Sarah Nesheim

On social you need to be fully pursuing an organic, paid, and influencer strategy — all 3. Test all platforms to see what works the best. Then double down on that platform. The biggest mistake I see brands make with social media is that they are creating content that consumers don’t care about. It’s heavily product focused or brand story centric. What makes consumers (with the attention spans of squirrels) care? If you cater to their fears and desires. If you make them feel seen. If you educate and entertain them.

In the world of omnichannel everything - marketing everywhere and selling everywhere - collecting and making sense of the data is challenging but critical. Your customer’ needs and wants and buying patterns are varied and ever changing. Staying endlessly curious and tweaking / pivoting / innovating to continue holding their attention is a must. Customer data should be at the core of everything you do.

Yes, your website should be well designed, branding and value prop clear, and path to purchase frictionless. But more importantly, if people are searching for your product’s attributes on tiktok or google, your content should pop up. TikTok is the top search engine of gen Z. By not having organic or influencer video content answering your target audiences’s burning questions (which usually have high purchase intent), you are missing out!

The more you can bridge online and offline communities, the better off you are. If you’re a local brand, host events and partner with other local establishments. Online, create and commission content that speaks to your locale. If you’re national, you can replicate this experience across different niches via nano and micro- influencers at scale. Coupled with a celebrity endorsement / founder and national distribution, you are tapping into awareness and communities on a greater scale.

Interactive experiences that come to mind are popup events, interactive shelf screens, smart carts, virtual try-on / ordering experiences in store — memorable experiences that spur word of mouth marketing and are begged to be shared and go viral online. Glossier, Reformation, Bass Pro Shop, Stew Leonard’s, Netflix, Camp are retailers that stand out in my mind as creating this unique physical store experiences.

When selling through retail, it’s important to use tools like Brij to capture first party data so that you are able to run tests and survey your audience directly. Gathering customer insights is a lot harder when retailers are gatekeeping their valuable data from you.