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Black Friday Fashion

Black Friday: How to Win in 2019

The mad rush that is Black Friday and Cyber Monday is upon us. We are prepping our ‘Normal’ brands for some huge revenue busting figures come the end of it all. It’s expected to be a year bigger and better than last year, which heaved in a record of $6.2 BILLION in the US market in online sales alone. 

But, with every brand scrapping for the attention of the end consumer, will your brand REALLY hit those targets you set out to?

Here’s our Normal Company essential tips to soak the most out of the shopper frenzy..

1: Start Hyping NOW

A Black Friday promotion when done correctly, creates FOMO and drives impulse buys better than any other time of year. However, the brands that really win at this game are the ones that give their followers, email lists and previous customers a little heads up.

Why does this work? 

It’s the simple hype strategy, with the edge of the first mover advantage.

Remember, you are battling with 1000’s of other stores for those credit card details come the start of the weekend, and if you leave it too late, you are susceptible to being pushed out of the way by the stores that capture your customer’s attention first. If you can get in early, and create some hype about what is to come, you already have your customer’s attention, and are wetting their appetite by letting them browse the site, already anticipating making the purchase once the discounts become available.

Who does this well? 

Maniere De Voir as you can see here, have been hyping their massive 70% off promotion since the 17th November. This would have generated some huge intrigue and anticipation, allowing their loyal fans to essentially know what they are going to be in for, ahead of time. This has been done in such a way, it is similar to an event. A ‘save the date’ hype strategy which will have their customers on the edge of their sofa, with their wallets ready.

Maniere De Voir Black Friday Promotion

You can bet that their revenue figures will hit some very interesting numbers after BFCM.

2. Have Instant Offers

Black Friday is all about discounts and deals, and you’ll be dealing with seasoned shoppers who want to get the best deals and products for their money. So with this in mind, you need to place your deal in full view; from the moment people land on your site, add items to their cart and even after they’ve checked out.

The key here really is a key principle of success here at The Normal Company; make it easy.

Make things as easy as possible for customers to buy from you. Ramp up that conversion rate by eliminating as many barriers of sale as possible and guess what? You will get more sales.

When people have to search for deals or codes, especially during a big rush such as Black Friday, this creates a barrier which is most definitely unwanted for you, as the customer might end up going to a competitor if they cannot find a good enough promotion. So, you’ll need to give people instant access to discount codes, and make them easy to see. Spam that thing all over your social media, bang it on the front page of your site, and put it on every page as a banner. Promote it like a Kardashian, and break the internet. Don’t hold back.

A prime example, is Hot Topic. 

Click on their site and you are not going to miss their 30% discount offer. As a shopper lands on their site, there will not be a single person that will be missing this, and so this will get them into buying mode instantly.

Hot Topic 30% discount

3. Anticipating things to BLOW UP? Get your customer service ready. 

As an online shopper, you expect good, fast and reliable customer service. Especially at this ripe time of year when a ton of online sales are gifting; customers want to get it right first time when buying for someone other than themselves. LivePerson did a study revealing that 83% of online shoppers actively seek out help while they shop online.

If you have a scarcity of customer service on your website it will only fill your shoppers with doubt and make them uneasy about completing a purchase. At this peak part of the season when you are wanting some big revenue pumps, you need to be prepared for an influx of customer enquiries and questions. Be on hand, and invest into your site to ensure that you have everything a customer would need in order to have their questions answered, and fast.

You need to have your live chat, FAQ’s, size guides, customer support lines and returns policy as accessible as your offers for Black Friday. If any of these integral parts is unavailable before a sale, it’s most likely to be unavailable after a sale, and thus will create doubt, and leave you without the sale.

ASOS are killin’ the game when it comes to fashion e-commerce, and we are constantly reviewing why, in order for our brands to be ahead of the market. One key factor in ASOS’s rapid expansion and growth, is that their ASOS Stylists Live Chat is always on hand. If you have specific requirements such as particular sizing or needing any form of advice, you literally feel as though you are in a store, speaking with a genuine stylist.

Shore this stuff up, and get maximum ROI and conversion rates.

ASOS Stylist Chat

Happy BFCM!

The Normal Company x

Categories
Fashion SMM

Carousel Posts; The Secret Weapon for Engagement?

Ever sitting there with ‘Gram-Whiplash’ thinking what the hell just happened with the time?

You went to check Instagram for a couple of minutes to pass the time, only to end up losing 48 minutes of your day…

Your favourite influencers and brands probably had something to do with that.

…and the main culprit for attention grabbing and sending you down a deep, dark rabbit hole?

Carousel posts.

