June, 2021 - Mason Interactive

We’re feeling pretty about our newest client, Michael Vincent Academy, the #1 accredited beauty school in Los Angeles, CA. Michael Vincent Academy fits effortlessly into Mason’s roster sitting between beauty, fashion, and higher education.

Tal Hajek and Michael Vincent, Founders and CEOs of #TeamMVA, have dominated the makeup and hair artistry industry for 15+ years. Together, they built Michael Vincent Academy with a mission to “prepare dedicated students for successful careers in the beauty industry and beyond by providing them with exceptional training both online and in-person.” Their fleet of affiliates and students makes Michael Vincent Academy the #1 place for beauty professionals to work with celebrities and pro models.

Mason Interactive will manage Google, and Facebook paid media advertising for Michael Vincent Academy to drive leads and sales for the online makeup courses. Brook Shepard, CEO of Mason Interactive, remarks, “Michael Vincent Academy is a unique partnership for our team, and we’re excited to combine our experience in beauty and education verticals with our expertise in digital advertising to help them reach their goals.”

If you’re interested in driving leads and sales for your online academy, contact us for a free discovery call.
Learn more about Michael Vincent Academy here.

Email marketing is without a doubt the most effective marketing channel for emerging D2C brands. Now, email has a new sidekick: SMS marketing. By pairing email with SMS, eCommerce marketers have the potential to double the sales figures. We asked Mason’s Director of Email, Brian Poole, to share his insights and SMS marketing tips for emerging D2C brands.

Email + SMS = The Power Duo in D2C Marketing

Is SMS already part of your D2C marketing strategy? It should. “It’s 2021, every eCommerce brand must use SMS marketing to stay relevant. It’s not a matter of whether you should do it – you definitely should – but how to do it”, Brian said, “You’ll be able to leverage SMS more than you think. My advice for emerging brands is to start collecting SMS early. Pop ups and landing pages are good ways to collect mobile numbers. Or, collect them at the checkout.”

Number one marketing tip for emerging D2C brands: start collecting mobile numbers early.

SMS marketing is an extension of email marketing efforts, and it works best when aligned with your email strategy. Essentially, SMS is very similar to email in terms of tracking, segmentation, and scheduling campaigns. There is one significant difference, however. Volume. How many promotional emails do you get to your inbox every day? 10, 50, even more? Would you like to receive the same daily number of text messages directly to your phone? Probably not. Brian recommends sending no more than two text messages per month. Sending messages too frequently, you’ll run a risk of bothering people.

Only Send Worthwhile and Relevant Content

Before hitting the send button, always ask yourself: Is the message worth sending? Am I giving the recipient something worthwhile? Brian shared an important piece of advice, “Use SMS marketing to announce new launches or other exciting events. And, share the announcements on SMS before any other channel. Early access will add exclusivity.”

90% of all text messages are read within 3 minutes of being received.

Consider using text messages also for customer service. SMS is a personal and highly effective channel to have direct conversations with your customers. According to Gigaom, 90% of all text messages are read within 3 minutes of being received, making it a great way to communicate in real time. The same study shows that text messages have an average open rate of 98%, whereas the average open rate for email is 22%.

“SMS marketing is very cost-efficient and has great return on spend. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone spend more than they make with SMS, ” Brian sums up his email and SMS tips for D2C brands, “In addition to new launches, use marketing automation to send SMS shopping cart abandonment reminders and resell to existing customers. Just as you would through email marketing.“

Ready to launch your SMS marketing campaigns? Klaviyo is a great platform for seamless email and SMS marketing. For expert advice with your email marketing strategy, book a consultation with our digital marketing experts today.

Search engine optimization is a critical tactic for a D2C brand. Search engines originate a big chunk of online sales. You may ask, how big? 65% of all eCommerce sessions are generated through search traffic and 33% through organic search. Mason’s Director of SEO, Jenna Vaccaro, shares her search engine optimization tips for emerging D2C brands.

