If you’re a marketer for an online store, check out Daily Grommet’s website and social media channels to find killer ways to market your own business. In this case study, we’ll analyze their 12 best online marketing strategies and show you how they’re done.
About Daily Grommet
Daily Grommet is an online marketplace and product marketing platform. Their main goals are promoting innovative companies and helping them build connections with consumers. Daily Grommet seeks out creative and useful products that can be discovered by themselves and consumers.
12 Killer Online Marketing Lessons from Daily Grommet
Daily Grommet has great online marketing strategies to optimize their social media channels, get target customer’s attention and increase sales. In this case study, we are going to analyze the 12 following strategies that Daily Grommet uses in their online marketing:
Website
1. Create a referral program to increase the number of customers
2. Write highly specific product descriptions to highlight products’ values
3. Discover products with customers
YouTube
4. Create Story Productions to describe innovative products in detail
5. Share behind the scenes videos
Blog
6. Promote contests and giveaways to generate participation and buzz
7. Provide gift guides to promote your products
Facebook
8. Provide exclusive promotions only for Facebook fans
9. Ask specific questions to Facebook fans
Pinterest
10. Create interactive Pinboards to drive more Pinterest engagement
11. Use Pinterest contests to improve customer experience with your company
12. Collaborate with socially responsible businesses
Let’s take a look at each strategy by online channel:
Website
1. Create a referral program to increase the number of customers
Daily Grommet provides $10 exclusive coupons if you invite your friends to their website. Once your friends register and make first purchase, you and your friends will receive $10 on each Daily Grommet account.
What can retailers learn from this?
- To entice more customers, promote your referral program information on all of your social media channels.
- To directly increase sales, provide giveaways that are only available on your website. If you sell your products on the other Ecommerce sites such as Amazon.com or Etsy, you can also offer giveaways that can be used only for these sites.
2. Write highly specific product descriptions to highlight products’ values
Daily Grommet launches their products with informative descriptions including videos, images, and story contents to highlight products’ values and benefits and to educate customers.
Example:
What can retailers learn from this?
- Test your new products carefully and tell your consumers that you have an inherent love for your products.
- List benefits, not features. Think like a consumer. What if you talk with a salesman who rattles off unnecessary product specifications that you don’t really understand? For example, if you sell a latest smartphone, explain about benefits of its design or voice search rather than technology with fancy words.
- Educate customers first. If you educate them about your products, they will feel like you are providing more values and treating them well.
3. Discover products with customers
Daily Grommet is the birthplace of “Citizen Commerce,” which creates connections between inventors and consumers in a more interactive way. As a part of “Citizen Commerce”, anybody can discover and launch a product with a video, an image, or a story content on “Suggest A Grommet” and “Citizen Gallery”. After users post products, each posting will get votes and comments from other web users.
What can retailers learn from this?
- If you decided to launch a product recommended by your customer, provide a small gift like a $25 gift card to that person and send “Thank you” email to show appreciation of participation.
- Make easy and simple guides to let customers know how to launch a product.
YouTube
4. Create Story Productions to describe innovative products in detail
Daily Grommet provides specific editorial videos for every product by the “Stroy Production” service. Videos help to get the voice of the creator to consumers and to visually talk about their remarkable product and brand stories. Also, all of videos are shooting at Daily Grommet’s headquarters and are updated on their Youtube channel whenever launching a new product.
Example:
What can retailers learn from this?
- Keep it short and to the point! You have 3 minutes for each video because your audience wants a quick product review, not comprehensive specifications. Avoid boredom!
- You can create your own videos with great contents with minimum costs. All you need is a smartphone or a video camera to create quality videos quickly and efficiently. If you want to highlight key points, use Jing for Mac and Windows Live Movie Maker for PC for some video effects. Also, you can try YouTube’s simple effects as well.
5. Share behind the scenes videos
It shares “Behind the Scenes” videos that share the background of Daily Grommet and their products. For example, they share the story how Citizen Commerce began and how it works at Daily Grommet.
What can retailers learn from this?
To get more transparent and reliable company image by behind the scenes videos, you can upload short clip videos about:
- Your company background
- An interview with a designer or an inventor to share their behind stories
- The production process for a product
- Your team
And more….
