Mediaboss Marketing

Last week, Nixon made some adjustments to its internal structure that included a round of layoffs to reposition the brand for growth.

Although there wasnt much elaboration on the positions that were cut, the brand was able to share with us which areas of the business they are strengthening moving forward specifically, Nixon will be shifting its resources to digital in both the marketing and commerce sides of the business.

The changes we are working through arent dramatic, said Nixon CEO Nick Stowe. Weve seen our consumers changing, moving much more into digital in terms of where they go to discover and learn about brands and where they go to shop. What we are seeing is as much about marketing as commerce, lots of social and some real blending of the two on platforms like Instagram.

Nixon is mirroring the fast-paced digital growth they are seeing among their retail partners, and looking at ways they can lean on those partners many of whom command mass followings of their own while also driving consumers back to Nixons own e-commerce platform, explains Stowe. Were seeing consumers look to a range of sites when they shop: Amazon is clearly the largest, but our accounts like Zumiez and Nordstrom are really important, and consumers also want to go directly to the brand, to Nixon.com.

The brand is making a significant push to move from traditional practices to a more streamlined, all-encompassing approach when it comes to e-comm. Stowe shares how the brands strategy has been realigned to meet these goals.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In terms of restructuring the brand, can you speak to what areas of the business you are looking to strengthen? Can you also give us insight into the new positions you have created / will be hiring for?

Were adding positions mainly in digital. We have a search underway for a VP of e-commerce and marketing, and have set aside several positions for that person to build out the team we have, add some new roles in digital and social marketing and super-size the e-commerce team.

In some areas, well continue to use agencies to help us, and weve seen a benefit to the right blend of internal and external expertise. Were also looking geographically, and will be adding some more support to our business in Japan, working alongside our distributor partner there, launching Nixon.com in Japan and doing more in terms of digital marketing for that market.

Well also be strengthening a new area of the business, something were excited about in terms of reaching a whole new set of consumers, and will be announcing that more formally in the next few months.

Making cuts is never easy, especially with a close knit team like yours. How did you decide which areas of the business needed to be adjusted?

Its hard to lay people off and weve tried hard to avoid it. As we looked at the organization we tried to focus on positions, not people. Some of it was just about filling gaps in terms of getting the right capabilities in place and putting in some depth.

But it was also about looking at efficiency across channels and geographies. That has mainly been about making our US wholesale business more efficient, as well as improving our overall business in Europe. Explaining that to the people affected doesnt make the news any better, but its the analysis we did and it should serve us well as we look ahead in terms of having our people and resources focused in the right places.

How much will we see Nixons marketing strategy change over the next few months with this realignment? What types of marketing is resonating with the Nixon consumer and what strategies will the brand use to leverage this?

It wont really change in terms of what the brand stands for. But youll for sure see more in terms of how we publish on the major digital platforms, and that includes social platforms like Instagram and Facebook, as well as commerce-focused platforms like Fancy. And our investment in search is also ramping up, getting sharper in the terms we use. Our goal is to get better at how we target different groups of consumers, what we publish to them, where that takes them in terms of e-commerce landing pages (ours and our partners).

E-comm is an area that most companies are looking to ramp up and it sounds like this is the case for Nixon. Can you describe what your strategy currently looks like and how you plan to modify and build it to reflect your current audiences needs? How is Nixon attracting a broader audience?

Weve had a pretty traditional e-commerce strategy up to this point. We redesigned the site for more commerce, moved it onto Demandware to get that platforms robust performance, and weve added some better imagery and more recently with The Mission, customization, which has been a huge hit for us. Some of the changes we have coming are more evolutionary: for instance, changing up content and imagery to reflect what weve seen work on social.

But our ambitions are bigger than that. The big direction for us is to move away from hierarchical navigation and much more into search. Navigating using our drop-down menus is kind of like Yahoo! back in the day, and our consumers are much more likely now to use search on the site or enter the site straight from Google search. That means they want relevant results, strong recommendations, and reviews. They want a set of products that is more curated and specific than our hierarchical navigation. Think of many more curated landing pages than we currently have, some pre-merchandised, others created on the fly.

In terms of reaching a broader audience, some of that is about targeting our growing digital advertising to new consumer segments and backing that up with the right landing experience. But our retail partners are really important for growing our audience: individually many of them have much greater reach than we do as a brand, and collectively they have orders of magnitude. We want to extend what were doing in e-commerce to help them.

