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Cover
Retail Rap
By Phyllis Schiller
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| Miseno |
The 4Cs are not the only things that make a piece of diamond jewelry a sales winner. In an ongoing series, Rapaport Magazine explores the “3Ws” — what’s selling, what’s not and why — by going straight to the people who really know — jewelry retailers. Each month, we ask a sampling of retailers to comment on the important issues that are facing the industry today. Here is what they had to say when asked: “Are you using online and social media postings to attract customers?”
“I’m on Facebook and I have a Twitter account. I use them as a tool, along with my advertising and marketing; it’s very important. Once you get followers, you can show them different ideas or new trends. People are coming in based on Facebook and also from Googling jewelry on the web.
“I actually start my holiday marketing and laying out ideas really heavy in October all the way through to Christmas. Anoka is the official Halloween Capital of the World and we celebrate all during October. We start promotions and guidelines then, thinking people buy early. In November, Thanksgiving is the kickoff and we do discounts on certain staples like diamond studs, which have really taken off this year, as have pearls. They’ve been two really hot items year round. I’ve stocked up on those. And then that will lead into Christmas. I also post a lot of things from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), especially those that have to do with precious stones and jewelry, to give people helpful hints on what they should look for. So it’s a combination of educating and promoting the store.”
“Yes, we do Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, and we deal with Yelp quite a bit. It keeps us connected to our current clients. We show pictures on Pinterest and Instagram of new collections and special pieces we’ve custom made or gotten in. We’ve already scheduled quite a few holiday promotions, email blasts and Instagram and things like that. Business is phenomenal; we’re planning on a huge Christmas. We’re ordering more high-end pieces for this year, bigger diamond earrings, that we’ll feature on social media.”
“We have an online site and we do have sales through that, which we’ve been doing for about a year or so. And we do social media, so it’s a combination of traditional advertising and the web. Having an online site these days is pretty important. It creates interest with existing customers, to remind them that you have a brick-and-mortar store, and it does promote sales as well. But for us, most of the sales emanate from the store itself.”
“More and more people are growing up on smartphones. Everybody preshops everything on their smartphones. The social media aspect for us, whether we’re tweeting or Facebook posting, doing constant-contact promotion, has become increasingly more important. And we have plans to ramp it up for the remainder of the year.”
“We promote the store on social media, usually Facebook, and then we do a lot on Instagram as well. We do a lot of high-res images to promote the store on social media and we tailor the advertising to hit our target market. For the holidays, we’re going to be focusing heavily on bridal. We’re doing a bridal shoot and sharing it and promoting it on Facebook and Instagram. We also partner with bloggers. A lot of people see things and they keep it in the back of their minds until they’re ready to make a purchase and then they subconsciously pull from all the advertising you do.”
“We certainly do use social media and online postings through Facebook and things of the like, especially direct email. We are learning, though, that the people who are buying the direct advertising through Facebook are having more success than people just doing their own Facebook postings. So whether we cross over into that is as yet to be determined. But certainly, we will be participating in some way on social media and advertising the offers that we have for the Christmas season, like our Black Friday giveaway with purchase. We’ve run an iPad-giveaway promotion the past few years and we are doing a different product this year. It’s made Black Friday something for us, whereas in the past, it had not been. While the industry sort of sat back and gave Black Friday away, now it’s become a very important part of the business for us in the past four years. And we’ll blanket every avenue that we can about that.”
“We do social media, Facebook, for sure. We’re kicking it up this year over what we’ve done in the past, increasing the volume of information and posts. As it gets closer and closer to the holidays, our plan is to increase the frequency. This is relatively new for us and we’re increasing the time and energy that we devote to it. We’ve definitely freshened the website and we are really trying to give it a lot more energy than we ever have before.”Article from the Rapaport Magazine - November 2015. To subscribe click here.
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