge a deeper connection with your fans, customers and followers.

Finding Your Funny

Brainstorm qualities that unveil your brand’s lighthearted side. Are you the quiet, dry type? The bold jokester? The playful pal? Humor doesn’t necessarily need to tie directly to your product or service; it simply can identify you as a dynamic company with a witty, engaged staff unafraid to push the boundaries. Others feel welcome to interact and express themselves in your conversation. Explore voicing your sense of humor through a variety of mediums, from a parody video to — yes, indeed — even a quippy cat meme.

Wield Wit with Care

As Forbes points out, effective brand humor can be a fine line to walk. Heavy-handed jokes can easily backfire when they cross the line into demeaning sarcasm. Keep close tabs on the tenor of your communication and seek an inclusive rather than exclusive tone. While it feels lighthearted and spontaneous, well-honed brand humor requires significant thought and planning to craft a streamlined output. When in doubt, consult a communication professional as you develop your brand voice.

At Clairemont, we help our clients craft a compelling brand voice that connects with the personality — the hearts — of their audiences. Learn more about honing your brand!

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