Outdoor Retailer - Summer 2017 - 12

THE PULSE
REAL LIFE?
Most retailers are just too
busy to take the time to
create these engaging
campaigns on Facebook.

sure I have in stock,
then I can choose
from platforms-
email, Instagram,
Twitter. Young says
he literally spends a minute or two on each
Promoboxx campaign, scheduling when to
make it live, and making sure he has the inventory to match the promotion. "I'm still in
charge, but it's basically a marketing team
working for me, so this is pretty huge," he says.
Al's, in Logan, Utah, is a much bigger operation than Fleet Feet, with 120,000 square
feet of retail space. Ari Rees, who manages
Al's, credits Promoboxx for driving a lot more
social media engagement. "The North Face's
Steep Series ad last fall helped us reach over
35,500 people. We only have 5,600 Facebook
fans and an average organic reach of about
1,000, so the margins don't lie," he says. Rees
explains that after that impact, his team rethought how it uses Facebook.
"We boosted an ad of our own for ski rentals. We had phenomenal response. We ended
up renting out about 200 pairs of skis/boards
from our fleet, and people kept calling in and
mentioning the Facebook ad," he says. "Since
then, boosting product-specific posts during
sale periods has become fairly habitual for us."

HEADLINES

Think
Inside
the Box
Retailers can use hyperlocal ads to help get customers to
buy from them instead of online. This is how your store can
beat Amazon at its own game.
by Michael Frank

HOW IT WORKS FOR STORES
Phil Young runs Fleet Feet Sports in
Davenport, Iowa. There are about 500,000
people in the local market, an active community, with good trail systems. Young's biggest
advantage over online sellers is that seasoned

12 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ Summer 2017

"... YOU CAN TAKE A PREPACKAGED MARKETING CAMPAIGN FROM A
MAJOR NATIONAL LABEL THAT YOU CARRY AND REDISTRIBUTE IT TO
YOUR OWN CUSTOMERS VIA EMAIL AND SOCIAL MEDIA IN SECONDS."
runners know they have to try on shoes before
they buy. His problem, like all specialty retailers, is growing beyond that core consumer.
To broaden his reach, Young uses
Promoboxx. "I get an email blast telling me the
first 100 stores that engage in a Promoboxx
campaign get $100 worth of Facebook ads."
That ad carrot might come from New Balance
or Mizuno, and Young says the best part isn't
just the free ads, but that they come pre-packaged with his own store logo-they look like
he produced them. "I don't have time for this
stuff, so with this I get 10 different images to
choose from, maybe a different colorway I'm

HOW IT WORKS FOR BRANDS
"What we learned is that just pushing seasonal ads wasn't that useful for stores," says
Denise Anderson, Smartwool's marketing director. Anderson says while promotions around a holiday, say Father's Day for
gifting socks to dad, do help, "We wanted a
way to give retailers more control." That led
Anderson and her team to pitch Promoboxx
on allowing stores to have their own ad "wallet," so they could use the money to invest in
their own promotions. These still get the professional imprimatur created by Smartwool's
marketing squad, but they let stores use as-

Courtesy Wigwam

IF YOU OWN YOUR OWN STORE OR LOCAL
chain, you probably have exactly zero hours
a week to devote to creating social media ads.
And you're in good company. That's the norm.
Your competition down the block or five miles
away is in the same boat. But if you sell anything that can be commodified, from tents
to Garmin GPS units, you should know that
e-tailers with national reach have entire teams
devoted to targeting customers in your backyard with online deals.
Luckily, there are finally new digital tools
that let you do exactly the same thing-only
better. Boston-based Promoboxx works directly with brands from Smartwool to Osprey,
New Balance to The North Face, to enable
them to spend their marketing budgets more
wisely. The gist: Via Promobox, you can take
a prepackaged marketing campaign from a
major national label that you carry and redistribute it to your own customers via email and
social media in seconds.

Outdoor Retailer - Summer 2017

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