First, let’s drill down to the meaning of SEO, what is it and how does it work? “Simply put, search engine optimization is the process of driving more organic traffic to your website from search engines. Skillful SEO professionals focus on both, the quantity and quality of that traffic”, Jenna explains, “It’s a healthy mix of delivering content that potential customers are looking for now, ensuring the site is free of critical technical errors (hello page speed!), and implementing ongoing offsite strategies (including local SEO for eCommerce with physical locations). All the elements must work together in order to improve the most valuable KPIs. More traffic doesn’t always equal more sales.”

Step #1: Begin with Keyword Research

Any successful SEO journey starts with in-depth keyword research. Think of what your customers type into Google to find your product, or any kind of product in the same space. If you’re in a highly saturated direct-to-consumer market, it’s crucial to think of the entire competitive landscape. Thoughtful curation of content, from a user and from a search engine stand point, is the key. This applies across the website from the ‘About Us’ page to Product pages and everywhere in between.

Jenna recommends direct-to-consumer brands to focus on how the product is described. “The way you talk about your product doesn’t necessarily match what users are searching for. You may describe your product as X, but the masses search for Y”, Jenna said.

“It’s important to keep searchers’ intent in mind and optimize content to your ideal customers.”
Jenna Vaccaro, Director of SEO, Mason Interactive

Don’t Over-Optimize With Too Many Keywords

Now, what makes a good product description? From an user standpoint a good product description is descriptive, gives enough information about the product, and clearly describes why your product sets itself apart from competitors’ products. From a search standpoint, a good product description is written in a way that someone who is searching for keywords would be able to find your product. Jenna reminds D2C brands to maintain a good balance between SEO and brand identity. “Keep your brand in mind and avoid tarnishing the content with too many SEO keywords”, she recommends.

In addition, make sure all your website elements like structured data, reviews, rich snippets, and stock availability, are searchable and in Google’s preferred language (JSON-LD). Search engines might not be able to find you if the backend is not optimized for search.

SEO is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Jenna reminds eCommerce business owners and marketers that SEO is an ongoing effort, “it’s a common myth to think that SEO is a “one and done” strategy. But if you don’t maintain your SEO, you’ll lose your position on search results. Stay on top of Google’s algorithms that change several times each year. On top of that, direct-to-consumer brands can’t forget about seasonality changes and keeping up with competitors.”

Regular SEO audits are a must in your toolbox to identify possible errors and bugs. Let’s imagine a couple of scenarios of such errors for D2C brands:

You received a lot of good PR that links back to your site (Google likes, yay!). Since, you have made changes to your website and those links are now broken. As a result, all that press becomes worthless for SEO purposes.
The required fields are mislabeled in your organic shopping feed and Google won’t find your products. As a result, you risk losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in conversions.

Doing your SEO right will have a positive impact on your holistic D2C marketing strategy. “Always focus on omnichannel success. SEO gives you tons of findings to use for cross-channel marketing. Align the strategies and identify keywords that work best on all channels”, Jenna adds.

Are you ready to put these tips into action for your direct-to-consumer brand? A thorough SEO audit is a great place to start. Claim your free SEO audit here or contact us today to talk with our SEO experts.

Mason Interactive recently partnered with Facebook to host a webinar on Facebook Discovery Commerce. The goal of the webinar was to teach attendees how to create a seamless shopping experience from discovery through purchase. The event was hosted by Karly Surman, Agency Partner Manager at Facebook, and Mira Valjakka, Director of Growth & Marketing at Mason Interactive.

Karly and Mira get down to the recent changes in the modern shopping journey and discuss how Facebook Discovery Commerce helps businesses engage with the new mindset of consumers. Continue reading for highlights and to get a better understanding of the four elements of Facebook Discovery Commerce:

Personalize – Set your business up for maximum value
Inspire – Embrace and master the dynamic surfaces where your creative shows up
Convert and retain – Optimize the paths you create to serve people and your objectives
Learn and optimize – Leverage tools to learn, sharpen and evolve your practices

Why Facebook Discovery Commerce

The shopping experience has changed in a fundamental way. The past model of shopping was intent-based; shoppers took action and made plans to make their purchases. The new model of shopping is serendipitous and integrated into the shopper’s daily life online. This has never been more apparent than it’s become in the last year.

In 2020, eCommerce grew by 30% and 57% of adults said they would spend more money online than in brick and mortar stores.