Weve focused very much on our in-store experience with retailers, and now we need to focus on the in-digital experience with them, as well. That includes simple things like better digital assets to represent Nixon and our product. It should include more commercial support, like helping them always be in stock with drop-ship programs: if youre shopping on Zumiez, and you search for The Mission but they dont stock it, it would be great if we served that up. And it should include extending more service offerings to them, giving authorized dealers post-sale service benefits like free battery changes for instance.

Along with the internal restructuring, will we see an outward realignment of Nixons brand image or focus in terms of who the brand speaks to outside of the core action / adventure sports demographic? If so, what will that look like?

Youll see some new approaches to campaigns over the next few months. I dont think we need to tell many of our core audience who we are and what we do, but well continue to work really closely with our athletes in our core space. But we need to introduce the brand more broadly, particularly with some of the product that we have that is very much on-trend (like our more simplistic Time Teller or Porter watches).

Were going to ramp up our digital marketing collaborations with friends of the brand who have an audience that overlaps with ours, but that stands more outside of our core demographic; we have a few people in mind in the music and art spaces outside of core action sports. Well use imagery that reflects how they see us, and product they want to represent and share. It means publishing more to their channel and audience than we have in the past. Weve occasionally blasted our voice pretty broadly, but this time its more like an introduction from a friend. That feels like a better way to grow and reach out.

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CEO Nick Stowe on Nixon restructuring, updated strategy - GrindTV

Provide social customer support

"Brands need to evolve from social monitoring and social listening to social customer support. Doing this has historically been very expensive. B2B brands will likely hire dedicate staff to respond to every social interaction, while B2C brands won't have such a luxury, unless their business is focused on buying and selling products and services online. However, even then they will triage social interactions to focus on urgent requests and issues vs handling all requests. With chatbots as part of brands' social strategy, they can ensure the best support for customers, said John Forrester, Chief Marketing Officer, Inbenta.

Answer questions and provide product and service information on social channels

"Chatbots can ensure all your customers understand the products and solutions your company offers. Via social channels, chatbots can let your brand move beyond static information on websites and search to enable customers to directly discover the details about your company's offerings," said Forrester.

Utilize social channels for taking orders and driving promotions

"With chatbots, marketing teams can driving promotional offers to customers they are engaging with on social media. For instance, on Facebook messenger, once the chatbot has a conversation open, the chatbot can start new conversations with customers in the future when a promotion is available. In addition, the chatbot can directly take orders and process everything instead of forcing customers through a traditional e-commerce flow," said Forrester.

More from Forrester and Inbenta later this week, including how brands can being implementing chatbots in their social media.

Tags: chatbots, Inbenta, social commerce, social marketing, social marketing trends

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Top 3 reasons to add chatbots to your social media - BizReport

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Most people who have their businesseson social media are looking hard for answers to solutions for more traffic, engagementand conversions to build their brand. While great social media strategies dont simply fall off a truck in front of your doorstep, you dont have to make it any harder than it should be.

Nathan Pirtle, social media/digital marketing specialist and founder of Work With The Coach, is one person who snatched his success from the hands of fate.Pirtle became a hard core marketer because he wasnt looking for someone elses answers, he was looking for his own. These five important tips from his personal strategy can help your brand on social media.

Related: How Social Media Marketing Generated $7 Million in Affiliate Sales for This Entrepreneur

Theres a program and an app for everything you want to do with your social marketing, from analytics data to auto posting and direct messaging. While these are important aspects to your digital marketing business, at some point you need to make sure these robotsarent the primary source of your social media activity.

One thing Pirtle is direct in announcing is his approach to being personal with people on social media. Sure, your auto-posting social media tool is helping you stay relevant and seen, but its not replying to people, nor is it responding to someones questions in real time. In short, these are mistakes which can share negative messages to your audience.

People want conversation and engagement from your brand -- from the real you. Dont allow your brand to be controlled by these automated sources because it doesnt portray your true personality. Dont get me wrong, its okay to use these tools because youre a smart marketer. However, because you are a smart marketer, you will understand when to pull back on the reins and allow a more personal touch.

Your brand pages and accounts need to understand what your audience enjoys. For Pirtle, itwas a plethora of motivational, helpfuland funny pictures or memes to get his audience engaging with his brand on a continual basis. He also advises the best way to attract more people with real content on your social account is by keeping your house (your social account) clean and orderly. If it is, people will want to stick around and listen to what you have to say.

