Strategic outreach is one of the most effective actions a retail brand can engage in to promote audience engagement, backlinks, and SEO.
Strategic outreach places your brand in front of the right people at the right time across all platforms that your customers use. It broadens your horizons. And it gives you the perfect opportunity to really show off your brand's personality and uniqueness.
Amazon currently accounts for 47 percent of all online retail sales. As a result, merchants must employ innovative outreach strategies in order to cut through the clutter and make their imprint.
Have you ever seen a Facebook ad for a brand you've never heard of yet are interested in purchasing a product? Thinking about where you would go next in this case can teach us a lot about the value of outreach. You'll most likely Google the brand or check for their social media pages, looking for indicators of long-term popularity and customer interaction.
A brand with an erratic internet presence or one that lacks social evidence will quickly lose your trust. But what about a brand that receives attention from high-profile websites and mentions from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of influencers? That's a brand you can feel good about shopping with.
Any retailer may improve their online exposure and organic search traffic by implementing the correct blogger outreach techniques. Here are five powerful tactics to ensure that your retail brand has the upper hand when it comes to strategic outreach.
Important Points
- Strategic outreach allows you to meet your customers where they are, expand your reach, and reflect your brand's individuality.
- Backlinks are pure gold in the world of SEO. Strategic outreach is one of the most successful techniques to significantly boost the number of high-quality links pointing to your website on third-party sites.
- Working with a few media and influencers isn't enough at the enterprise level. You must develop a scalable outreach strategy.
- Asking and answering questions fosters a bond between your brand and its customers.
- You can profit from trendy subjects by using newsjacking.
- User-generated content enhances audience engagement and provides you with a wealth of content with little to no effort on your part.
- Taking a strong stance on social issues opens up new avenues for involvement with consumers and the media.
Working with a small number of publishers and influencers at a time will not allow you to execute enterprise-level SEO. In order to have a meaningful impact, outreach efforts must be scalable. This is where precision-targeted, individualised outreach comes in.
There is no paid media or money involved. What effect does that technique have?
The work also resulted in numerous natural backlinks from blogs and influencers. The more value we provided to publishers and influencers, the more their individual audiences benefited and the word spread. Outreach techniques should be designed to generate momentum that lasts beyond the initial backlinks.
2. Pose and respond to questions
It is not necessary to limit outreach to journalists and influencers. Consider all of the advantages of undertaking client outreach.
For example, Everlane, a sustainable retail firm, presents Transparency Tuesdays on their Instagram Stories every Tuesday. This is a fun, casual forum where customers and followers may ask questions regarding products, manufacturing, upcoming releases, and anything else they're interested in. After that, an Everlane employee will go around the office, asking in-house specialists for responses to each query. It's a clever method to ensure that clients receive responses directly from the source, rather than through a social media representative.
This provides a sense of sincerity and connection, which promotes brand loyalty. Because they feel like members of the Everlane community, the public can become interested and excited about future goods and releases. Everlane has perfected word-of-mouth marketing as a result of its outreach strategies, which get their customers thrilled to talk about the company.
3. Newsjacking occurrences
If your company establishes a relationship with a reporter, blogger, or influencer, you can work together for years. The advantages are self-evident.
But how do you get the relationship started?
What you sometimes need is a nice news hook! The process of capitalising on popular events and news in order to join a conversation that people are interested in is known as "newsjacking." It enables you to capitalise on the traffic generated by a trending hashtag or hot take. However, it also allows you to have the dialogues that your customers care about. Rather of approaching a reporter out of the blue, for example, newsjacking gives your outreach context.
If you come into a party and everyone is talking about something that happened in the news, you'll most likely want to talk about it as well. With the obvious restrictions, a same logic applies to newsjacking. Don't force a connection, don't espouse ideals that are antithetical to your business, and don't capitalise on misfortune.
That leaves a HUGE range of fascinating or entertaining events, news stories, and online phenomena to mine.
Select the most pertinent events.
For example, if New York Fashion Week is hot, as a clothing company, you're in a good position to participate in a variety of conversations.
