The world of marketing has drastically changed since 2005 when Solowave Design first entered the world of manufacturing backyard play sets with its first brand, Big Backyard. When first entering the market most of the product marketing was handled directly by the retailers through which their products were sold. This left little need for Solowave to focus on marketing efforts or have a marketing team.
Today however, as social media thrives and customers are expecting to hear and get answers directly from manufacturing companies Solowave Design has found a need to developed their own marketing strategy. Over the past year and a half Solowave Design has embarked upon many new marketing strategies including entering the exciting world of social media marketing.
In early 2015 Solowave Design began by improving their online presence to encourage and customer communication and engagement through the use of Bazaarvoice Reviews, Question and Answers, and Connections. These programs enabled Solowave Design to respond to reviews and Question directly on their websites (www.bigbackyard.com and www.cedarsummitplay.com) as well as those posted on the product pages on their retailers websites.
As described in the video below, Bazarvoice provides many benefits to their clients. Firstly, it improves customer service and satisfaction by enabling customers to make more informed purchasing decisions. By providing companies the ability to respond to review and answer questions both on their website and on retail websites, Bazaarvoice provides organizations insight into what information or content was missing and provides a means to fill in those gaps for the individual asking the question or leaving a review as well as for future customers to see.
To further their social media marketing efforts, Solowave Design has brought on Harvi as their Digital Marketing Strategist to improve and capitalize on their social media accounts. Since the fall of 2015 Solowave Design has created Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube accounts for both their Big Backyard and Cedar Summit brands. Here Harvi explains how Solowave Design plans to utilize these social media avenues to reach their customers and why it makes sense for their brands.
Since bringing on Harvi in January and focusing some of their marketing effort on their social media accounts, Solowave Design has seen drastic improvements in the performance of their social media accounts. Just over the past month followers have drastically increased and Solowave has been able to successfully inform potential customers of upcoming sales and promote key products.
Lessons for Others
Overall it is important to realize that times are changing and the world of marketing has become extremely social. There are many ways that social media can be used in your marketing strategy that can be adapted to the needs of your organization.
Organization:
Solowave Design Inc
Industry:
Manufacturing
Name of Organization Contact:
R.Boyer
Authored by: K Harman
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.
References
Bazaarvoice | User-generated content marketing solutions. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2016, from http://www.bazaarvoice.com/
Big Backyard Play Set. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2016, from http://bigbackyard.com/
Cedar Summit Premium Play Sets. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2016, from http://www.cedarsummitplay.com/
Solowave Design. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2016, from http://solowavedesign.com/