This change to the way customers view shopping means that the customer’s journey no longer starts at intent. Instead, it starts long before they consider buying something. Businesses now need to prioritize that personalized experience that nurtures customers in everyday life, not only when they’re actively seeking to purchase.

The new consumer journey starts well before intent. Image: Facebook.

The Four Elements of Facebook Discovery Commerce

Facebook advertising offers great conversion for eCommerce. 86% of shoppers who use Facebook weekly purchase fashion, beauty, furniture, and consumer electronics that they originally discovered on the platform.

Using the four elements of the Facebook Discovery Commerce system lets your business take advantage of this powerful modern shopping journey. The four elements are:

Personalization engine
Engaging surfaces
Advertising & conversion tools
Measurement & optimization tools

For marketers and eCommerce businesses, now is the perfect time to start thinking about the Holiday season. Getting a step ahead with Facebook Discovery Commerce will help you personalize the experience to get you in front of your customers now, so you don’t miss the small window coming up. With summer weather and everyone enjoying their vacations and activities, it might seem a little early. But, we all know that the Holiday season represents a large portion of yearly revenue.

As shoppers move to an always open to purchasing mindset, it’s never too early to engage and interact with your target audience on Facebook.

So let’s get into how the system works.

The four elements of Facebook Discovery Commerce. Image: Facebook.

The personalization engine

Facebook’s personalization engine is all about connecting with your customers. This tool helps you to connect with the exact people who are likely to love your business and products. That means more efficiency in your marketing and higher ROI. It also helps you to connect with your target audience across borders. There’s no limit to where you can find your audience. Facebook Discovery Commerce ad solutions help you create a completely personalized experience for your audience to capture engagement and propel conversion.

Engaging surfaces

With engaging surfaces, you can create a truly impressive user experience. Facebook’s mobile-first technology means that your audience gets responsiveness and easy-to-use features on any device. With images that pop and buttons that respond, you never have to worry about design that doesn’t fit the screen or features that frustrate your audience.

Advertising and conversion tools

Did you know that 88% of shopping carts were abandoned in March of 2020?

Nothing will make your customers abandon shopping carts as quickly as a complicated buying process. With Facebook’s advertising and conversion tools, you reduce the obstacles that cause customers to abandon ads and carts. Your dynamic ads drive action. Leveraging Facebook Discovery Commerce, you can say hello to a frictionless customer journey that’s not disrupted by slow loading pages, checkout errors, difficulties with reaching customer service, or any other issues that might turn your customers to a competitor.

Optimization and measurement tools

Advertising on Facebook, you get real-time measurement and optimization tools that let you perform testing, improve your campaigns, and truly measure growth. Advertising for today’s shopper isn’t a one-and-done event. You need to keep measuring how your ads are performing and make improvements. You also need to be able to add to your messaging as times and customers change.

Facebook Discovery Commerce gives businesses a versatile tool to propel ROI with modern shoppers. To learn more about improving your Facebook marketing efforts, and to prepare your marketing strategy for the Holiday sales, contact us today.

We’re thrilled to announce that Mason Interactive has won an RFP from Oars+Alps to deliver a paid media strategy for the Chicago-based men’s natural skincare brand.

Oars + Alps was founded in 2016 by two women who were tired of their husbands stealing their everyday skin and eye creams. Together, they developed an easy-to-use skincare regimen rooted in natural ingredients. Acquired by S.C. Johnson in 2019, the brand has taken significant strides to growth – from partnerships with NFL wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, to podcast placements on Barstool Sports.

Following a thorough RFP process, Oars and Alps selected Mason Interactive as their new paid media partner. The partnership will focus on growing awareness and reach through a long-term digital marketing strategy that will support eCommerce sales. The Mason paid media strategy team will be responsible for increasing YoY revenue, and working with the Oars+Alps team on new channel opportunities, with an emphasis on new customer acquisition, loyalty and retention.

Contact us to schedule a free consultation with our digital experts, and take the first step on your journey. Learn more about Oars + Alps and build your own custom kit, or check out DeAndre Hopkins’ Top Picks, here.

Through effective B2B marketing strategies, you can let companies know about how your products and services can support their business success. The process allows you to create a reciprocal relationship that helps promote the mutual growth of your operations.