In 2017 Instagram launched this new carousel format, which allows users to add up to ten images or videos to a swipeable single post. It didn’t take long for the new feature to gain popularity, especially in the influencer and fashion space which expectedly, adopted it in a warm embrace.

Additionally, high roller brands have been quick to pounce, using the carousel to promote look books, entire collections in one post, and capsule wardrobes in one ‘gram.

Attention is a key metric for brand success. If you don’t have it, you don’t have an audience, and if you don’t have an audience…

…You’re irrelevant.

Some of our favorite influencers that our brands at The Normal Company work with are out there showing brands why they’re missing out if they haven’t made carousel posts a regular and integral part of their content flow.

Influencers leverage the feature to add an extra layer to their partnerships, and showcase everything from their carefully procured trips to Hvar, selfie styles in the bedroom mirror, to 5 different ways to wear a blazer in Winter 2019.

With this becoming a top trend to stay relevant, and with the average engagement per post being around 35%+ on a standard post, (The Normal Company campaign analytics September 2019) we highly recommend that you stay ahead of the curve, and get your influencers to post your products in a carousel layout.

Giulia Nati’s account @giulianatiofficial posts mainly single image shots, however to mix it up she will post carousel images that depict a ‘story’ of her day, or in this instance on a brand collab, the carousel image comes into it’s own to showcase how the front and back of her outfit is truly unique, giving an instant experience with her audience as to how unique her particular daily wear is.

Giulia not only knows how to work her angles in the latest fashions, but she knows how to put her content to work too, which makes her a very good choice for our luxury womens labels to work with on a consistent basis.

The data on the back of these posts is astounding, and when used in comparison to single image content posts, we also see the back end metrics lining up nicely for us to add in our Normal Formula, to scale brands in this peak part of the calendar. High quality traffic gets generated, which allows us to fully leverage the influencer collaboration to maximum capacity and sales ROI.

There you have it; the hidden lever for content performance on Instagram for some of the top brand influencers.

With the Instagram algorithm always swinging in strange ways, you need to up the ante when it comes to how you collaborate with influencers to get maximum returns. Influencers work, and always will work, but only with the right system in place and staying ahead of your environment.

Categories
Fashion SMM Uncategorized

Why #MenWithxHM Is The New Standard of Collaboration For Brands

“A design collaboration with style inspiration from the 10M+ followers of the MenWith Instagram accounts. This has resulted in a collection of updated key items for supreme style, every day.”

Nowadays, every brand who is striving for success and growth has an influencer strategy. Actively seeking the fashionpreneurs, latest hyped individuals, reality TV stars and best models of which closely align to select core values of the brand.

This strategy is tried and true, with influencers obviously playing a core part in driving bucket loads of traffic to a store, with a simple endorsement of a branded product.

This is something that we at The Normal Company, are 100% in agreement with for brands to do. However, this is becoming more and more saturated as each year goes by, and the influencer craze is becoming a blood bath that as consumers get wiser, and the #ad hashtag gets used more frequently than a Valencia filter, brands have to show a little more innovation when it comes to collaboration, in order to step up their game and step up their brand impact in competitive markets such as fashion.

Please step onto the stage, #MenWithxHM.

A TRUE collaboration, fit for the current influencer-saturated world we live in today.

@menwithclass have collaborated with H&M for their latest HMx collection. With an instagram account following of just shy of 5 million, and 10 million accumulatively across all of the ‘men with’ accounts such as @menwithstreetstyle, the Men with Class accounts are a brand in themselves. Embodying the very latest trends of the modern man, and encouraging gents worldwide to adopt the top trends in which they showcase.

#MenWithxHM Faux leather jacket

@menwithclass owners Erik & Daniel have amassed a cult following of men all seeking to get inspiration from their content, and H&M knows it. The collection embodies this and their exact style preferences in a capsule collection of basics and subtly branded #MenWith garments that portray the style aspired to be achieved by their following.

This, is a power collaboration.

A collaboration which asks a ready and waiting crowd the question ‘What do you want?’ built from the exact needs of a follower base, and the fashion inspiration in which millions of men worldwide are looking for, and actively seeking whenever they hop onto Instagram.

By looking at the posts with most views, comments and general engagement, H&M collaborated with MenWith to create a capsule collection which looked at this data, and provided the exact styles and items. The collaboration includes a knitted roller neck, two soft hoodies, plain t-shirts, sunglasses, suede caps and the statement biker jacket.

#MenWithxHM swipe up to shop advert on Instagram stories

The saying goes ‘place a burger van where there is a starving crowd’ and it’s safe to say that the #MenWithxHM collection does this to mass effect.