Blog
6. Promote contests and giveaways to generate participation and buzz
“Contests and Giveaways” information is posted on blog and other social media channels. With a winning prize, Daily Grommet promotes innovative brands and products to their blog audience. Also, they generates engagement and drives traffic to the other channels.
What can retailers learn from this?
- Use your own products for giveaways and winning prizes that must be available only for your products.
- One powerful blog tool is tags. These are very short notes and descriptions of each posting and page. Tags are all about SEO. If you use various, relevant, and unique tags, they help to increase SEO. Also, search engines send more traffic to your blog if they understand what your blog posting is about.
7. Provide gift guides to promote your products
“Grommet Gift Guide” helps consumers find the right gifts. For each gift theme, Daily Grommet introduces a series of excellent products that they procure and profile. To understand blog users’ opinions about their gift selections and products, Daily Grommet invites users to leave comments on each posting.
Example:
What can retailers learn from this?
- Post blog articles about your products on blog communities or forums such as Bloggeries or Bizsugar. However, don’t sell your products at these sites because they might have strong policies about promotions or advertisements.
- Choose category titles carefully to navigate blog users to your posts that they are looking for. Keep them short and simple!
8. Provide exclusive promotions only for Facebook fans
Daily Grommet posts about exclusive deals, offers, giveaways or product launches that is only available for their Facebook fans to keep them coming back to their Facebook Fan page.
Example: Facebook posting with a URL of a landing page
Example: Exclusive giveaway and product launch
What can retailers learn from this?
- Create landing pages. If you create more landing pages on your Facebook Fan pages, you will have more opportunities to convert visitors into leads.
- *Note: According to Our Social Times, 67% customers expect to be eligible for exclusive offers when they “Like” a brand on Facebook, but only 22% of brands deliver special offers, discounts or deals exclusive to fans.
9. Ask a specific question to Facebook fans
To get into the community survey, people have to “Like” the page first. The question surveys increase Facebook fans (interaction and engagement), as well as help to understand customers’ favorite products and reasons why they like them.
Example: “Like”
Example: Community Survey
What can retailers learn from this?
- Ask specific open-ended questions and carefully analyze Facebook fans’ answers to improve your challenges and enhance your strengths.
- Differentiate tabs, are placed right under the cover image of your Facebook Fan page. Each tab is shown by different images. Therefore, you have to customize images, yet make them fit your Fan page’s design. If you’re not familiar with Facebook Fan page, use 3rd party apps like Wishpond.
Pinterest
10. Create interactive Pinboards to drive more Pinterest engagement
Daily Grommet extends “Citizen Commerce” to Pinterest. “Finds YOU want to see featured on Daily Grommet” Pinboard consistently represents as the top referral sources.
What can retailers learn from this?
- Categorize each Pinboard specifically and uniquely. It’s important to appeal to a wide range of target audience and to generate more buzz. For example, use “Finds YOU want to see featured on Daily Grommet” for your Pinboard title instead of “Share your favorite product.”
11. Use Pinterest contests to improve customer experience with your company
Daily Grommet organizes “Pin it to Win it,” contests and pins winners’ names to “Pinterest Giveaway Winners” Pinboard. Through these contests, they can curate Pinboards, find out followers’ favorite products, and discover new products, gadgets, and designers by pins and re-pins. Pinterest contests are promoted on the other social media channels to generate more participation and buzz.
Example:
What can retailers learn from this?
- Pinterest is a highly visual platform. Use the best picture of a winning prize or a giveaway to showcase your products and to attract more participants and followers, even to generate customers.
- Promote Pinterest contests to your website and other social media avenues. You can post contest information with a URL link or simply add the “Pin It” button on each posting.
12. Collaborate with socially responsible businesses
Daily Grommet supports charities and green/eco products from socially responsible businesses that donate time, money and resources, as well as humanitarian organizations around the world. They encourage donation for these organizations on all of their social media channels.
What’s are benefits to working with socially responsible businesses?
- Differentiate your brand through raising your voice to the world and enhancing your business values
- Invest in the future image of your business
- Build a favorable relationship with customers
- Motivate, develop, and retain your employees
By Adella Choi
Content Marketer, Wishpond