Share your comments on favourite ensembles, as well as behind-the-scenes information. Connect what you're seeing to bigger consumer trends that may emerge in the coming months. On video, conduct an interview with the Fashion Week attendees. Survey designers will use the results to produce a colourful infographic. Give each designer's collection an environmental friendliness rating. Alternatively, pitch a series of blog entries to a publisher for publishing during the week. Regardless of how you engage, it will refocus the conversation on your brand.
The sky is the limit when it comes to what you can pitch during your outreach regarding these new things. When you offer news stories or other fully-formed content ideas, your contact may inform you whether or not they want you to write it for them. Alternatively, they may prefer merely the major bullet points so that they may compose it themselves, and so on. You can also provide them with a variety of options. Offer to connect the reports with your c-suite executives for in-depth interviews, for example. Alternatively, provide a report based on survey data you have on hand, making infographics, and so on.
4. Use user-generated content (UGC) to interact with your customers.
People enjoy receiving attention, so offer it to them! Use User-Generated Content (UGC) to communicate your story and engage your audience.
Madewell, for example, encourages consumers to submit images of themselves wearing Madewell denim products by using the hashtag #denimmadewell. This not only broadens their reach. It also provides Madewell with a wealth of content from which to draw and utilise on their own social platforms.
J.Crew, Madewell's parent business, used UGC in the form of a #AccessoryFix contest. J.Crew consumers were urged to enter the contest by taking photos of themselves wearing their favourite J.Crew accessories. What is the promise? That J.Crew would highlight their favourites. It resulted in roughly 8,000 mentions and provided them with a wealth of content to feed their marketing approach.
Starbucks is an expert in user-generated content (UGC) and has run numerous campaigns over the years. For example, in its White Cup Contest a few years ago, fans of the coffee business could sketch a new design on their cups. They'd then take a picture of it and share it on social media with the hashtag #WhiteCupContest. The chosen design would then be produced as a limited-edition tumbler. In just a few weeks, the campaign drew thousands of entries.
5. Be socially responsible
Eighty-one percent (81%) of millenials expect businesses to take a stance on social problems and make a public commitment to good corporate responsibility. Consider Patagonia and all that it represents for in terms of social good. They take a strong social stand on environmental issues and incorporate it into the brand's basic values. Patagonia is always involved with organisations that fight for the social problems with which it has partnered. This implies they are constantly engaged in outreach with environmental groups, assisting in the advancement of numerous causes. As a result, their brand has spread worldwide across groups with similar ideals.
Furthermore, because of Patagonia's strong social stance, media and bloggers are always writing about the brand. Everything from its washless apparel to its ultramarathoning workers and used garment buybacks is washless. The brand receives a large number of mentions, shares, and backlinks. It has set itself up to be a brand that others want to talk about, which opens up a plethora of chances for outreach, interaction, and additional coverage of the brand.
Take decisive action
Long-term brand-building work is required first to avoid this. You must define your brand's values and develop a logical link between your brand and the issue you've chosen. Once you've established a value system that serves as the DNA of your brand, as well as an employee culture in which those values are held dear, it should be simple to identify a problem that everyone at your firm actually cares about. The enthusiasm for the topic will be mirrored in the inventiveness of your company's approach and in its digital marketing.
Everlane, for example, strives to use solely recycled plastic in their goods. Because sustainability and ethical purchasing are deeply ingrained in their values, such a choice feels fully authentic.
Other brands' relationship to the subject they've chosen may not always be as obvious. However, it can still be read favourably if it accurately depicts the brand. Dawn, for example, aids in the cleanup of oil spills. This is the consequence of a rational and convincing story: prior to Dawn's involvement, environmentalists were actually using their soap to clean up oil spills. When Dawn learned of this, they realised they had an opportunity to help more actively and provide more resources for those programmes.
Here's a list of even more socially responsible businesses, as well as the brand advantages of CSR.
Consumers are more concerned than ever before about contributing their money to brands that make a difference or take a statement on an important subject. An astounding 89 percent of consumers are inclined to switch to a brand connected with a good cause if the price and quality of competing products are the same. Choosing a social cause that your entire company believes in may be an exciting and satisfying way to broaden your firm's impact, convey your narrative, and engage with consumers and the media alike.