Burberry: 3 Powerful Ways To Engage Consumers Online

The Challenge: According to a study conducted by Martini Media, luxury brands have been gradually dropping TV from their multichannel marketing mix in favor of digital media. But will the move pay off in the end? Digital darling Burberry seems to think so, quickly taking the throne of luxury online marketing by creating entirely new levels of customer engagement.

While luxury marketers have traditionally trailed mass marketers in digital marketing spend, digital media has skyrocketed among luxury agencies over the past year. Context and targeting are quickly becoming the most important criteria for luxury brands, and luxury marketers are finding a need to achieve reach through the use of niche, passion-based sites.

Digital media is perceived to be more effective than offline marketing in driving favorability, as well as online and brick-and-mortar traffic. It appeals to affluent audiences on the go, who often have more money than time. And because luxury brands must deal with an extremely niche audience that is more privacy-sensitive and difficult to reach, these customers expect an engagement experience that mass marketers aren’t capable of delivering.

With its highly successful push into digital media earlier this year, Burberry has become luxury online marketing's champion. Creative officer Christopher Bailey claims it’s become “as much a media-content company as a design company.” As proof, the company has launched its recent AW(Autumn/Winter) 2012 collection across 10 different social platforms, tailoring the presentations to best leverage the advantages of each site.

Key Takeaways from Burberry

1. Use co-creation to drive brand awareness and engagement through
user-generated content.
Taking a cue from Threadless, Burberry’s Art of the Trench photo-sharing site allows consumers and fashion photographers to document how they wear the brand’s iconic trenchcoat. This unique use of user-generated content and customer engagement has generated a massive amount of brand awareness for the company.

2. Make your consumers feel exclusive by showing them exclusive content.
In its recent “Tweetwalk” event, Burberry partnered with Twitter to post backstage pictures of every look before models were sent out onto the runway, which meant that Burberry followers were seeing looks before most members of the fashion show audience.

3. Design your content to help guide your customers down the purchase path.
In a fresh twist on direct sales, Burberry live-streamed its London Fashion Week catwalk to 25 main stores as a “living catalog,” allowing existing customers to place immediate orders on upcoming collections before the looks became available to the public. Burberry also made it possible for consumers to directly purchase items by clicking through any of the image or video galleries on their social media posts.

The Election: What Marketers Should Learn About The Multichannel Mix

The Challenge: During this tight Presidential campaign, both parties are deploying an unusually diverse and integrated multichannel marketing mix. What lessons should you be learning from these strategies?

Traditionally, TV, print, and radio have been the mainstays of presidential campaigns. However, they are not enough to engage today’s multichannel consumer. Increased use of social and mobile media is essential to engage potential voters. This has significantly complicated the media mix challenges for campaigns.

A recent study conducted by Borrell Associates reflects this, showing that while candidates still primarily utilize traditional media, campaign ads dropped from 61.9% to 57.3% for TV since the last election. However, other channels received increased funding across the board, demonstrating a shift towards more diverse multichannel marketing. This is particularly apparent in online media, which received 6 times more funding than it did in 2008.

Mobile: The Newest Addition to the Mix

Both camps understand the importance of social media in engaging today’s constituents, with staff manning Twitter and Facebook accounts for both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. These efforts are complemented by email to drive voter behavior and raise funds for ongoing campaigns. All indicators point to stronger focus on digital media and increased diversity in political marketing in the future.

Mobile Payments – Obama campaigners created a new program called “Quick Donate”, which makes donation easier by allowing supporters to contribute via text message.

Social sharing
The “With Mitt” app engages Romney supporters by helping them apply templates to photos of themselves at assemblies. The pictures can then be uploaded to Twitter or Facebook via the app.

Key Takeaways for Marketers

1. Think holistically about your multichannel marketing mix.
Whether you’re a presidential candidate or a corporation, you need the power of all elements of the media mix to engage today’s multichannel consumers. According to Glen Senk, CEO of Urban Outfitters, consumers who engage with the company across three or more channels spend 6x more than single channel buyers.

2. Engage your customers per their media of choice.
Campaign staff uses Facebook and Twitter to provide followers exclusive content and hear what they have to say about the candidates. This creates a degree of engagement and rapport with consumers that traditional media can’t match. How can you motivate your customers and prospects to opt-in and engage with you across multiple media?

3. Be self-aware.
An increased number of marketing channels leads to an increased amount of exposure. It allows you to be transparent and candid with your customers, but it also means that you should take greater care to maintain decorum and monitor the content you distribute.

Simplification in Marketing: Apple's Not-So-Secret Weapon

The Challenge: We all know that Apple has been holding court over the mobile market for the past several years with various incarnations of the iPhone. But how is a company with only a handful of mobile products capable of outselling the hundreds of models their competitors are cranking out? The answer might be simplicity itself.

In a recent CEB study, marketing simplicity was quantified using a “decision simplification index,” which gauged “how easily consumers can understand (navigate) information about a brand, how well they can trust that information, and how readily they can weigh their options." It was indicated that a 20% increase in decision simplification resulted in a 96% customer loyalty increase, and made brands 86% more likely to be purchased and 115% more likely to be recommended.

In a world where consumers are being bombarded with thousands of marketing messages, it's easy to fall victim to information overload. That overflow often leads customers to overthink purchase choices, making dozens of micro-comparisons between virtually identical products.

Instead of confusing customers with similar factory specs, marketers should be simplifying the decision-making process and giving the consumer less choices to agonize over.

For a real-world example, let’s look at Samsung, which features over 100 concurrent smartphones on its website, each with an encyclopedic list of factory specs. For most consumers, the amount of near-identical models and technical jargon only makes the purchase path more difficult to navigate.

Apple, on the other hand, only has one phone on their site. They tell you everything you need to know about it in plain, understandable language, not millimeters, megapixels, or megabytes. In short, they create a simple, easy-to-follow purchase path for their single product. And that one product has outsold all of Samsung’s 100 phones combined in the past year.

Not surprisingly, Apple also has one of the highest decision simplification indices in the CEB study.

Best Practices for Simplifying Your Marketing

1. Help Consumers Navigate The Purchase Path.
Creating a clear and efficient purchase path requires marketers to minimize the number of information touchpoints consumers must traverse as they move towards purchasing.

2. Generate Trustworthy Information About Your Product.
In the context of decision simplification, trusting product information is more important than trusting the brand. Unbiased reviews given by trusted advisers (review bloggers, consumers’ friends and family, etc.) are generally your best marketing asset.

3. Make It Easy For Customers To Weigh Their Options.
Cut down the number of available product choices. If that’s impossible, create transparent buying guides with side-by-side product comparisons to help customers feel confident about their purchases. Or, even better, create step-by-step online decision guides that auto-generate the best choice for their needs.