One of our brand clients has historically always provided retailers with marketing content, both in-store and online. So, when that brand turned to Promoboxx to help better engage its retailers the relationship’s foundation was already there; Promoboxx just helped streamline the process.

The problem with providing a lot of content to retailers is that they might not fully understand what to do with it or how to talk about it with their customers. Should it be shared on Facebook or Twitter? How often should it be shared? What makes the promotion special? These are all questions that need to be answered by the brand before the content is distributed. It’s important to give context around the content, because if you don’t make it easy, you’ve done nothing but discourage your most important advocates (your retailers!) from promoting your product.

How did Promoboxx solve this problem?

Promoboxx packages the content on a campaign basis, allowing the retailers to log in to their Promoboxx account, customize national content to engage their local audience and easly share it online with our checklist of share tools: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and website. Depending on what type of channels the client wants to focus on we will also provide instructions on share copy or what hashtags to use to keep the conversation going. We also send out weekly e-mails to all participating retailers reminding them that they should share their campaign again.

Content is vital to any online marketing strategy, but content without purpose is meaningless. Right now, we’re seeing more content than ever, but rarely do we see it making an impact, starting the right conversations and helping independent retailers boost their online presence.

That is where YOU, the brand, comes in. It’s great if you are are helping your retailers out with their online marketing, but make sure you are equipping them with the right kind of training and tools to succeed.

I recently attended a conference and had the chance to talk social media with the folks that keep brands alive: retailers. All too often I heard “I have Twitter, I just don’t know what to do with it.”

The truth of that matter is that it’s not enough to simply have an account on Twitter; that’s like buying the storefront and not setting up shop. Twitter, when used correctly, is extremely valuable. Twitter allows retailers a huge opportunity to connect with consumers on a more human level, offer top-notch support, reward loyal customers and identify industry trends. The best part? It’s free!

We’ve collected five reasons to stop being stubborn and start tweeting.

1. Give your company a personality

Twitter is one of the few places a company can exhibit their “personality,” so use it! Your followers will appreciate the reminder that there are people behind that logo. It helps them remember why they love you so much in the first place. Tweet about a customer service success story, your corporate culture, or new products. Get creative and remind your customers what makes you different from the rest of the competition.

2. Use Twitter as a support channel

This includes responding to direct tweets, responding to your follower’s comments, and tweeting about product updates. If a customer tweets you feedback about your product or service, good or bad, take it seriously. Social media gives you a huge opportunity to show off how amazing your customer service really is.

3. Reward your followers

Your Twitter followers are likely your most loyal customers, and therefore deserve a reward. Offer exclusive discounts to your Twitter followers by tweeting special promo codes, running contests for the best tweets about your product, or simply give them a sneak peek at a new product release. They’ll appreciate being on the inside and that you value their loyalty.

4. Use hashtags

A hashtag is a word (or words) that point to a specific topic using the # symbol. A hashtag is a word (or words) that point to a specific topic using the # symbol. Hashtags are an excellent way to identify what’s trending in your industry, or better yet, initiate buzz about what you’d like to be trending.

5. Share meaningful content

Don’t just talk about your product, rather offer relevant tips, fun facts, or how-to guides. The more meaningful content you produce, the more interest you can generate around your product!

At Promoboxx, our focus is making both retailers and brands happy. We do this in a variety of ways, but early on we realized the simple equation to this utopia is happy retailers = happy brands.

For now, we’ll concentrate on one side of the equation: the responsibility of brands to keep their retailers happy. By believing in retailers and providing them with the necessary tools for success, brands will be rewarded in loyalty (and sales) ten times over. Below you’ll find our top 5 tips for brands to make their retailers happy and ultimately, their biggest advocates.

1. Share Leads

Brands aren’t going to gain any points with the retailer if the leads that they collect during a national campaign go straight to corporate. After all, why should the retailer promote a campaign that doesn’t directly help them? Using Promoboxx, retailers that opt-in to national campaigns gain access to the leads that they collect. This motivates the retailer to share their campaign more often and push your product, in order to gain more leads. Impress your retailers by offering them the opportunity to gain consumer leads and allowing them to use the leads they collect for future marketing purposes. By rewarding their hard work it shows them that you support their success.