Unlike business to consumer (B2C) marketing, business to business (B2B) strategies demand a straightforward approach that focuses on the bottom line. Your products and services must serve as winning solutions to each company’s pain points or they’ll go with something that offers a better return on investment.

To make your B2B marketing campaigns stand out, you must have the right strategy in place from the start. Wondering how to get that done? Here’s seven effective B2B marketing strategies and tips to help you get started.

#1 Know What You Want to Achieve and Track

In order to create effective B2B marketing campaigns, you need to know what you want to achieve. Think long and hard about where your business needs the most help by answering these questions:

Which products or services do you want to focus on most?
Are you working on any new offerings that’ll roll out soon?
Do you want to market to a particular niche or expand your focus?
Which companies would you like to see buying your products and services?
Would you like to increase website traffic, phone calls, sales, or something else?

As you answer each question, you can zero in on your target audience and figure out what kinds of campaigns will work best.

The answers will also help you identify which key performance indicators to focus on as you run your B2B marketing campaigns. If you want to increase website traffic, then you’ll need to track new and repeat visitors to each page. If phone calls and sales are your focus, however, then home in on conversion rates instead.

#2 Build a Strong B2B Brand Identity

To attract the right clients, you need a strong B2B brand identity that lets people know what your company is all about. You’ll need to dream up a great logo and tagline, pick a suitable color scheme, and create your company voice. Then, create a relatable brand story that highlights your mission and goals.

With that done, you can write up a style guide that’ll help guide your website and social media content. Have all your employees and contractors read and follow that guide, so you can keep your brand consistent across all channels.

#3 Create Tons of Quality Content

As you build your online brand presence, your website and social media channels should clearly communicate the purpose and value of your products and services. That’s only possible if you infuse those resources with tons of quality content that aligns with your style guide.

To cast a wide net, create many different types of content, such as:

Blogs
eBooks
Case studies
Whitepapers
Infographics
Videos

Also, consider creating a resource page on your website that answers all the leading industry questions. This will help your B2B clients find your company as they search for solutions to their major pain points.

#4 Use Both Organic and Paid Search

Effective B2B marketing strategies use both organic and paid search to reach the target audience. For organic search success, you’ll want to create a keyword map that identifies all the words and phrases used to find your products and services. Then, you just infuse those keywords into the website content that aligns with their search intent.

After that, you can use paid search to drive even more traffic to your site by placing ads at the top of the search results for all your major keywords. You can also run social media ads using those same keywords. This approach keeps your company appearing in front of business owners as they look for the products and services they need.

#5 Engage in Plenty of Email Marketing

Through email marketing, you can engage with business owners directly through personalized content. You just have to build an email list and put each company into segments that reflect their needs. After that, it’s just a matter of sending out custom content that helps direct them to your products and services.

You do need to follow a consistent schedule to avoid missing opportunities to engage with your audience. If you’re running a monthly newsletter, for example, then make sure to publish your works on the same date each month.

#6 Hop on Social Media to Promote Your Brand

Thanks to the widespread popularity of social media, you can easily engage with business owners on all your favorite platforms. Like B2C audiences, B2B buyers are scrolling through the newsfeeds all throughout the day.

So, don’t miss the chance to promote your blog posts, eBooks, and other works on the appropriate social media channels. Fun photos and videos work best on Instagram, for example, while eBooks and case studies are best placed on LinkedIn.

#7 Embrace the Power of Remarketing

Across all industries, business owners are endlessly busy and constantly juggling multiple obligations at one time. As a result, it’s exceedingly common for them to abandon their search for solutions before completing their purchase.

Thankfully, you can recapture their attention through remarketing. This innovative approach lets you put your ads back in front of them once they return to social media in their downtime. Then, your ads will jumpstart their memory and inspire them to explore your products and services as their ideal solutions.

Ready to implement these effective B2B marketing strategies?

If you’re ready to put these B2B marketing tips to work for you, contact our team today. Our B2B marketing agency can help you craft a personalized strategy for your company, so you can win contracts and complete more sales than ever before. We’ll also help you monitor the success of your campaigns and adjust the approach as needed to promote the growth of your business.