For brands that sell through numerous retailers on a national or global scale, it is imperative that their messaging and image stays consistent across all channels. This can be especially challenging for brands that are managing relationships with multiple retailers.
Outdoor brand Mountain Hardwear, which is a division of Columbia Sportswear, provided retail partners with compelling content and resources using socialondemand from purechannelapps. By extending relevant, timely and rich resources through its network of retail partners, Mountain Hardware was able to reach more than 555,000 new consumers on a local level. Overall Cost-Per-Click (CPC) for the tool is just $0.15, an 86% decrease from the search engine marketing standard of $1.11 per click.
“Outdoor customers are continuing to turn to blogs and social media for information about products, brands and athletes,” explained Ken Voeller, who manages social media at Mountain Hardwear. “We view owned and earned media as a huge opportunity to communicate with our customers in a new and different way. We tell brand and product stories through photo, video, and written articles, and publish these stories through our social media channels. This allows our customers to develop a deeper, more meaningful relationship with our brand.”
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With the platform, the Mountain Hardwear social and marketing team can upload content in real time. Partners then receive email notifications when new pieces are entered into the system, and have the ability to edit pieces and content messaging before posts are published, according to Voeller.
“It’s a win-win situation,” said Voeller in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “Our content gets out into the world and is seen by more outdoor customers, and our retail partners are able to leverage that content to drive conversion in their own sales channels.”
“Mountain Hardwear has consistently focused on creating compelling and engaging content tailored to the wants and needs of outdoor enthusiasts, Voeller noted. However, “we realized that some of our retail partners were struggling to make use of that content across their social media networks.”
Putting A Local Spin On Brand Content
Socialondemand, which was branded as the Mountain Hardwear Content Lab, gives retail partners “more direct access to our content,” Voeller reported. “It allows them to take advantage of the resources we have at Mountain Hardwear, and leverage them in their own sales channels.”
Following a successful trial period in September 2013, Mountain Hardwear fully implemented the platform in December 2013. Approximately 54 retail partners initially joined the program, tying 67 Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts to socialondemand.
After creating and sharing 37 posts within the platform, Mountain Hardwear saw the following results:
- 710 shares by retailers;
- 16,703 total likes and re-tweets; and
- 13,314 clicks by potential customers.
“So many brands are creating content these days; content for blogs, content for social media, content for video channels, among others,” Voeller noted. “Purechannelapps allows us to communicate to our retailers that we’re creating high quality content not only to generate awareness around our brand, but also to drive conversion in their sales channels.”
Due to the success of socialondemand, Voeller noted that Mountain Hardwear plans to expand the solution to global teams so they can create content and publish it for their specific markets.