The rule of sharing is 80/20. This means 80 percentof the time, youre sharing content to either help, entertainand/or motivate your audience. The 80 percenthas nothing to do with your brand at all. Its all about your customers and what they enjoy.

If youre having a hard time finding out what your audience is into -- let's use Facebook for this example -- you can take a look at Facebook Audience Insights. Simply type in a couple of interests youre looking for, and it will supply you with other brand pages, like yours, who are killing it with real content. Take some tips out of their playbook, and offer some similar posts on your page.

Related: Meaningful Conversations Will Keep Your Clients Coming Back for More

Most people want to have a million followers, but they dont want to follow multiple people or accounts. It just doesnt work that way. To create a large social media following with real results, you need to be both a leader and a follower of people. "You have to know how to follow in order to be able to lead, so follow everyone who is relevant to your business," Pirtle said.

Dont reject the idea of engaging with people. This is going to help your business in the long run because people will always remember a helpful conversation. Once you learn to follow the most relevant people to your brand, and you consistently give them help and guidance, you will soon find yourself leading these people. Dont be shy to follow.

There are lots of ways to measure your success on social media. Stats from analytics to learn different things about your social media accounts is a great way to build your business. However, Pirtle always measured his success based on the social engagement his brand was acquiring every day on social media.

How many people are interacting with you on a consistent basis? Learn who the key players are and who always seems to be there when you share. Anytime anyone likes, comments, retweets, etc.,you should take notice, and respond to those people.

One great way to measure success within each campaign is to set a specific goal within your brand. Perhaps you want to set a goal of 50 signups on Facebook or Twitter. You also would like to see 25 comments and at least 15 shares. These are personal engagement goals you should make for each update your brand does.

KISSmetrics shares a very helpful article on how you can measure each step of your engagement, and they include metrics of engagement like awareness, engagement, drive traffic, finding advocates and fans, and your brands voice measurement.

Its important to understand and establish a set of goals in which you can measure your engagement success on your social platform of choice. Not all social networks are the same. The people may be the same, but their behaviors on each platform are different. You want to understand the behaviors of each person on your social platform of choice. It will help you provide the best possible content for them in the future.

Related: 5 Ways to Make a Strong Impression With Every Audience

There is no social marketing tip any stronger than this -- build the relationship. This is pretty much self explanatory, and while it seems pretty hard to do, most people are susceptible to your brand on social media, providing youre not trying to hard sell them right out of the gate.

Relationship marketing creates brand loyalty and an avenue for other people like the one with whom you just built a relationship with. You spend the time, build the relationship, and establish the trust. In turn, this builds a bridge between someone who doesnt know you and your brand with the person you just created this with. You see how important it is? The reach of relationships is powerful marketing within your social community, and you should be taking advantage of it every day.

There are all kinds of social media strategies you should want to try out, but these five are the most important ones to always remember to do consistently. You have a brand name to protect and an audience who wants to learn all they can about you. Just like Pirtle, when you invest your time, moneyand knowledge into your audience, you will reap superb results with these strategies.

Jennifer Spencer is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Energent Media, a digital branding agency focused on helping entrepreneurs share their stories on top podcasts. She is a passionate storyteller, online marketer and social media speci...

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5 Winning Social Media Strategies From a Master Marketer - Entrepreneur

The social marketing landscape shifts so quickly that a half-year review isnt so much ridiculous as almost requisite, if only to keep track of what has changed already in 2017.

When 2016 ended, Snapchat was a social darling, Facebook videos could be watched uninterrupted, and Instagrams Stories product was smaller than Snapchats original. Then 2017 happened. More specifically, these things happened:

Secrecy had always been part of Snapchats allure, but when the apps parent company Snap filed to go public in February, it lost some of that mystique, in part because it appeared to be losing its war with Instagram. Soon after Instagram cloned Snapchats Stories feature, Snapchats audience growth slowed. By April 2017, more people were checking out Instagram Stories daily than opening Snapchat. Those stats alone would have made for a rough start to 2017. But in May, Snap said that its Q1 2017 revenue slid from the Q4 2016 mark because of seasonality, a trend thats normal for a seasoned ad business but unusual for an upstart.

After closing 2016 by making run at Snapchats user base, Instagram opened 2017 by making a run at its rivals advertiser base when it rolled out Snapchat-style vertical video ads between peoples Stories. Then in April two months after Snapchat disclosed its daily user count for the first time Instagram revealed that more people were using Instagram Stories daily than Snapchat. Then in June, a month after Snapchat said that its daily audience growth had rebounded by 5 percent from Q4 2016 to Q1 2017, Instagram announced that Stories daily audience had grown by 25 percent from April to June.

