Digital marketing, public relations and seo to reach more consumers
- Record volume of website visitors
- Highest ever reach & exposure on social media
- First ever mass media product reviews
- Refreshed visual identity
- Improved customer service processes
In 2020 I was engaged by a local Australian consumer electronics distribution company to help provide outsourced product marketing support. The company wanted to build the profile of its range of Android TV’s that was being marketed under the name of EKO in Australia. They wanted to improve their digital marketing, public relations exposure & create content to engage their consumers while supporting their retail partners.
They had considered hiring another employee to focus on marketing, but with the available budgets it would have meant employing someone with relatively little experience. Their other option was to contract a freelance marketing professional which means you save on all the typical on-costs of a full time employee, but can secure a person who has maybe 5 or more years experience, with a proven track record. In this instance they chose to hire me as their marketing consultant, this immediately gave them someone with over twenty years of experience, only paying for what they need.
I was contracted to help support their exclusive retail partner as their range of Android TV’s were being sold as a form of private label exclusively through Big W. Quite a few retailers in Australia take this approach to their ranging, they will have their own in-house brand, their own exclusive brand as the next price point & then a range of global brands to complete their range. This helps them achieve a mix of price points & margins to make a category commercially viable in a retail store. For this marketing execution the outcome needed to be a more systematic way to increase the awareness levels of this consumer electronics brand using social media and public relations but in a way that could be measured easily. The marketing execution I delivered lead to record levels of online exposure for the brand in a short space of time as well as a wide array of marketing operation improvements.
THE MARKETING BRIEF
There was very little product marketing being executed for the EKO Android TV range
The range of Android TV’s from this brand had first been released in 2019 in Big W with great success. The combination of Google’s new operating system & very competitive price points hit the sweet spot for the type of consumer segment that Big W focussed on. The majority of time & energy being spent on marketing was to secure regular catalogue exposure via the retailer because it would fuel bulk purchases in 100+ retail around Australia to be sold in stores or online . Getting the product promoted this way was helping to slowly grow brand awareness through leveraging the retailer’s household name.
Develop online profiles to create cost effective consumer engagement
With very limited resources the team managing the brand had focussed their efforts around;
– securing approval from Google to use the Android TV platform (they even became a certified Android TV partner)
– created a brand website using Wix
– establishing a social media profile on Facebook using ‘boosted’ posts on occasion
Beyond these two online platforms there was no other marketing activities being executed for the brand and the team identified this as a great opportunity to fuel growth in Australia. Plus their retail partner was expecting to see some external brand awareness activities to give them confidence to keep stocking the range & to help with sell through.
How were consumers discovering the brand?
Over 90% of online search volume came from brand-specific terms. This indicated consumers were looking for information about the brand each time it was featured in Big W’s brochures or online advertising. Very generally, people wanted to know;
– who made the brand
– where did it originate from
– did it have a warranty
– what were the product reviews like.
Unfortunately finding any of this information proved difficult for most people as it wasn’t available on the brand’s website or other sources. Without being able to measure it (or see it) quite a few people most likely weren’t choosing to purchase simply because the most crucial information they were after wasn’t available. What was also more puzzling is that Big W’s website was indicating lots of great product reviews, but they weren’t being displayed.
So essentially it was fairly difficult for a consumer to establish how credible the brand was, the support available & what other people thought – these are fundamentals needed for consumers to make decisions.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE MARKETING CHALLENGES?
THE NEED FOR REGULAR MARKETING ACTIVITY
The brand had opportunities to have a more regular level of marketing activity beyond Big W's catalogue schedule.
SEO OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE WEBSITE
The brand was being found using search terms that were 90% branded terms vs more generic ones like 'Best Android TV'
THE BRAND NEEDED TO COMMUNICATE ITS STORY
Consumers wanted to know more about who the brand was and what it represented, this needed to be communicated on its platforms.
MORE VISUAL CONTENT & ASSETS NEEDED TO BE CREATED
There wasn't a library of brand lifestyle shots to show off the range of Android TV's in different environments or for public relations.
THERE WASN'T ANY 3RD PARTY REVIEWS AVAILABLE.
The products hadn't been reviewed on popular technology or entertainment websites.
THERE WERE GREAT OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE ONLINE ENGAGEMENT
The brand was being talked about on lots of platforms so had a great opportunity to directly engage people online.
WHAT DID THE MARKETING SCOPE OF WORK INCLUDE
I was contracted to provide marketing consultation and assistance to improve the execution for the brand.
- Suggestions for domain name, website URL and page naming to improve SEO performance.
- Improvements to customer communication processes and tracking to improve consumer engagement & customer service.
- Create a repository of product images and assets for use across all online profiles & for retail.
- Create online profiles for Product Review and Ozbargain to provide direct community engagement.
- Implement new processes between the Sales and Marketing support teams to improve communication.
- Create internal product databases for content, reviews and other materials to improve workflows.
- Set up new online profiles on Instagram, YouTube & LinkedIn.
- Begin public relations outreach to generate reviews for the new models of Android TV
How should new brands use marketing to get exposure?
How can a start up brand get brand exposure? Sometimes a new brand might catch a lucky break and be spotted by a celebrity or an influencer that shows off the item on their social media feeds, this can help kickstart their awareness & there are lots of examples of this. Although for most newly created brands more traditional methods have to be established to being building consumer awareness.
Advertising is the fastest & simplest method, but obviously is the most costly & not necessarily sustainable. Furthermore in today’s crowded market how many mediums do you try & what budget is needed to get real cut through? Different approaches can be taken though, including gorilla marketing where you advertise using Google Ads with keywords or ads targeted at competitor models or brands for example.
