Grow Social Followers, grow ecommerce sales and improve their online reputation

Lastman's Bad Boy started in the 1950's as an home furnishings and appliance retailer. Well known in the southern Ontario market they were know as the disruptors of their industry ! They would slash prices against their competitors and they were known as the "King" of discount furniture.

Unfortunately,the bargain persona that connected with the Baby Boomer generation wasn't connecting with today's buyers.

In January 2015, I was brought in to focus on their digital strategy. I focused on three key areas:

1. Improve their ecommerce sales
   
2. Grow their social media followers
   
3. Improve their online reputation

Unfortunately, the user experience was lousy! It was hard to find products on the ecommerce site, product descriptions and photos were non-existent and the check out process took way too long.

I inherited this month old site. As much as I wanted to rip it out and start new again, I had to work with what I had — maximize its return on investment and make massive improvements on the website.

1. Homepage Layout - full width carousel to show promotions, large tiles and video
2. Search - improve accuracy of the search
3. Product Pages - add up to 10 large format images and long tail product descriptions
4. Check Out - minimize steps to check out (three steps only) and new payment gateways such as PayPal and Visa CheckOut
5. Landing Pages - orphan landing pages about current appliance promotions: Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, GE, Samsung, Electrolux and Frigidaire

Results:

The ecommerce sales and average order value (AOV) grew substantially. Sales leaped from $800K to $1.8M a year and AOV increased from $700 to $900.

In January 2015, Lastman's Bad Boy was on Facebook and Twitter. They were using Facebook to announce their promotions (sales driven) and Twitter sporadically mainly to answer customer complaints.

WHAT'S THE PLAN?

Create relevant and engaging content to attract new customers on Facebook and Twitter, plus get them live on Pinterest, Instagram and Polyvore.

FACEBOOK & TWITTER

Their Facebook and Twitter channels highlighted all their customer complaints. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough content being posted in a timely manner. The only way to bury these negative posts was to out-number them.

Schedule:

On a daily basis, there would be up to two posts a day on Facebook and 9-14 posts on Twitter. By the sheer numbers alone, the negative posts were being out weighted with engaging content.

Unlike before, the new content plan would have a mix of current promotions, DIY home improvement projects, home trends and content their audience (stay-at-home moms between the ages of 30-45) would want to consume!

PINTEREST, INSTAGRAM & POLYVORE

Since Facebook and Twitter was under control, it was time to work on other social platforms. The goal with Pinterest and Polyvore was to create backlinks to the product pages. For Instagram, the strategy was to capture all Bad Boy moments from events we were running to new product launches and day-in-a-life look into our owner who was a local celebrity.

Results:

By concentrating on Facebook and Twitter, I grew their followers and increased their engagement. Organically, our posts were reaching more people and the total cost for ads was lower then before.

· 86% growth on Facebook from 9161 to 17, 054 followers

· 176% growth on Twitter from 1653 to 4563 followers

I launched their presence on key platforms such as Instagram, Polyvore and Pinterest. This enabled Bad Boy to reach their customers through all social channels.

​​ · Launched Instagram in July 2015 grew to 1609 follower

· Launched Pinterest in July 2015 grew to 1500 followers

· Launched Polyvore in July 2015 to create backlinks to product pages

One of the main concerns that had to be addressed was with their online reputation. On average they rated 1.6/10 on reputable review sites such as from Google and HomeStars. This low score ranking was creating a double-whammy! It created mistrust with customers and it made it difficult for Human Resources (HR) to recruit new staff.

Previously they had attempted to fix the situation with a review site that allowed them to omit poor reviews from showing up in the feed. Anonymous customers could rate their experience without writing a single word. The advantage with this review platform was its ease of use. It didn't require any authentication — of course the scores on this site was going through the roof. However, as a customer reading the reviews you'll see that it lacked content and substance. If anything, it looked fake!

HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM?

All the "good" reviews were going into an anonymous platform and all the negative ones were naturally finding their way into Google and HomeStars.

We needed to hit this were it hurt most! We needed to stop diluting ourselves and concentrate all of our efforts into Google and HomeStars.

Results:

Google Reviews:

Customers who had a Gmail account would be asked for their feedback on Google Reviews. The results were phenomenal! In less than 3 months, we were able to raise the score from 1/5 to 4/5 stars (for stores that historically performed well).

HomeStar Reviews:

This was a different beast! On HomeStars the company had 10 years worth of negative reviews. This became a numbers game. To beat this, we needed to out-muscle the negative reviews with positive ones.

We did this by implementing the HomeStars mobile app at all 10 retail stores. I put a quota on every store to obtain 15 reviews per week (15 x 10 stores = 150 reviews). This was "no-easy" task! It took re-training of all the staff on the new checkout procedures and on using a mobile app which they were unfamiliar with. After several cliches, it was finally working! The stores were getting more positive reviews in then negative ones.

In 10 months, we were able to raise the score from 1.6 to 5.8/10 stars!