Views are nice, but revenue is nicer. After building itself up as a legitimate alternative to YouTube for creators and publishers to attract audiences for their videos, Facebook finally started testing a way for companies to make money from the videos they post on the social network. Now its a question of whether advertisers shaken by YouTubes adpocalypse are comfortable with Facebooks limited controls over which videos feature their mid-roll ads.

In the movie National Lampoons Vegas Vacation, Chevy Chase tries to plug a leak in the Hoover Dam, only to have another one open. Twitter is Chevy Chase. The company has finally re-accelerated its audience growth, but now its total revenue and advertising revenue are in decline. And while Twitter has added more money-making ad products, like ads in Periscope, it has also lost one of its most marquee sales opportunities after the NFL opted not to renew its regular season live-streaming deal with the company.

Business-wise, LinkedIn had stayed pretty quiet since being bought by Microsoft in 2016. Then the the business-centric social network finally opened itself up to retargeted advertising through a new program called Matched Audiences. While LinkedIn isnt doing anything that hasnt already been done by Facebook, Google, Twitter really, by everyone it can better cater to B2B marketers.

Pinterest wants to do for visual search what Google has done for text-based search. But for a search engine to be truly visual, not only should the results be visual, but so should the queries. And so in February, Pinterest rolled out Lens, a feature in its app that convert a phones camera into a search bar. A few months later, Pinterest said that it would use the same computer vision technology powering Lens to target ads on its platform.

2016 was supposed to be a big year for chatbots. Luckily for them, it was not. But 2017 may be after Facebooks Messenger added a Discover tab to make people more aware of the chatbots and businesses on its platform.

More:
2017: The year in social marketing so far - Marketing Land

Couple travels in RV to teach businesses digital marketing

Christy Millweard, KVUE 7:08 PM. CDT June 30, 2017

While sightseeing, the married couple is also working to help small businesses. (Photo: KVUE)

On National Social Media Day, many think of the platforms as a way to post selfies, or vacation photos, but one local company sees it as a tool to help a small business -- or an individual -- grow.

Kristie and Elijah Whites are traveling the country in their RV.

"Sold our house, all of our stuff, bought an RV, and we're going to travel around the country. Sounds crazy, Kristie said.

While sightseeing, the married couple is also working to help small businesses.

"Were hoping that we can help save that small business, to get them online, to get them educated and to help them thrive, Kristie said. "It's a new concept for a lot of these smaller businesses, they haven't really dived out of traditional media yet -- it is a completely new concept.

They want to teach business owners how to market, digitally.

"They're like 'I don't know how to do that,' and they just back right off, so we think it can be simple if you're given a road map, Kristie said. It's to show them there is a way that marketing can be simple if you're given the right tools and resources, and that there's somebody that cares."

Richard Lindner, the co-founder and president of the company Digital Marketer works to provide that road map for individuals and businesses.

"I really believe trade schools are coming back, said Lindner. "Where we're going to see these individualizations and specializations and trades is in marketing and specifically in digital marketing.

He said digital marketing is like a modern trade, something you can get a certification in, not a degree.

"Instead of having your degree in marketing, you are a certified specialist in social media, said Lindner. "I think trade now means area of specialization.

At the company, they offer eight core subjects businesses can specialize in from social media, to analytics and data, to email marketing.

Theyre all ways Linder said marketers can help small businesses grow.

"People find out about your company, your brand, your product, they engage with you online, before they make the buying decision, said Lindner.

As for National Social Media day, Lindner said its a good time to reflect on the platform.

"It's great now to look back and say what was social media last year, two years, three years ago, different platforms, mainly people engaging one-on-one but now, over the last 3 to 5 years, businesses have really kind of adopted this, said Lindner. "Its not only how they make potential customers aware that they exist, but also how they engage with existing customers and keep top of mind."

Lindner told KVUE their company Digital Marketer is like a lab to help educate businesses owners and help train and certify people who want to go into digital marketing. He said its a field for anyone looking to switch careers and to be part of something emerging.

"This digital space is growing, it's going to become predominant, and there's lots of opportunity for everyone, said Kristie Whites.

Maybe even you.

You can follow the Whites marketing journey on their blog here. And if you want to sign up for certification through Digital Marketer, check out the details here.

2017 KVUE-TV

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Couple hits the road to teach digital marketing to businesses - KVUE