3M and Mohawk are both large manufacturing brands that pride themselves on driving innovation, while staying true to their deep roots. 3M and Mohawk teamed up and came to Promoboxx wanting to amplify their digital presence and strengthen their relationship with their aligned retailers. They also wanted to learn how to collaborate with their retailers to better reach the local consumer online.
After working with these two major brands and their retailers, the Promoboxx team learned a lot about what makes retailers and their consumers tick. I outlined three brand-to-retail (B2R) collaboration best practices learned from 3M and Mohawk’s Promoboxx program below.
1. What’s In It For Me?” Will Always Be the First Question Asked
Both your retailers and consumers will look at any campaign and ask themselves the same question – “What’s in it for me?”. 3M not only decided to allow Mohawk retailers to offer their customers a chance to win a dream vacation to a 3M race, but by activating their Promoboxx account participating retailers would automatically be entered to win a trip to a 3M race as well.
Not only was there a prize involved, but by opting into this campaign the retailers were also able to garner valuable insights using Promoboxx’s reporting tools. Retailers were able to pull Facebook insights and measure how much traffic they were generating for their online channels. These insights helped the retailers see how successful their current online marketing strategies were, and where there was room for improvement.
3M didn’t stop there, to help the retailers gain new customer contacts they also uploaded thousands of consumer leads generated from the on-site 3M races into Promoboxx. All leads were matched up with the closest retailer based on geographic location. These new customer contacts could then be used by Mohawk retailers for future marketing purposes. *All customer contacts had agreed they wanted to receive promotional updates and e-mails from the retailers.
B2R Takeaway: Don’t just think about the consumer offer, think about what you are offering to your retailers. It’s as simple as offering your retailers good marketing content and tools designed to save them time and better reach their consumers.
2. It Takes More Than Just Good Content to Win
3M and Mohawk not only gave their retailers turnkey tools to help them share their campaigns online, but they also looked to Promoboxx to hold training webinars. These webinars showed retailers how to activate their free Promoboxx account, customize their campaign, and share the content online. They also reviewed how retailers could export the new customer contacts generated from the campaign and better leverage the reporting tools available to them in Promoboxx to improve their current online marketing strategy.
On top of the training webinars, Promoboxx sent online marketing checklists to retailers to make sure they were getting the most out of their brand-sponsored online marketing program. The checklist outlined all of the elements needed to ensure a successful and effective online marketing campaign.
B2R Takeaway: Creating good content is very important, but your retailers need to understand how to use that content in order to generate buzz and be successful in their online marketing efforts. The tools and training that you give to your retailers are just as important as the content that you create.
3. Brand-to-Retail Collaboration is the Key to Success
Although the success of Promoboxx programs are measured by retailer engagement and the strengthened brand-to-retail relationship, Promoboxx understands how important consumer engagement is as well, which is why we launched a feature called The National View.
By using the National View functionality, 3M and Mohawk were able to promote their co-marketing campaigns on 3M and Mohawk’s national Facebook and Twitter pages. Essentially, the National View is a campaign-specific store-finder. The National View lets the consumer find the closest retailer to them who is participating in the brand’s latest Promoboxx campaign. Not only did consumer traffic increase by 400% after 3M and Mohawk started using the National View, but retailer participation increased as well.
B2R Takeaway: Brands love when retailers promote where to buy their products locally and retailers love when brand’s promote their store on a national level. Plus, when they work together more consumers are reached. It’s a win-win outcome when brands and retailers collaborate and help each other out.