A public relations outreach can be done to get reviews, mentions or even announcements published on a website, blog, magazine or newspaper. Although many traditional pr opportunities these days are paid advertorial, so even this can prove to be costly. The long term benefit of a review is when it is written and displayed online with a link to the brand’s website. This can help create backlinks, improve SEO performance and convert readers by taking the straight to the product.
Influencers are the buzzword of the marketing industry with thousands of ‘everyday’ people building audiences that they can supposedly ‘influence’ so for some brands this could be a quick way to get exposure, but most consumers these days aren’t easily fooled. So if the person isn’t genuine or has a ‘fake’ audience the time & money spent could be a waste of marketing budget. Quite a few influencers also don’t have any supporting platform like a website, eMail database or anything else that can be used to reach their audience. This means your piece of content quickly gets lost amongst newsfeeds.
Social media is the ‘go to’ execution for nearly any brand these days, but so many fail to do this properly & eventually the content just becomes a flow of one way advertisements rather than an engaged community of loyal brand advocates. Too many companies make the mistake of thinking that because everyone uses social media they will enjoy seeing a brand there. Plus anyone responsible for social media has to realise that every platform makes money from advertising – it isn’t there to help brands, it wants your advertising dollars.
Organic search – for any new brand you will get found for your name relatively easily (if people know who you are). Although the more challenging aspect is getting found for terms related to the problems your brand can solve or the types of situations it can be used in. So for example the EKO range of products are ‘smart tv’s with built in apps and of course using the Android TV operating system. There will be consumers looking for information about those market segments who don’t know any particular brand and are researching. A new brand can get found this way by creating rich content on those topics to help consumers with their research & decision making. Some may say this is a waste of time, but it is exposure for the brand that you wouldn’t ordinarily get.
What marketing results did I deliver?
A NEW PRODUCT MARKETING BASELINE WAS ESTABLISHED.
Within a short time period I made a number of fast changes to the product marketing executions that delivered significant shifts to how the brand was reaching consumers online. This also helped establish a new baseline for the team to work from & continue developing their efforts.
Their highest online website traffic ever
The combination of marketing activities that I assisted with helped to deliver improved results quickly. While it was coming from a relatively low base, the trend was extremely positive and demonstrated a measurable change in consumer behaviour. The brand has enjoyed the most online search activity to its website in over 12 months. Even the brand's LinkedIn & Facebook profiles delivered visibility growth for the first time.
The approach taken was to improve basic website content, on page SEO structure & compliment this with revised social media profiles, product review brand profiles & being engaging across all channels directly with consumers.
Refined brand positioning statement
I helped to craft a more refined brand positioning statement that was to be used across all online profiles and the website. I felt it important for the brand to clearly communicate what it stood for & what the brand represented. This included a major change from using the name of 'EKO Consumer' which didn't really mean anything to transitioning to 'EKO Entertainment'. This would help facilitate a more generic position and enable them to secure this naming internationally while being specific to their product range. Part of the reason behind this strategic change was that the product range included TV's as of June 2020 but was being expanded to include other products like earphones, dvd players and sound bars. These all fit perfectly with the idea of 'Entertainment'
Website domain name, page structure & URL CHANGEs
Changing the domain name opened up the opportunity for the brand to use the same name in other countries and 'own' its identity to help with possible expansion. I also provided a number of suggestions to change the page structures and page content to improve the way products were presented. These changes were aimed at improving website visitor page experience and SEO results. Small things like removing excess tabs, adding an 'About' and 'Warranty' pages helped to reduce phone calls & other questions being asked online by consumers.
All of the suggestions came from using consumer insight data that was analysed from online search behaviour from Google Analytics and Google Search Console information.
The first ever product reviews written for the brand
I carefully selected online media partners to help generate review content for the brand to help increase their online discoverability. I successfully secured reviews with Women Love Tech, EFTM, TechAU & TechGuide using a mix of earned and paid media coverage. Part of the strategy included a guarantee that links to the retail parter and the brand would be included.
This would help to grow visitor conversions, track results from the reviews & encourage sales.
NEW CUSTOMER SERVICE RESPONSE FORMS
I made improvements to the information being captured by the website so that the Customer Service team received more accurate information from each consumer. This helped to reduce the turnaround time of support requests & meant consumers had their questions answered more specifically.
This data was also collated to create a database of support requests that could be reviewed quickly with the insights used for further brand improvements like content on the product pages or information for social media posts.
NEW ONLINE PROFILES FOR LINKEDIN, INSTAGRAM & PRODUCT REVIEW
New online profiles were set up to help the brand reach different types of consumers or industry contacts online. For each platform it enabled the brand to speak directly to people and engage with them to improve customer service and general engagement. Brand visuals were created to begin crafting a profile for the range.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS & SEARCH CONSOLE REPORTING
I set up & implemented analytics from Google's reporting tools to provide consumer insights that were used to make operational changes. It also enabled the team to see for the first time how much interest was being created for the brand.
CONTENT CREATION COLLABORATION
I worked closely with Women Love Tech to structure their product review to aid SEO performance on their website. This helped deliver over 4,000 views with an incredible reading time of more than 4 minutes on average. Their article achieved just over 15,000 search impressions in a short period of time meaning there will be long term benefit of the review content appearing online.
Women Love Tech provided links to the brand which also helps build domain authority.
ENHANCED VISUAL PROFILE
I helped put new practices in place that would generate assets and more visuals for the brand to improve its visual profile. This included updates to their Instagram and Facebook profiles so they can build engaged communities. All of the assets were then made available to their sales team to use with the retail customers to maximise the return on investment.