2. Provide Multiple Opportunities to Be An Advocate

What works for one retailer won’t work for another, so give your retailers plenty of ways to promote your brand. If your campaign is digital, encourage them to share via Facebook, Twitter, Blog and Email (to name a few), or if it’s an in-store promotion, make sure they have access to several types of signage, print ads, or whatever will work best for them to get on board your brand’s campaign.

3. Do the Leg Work (and Make it Free)

One of the most common reasons we hear for why retailers don’t market their stores (and the brands they carry) is that they simply don’t have the time or the resources. Take a load off your retailers’ backs by giving them the content to customize and share. If you really want them to be your advocates, provide it free of charge. At Promoboxx, our brands know that their retailers are the number one way to promote their products, so they use our platform to make their digital content as accessible as possible. Bonus: the brand’s national campaign will result in a more streamlined, cohesive effort.

4. Reward Your Retailers

Encourage your retailers to promote your campaign with an incentive. In a recent Promoboxx campaign, a brand offered its retailers a chance to win a dream vacation in exchange for promoting a national sweepstakes they were running. Another Promoboxx campaign rewarded the top-performing retailer with a discount on their next order from the brand. Giving your retailers a little extra motivation will not only get them excited about your current promotion, but it will also generate a desire for them to participate in future campaigns.

5. Give Retailers the Inside Scoop

Retailers interact with consumers more than anyone else, so their opinion is extremely valuable. Recognize retailers as an excellent source of information. Invite them to give their feedback on what type of promotions they would like to run, their preferred methods of communication with their consumers, and what works (and doesn’t work) for them. By working as a team, retailers and brands can build and thrive in a mutually beneficial relationship.

As a Client Marketer at Promoboxx, part of our job is to have conversations with independent retailers and garner insights to better help them market online.

Independent retailers are the key to success with any Promoboxx campaign. Independents are the ones that sell products, help build a community, create memorable experiences and provide exceptional customer service. These reasons are why brick and mortar will never die and also why Promoboxx’s number one mantra is “believe in retailers.”

Yes, Promoboxx is a technology platform that connects brands to their retailers to help them localize national online campaigns, but there is another side to Promoboxx that most people don’t understand. To elaborate, today I was reviewing all of the retailer feedback I had received recently with one of my clients. Although I won’t reveal all of the details (top secret!), I will provide a few examples of insights Client Marketer’s at Promoboxx are able to share with clients on a daily basis…

- Retailers are looking for promotions that encourage the consumer to follow up in-store. Consider running an online promotion that drives traffic to both the local store’s physical store as well as its online channels.

- Retailers love to run an online campaigns around rebates because it draws the consumer to purchase without making an impact to the retailer’s bottom line. Rebate campaigns are a win-win.

- Retailers don’t have Facebook pages because they have a hard time understanding how managing a business page is worth their time. Now that your providing new, original content for their online channels, they want to get started.

Not only do we provide a technology that strengthens the brand-to-retailer relationship, but we help our brand clients better understand how to work with their retailers to achieve success…and we love what we do!

Here at Promoboxx, we’re always striving to help brands connect better with their retailers and distribute co-branded content to an increasingly social consumer base. Recently Promoboxx has released several new features that not only improve the experience for retailers using our system, but these features also help brands optimize campaigns in order to better connect with their retailers and reach their consumers.

New Enrollment Flow

As new retailers sign up for Promoboxx, they are taken through the enrollment flow process, which allows Promoboxx to gather the necessary data to create a co-branded campaign. The updated enrollment flow includes features that help retailers understand the campaign they are activating, take them quickly and easily through the share process, and also allow for quick access to Promoboxx support channels if they need it. We’re excited for more retailers to use the new enrollment flow, and we’ve already seen significant increases in participation rates and sharing of co-branded campaign content.

New Retailer Dashboard

As a Promoboxx retailer, you want to know how well your co-branded campaign is performing, how many consumer views it’s received, and how many of your fans and followers have shared your co-branded content. The new Retailer Dashboard gathers the most important metrics of campaign success in one place, and shows each retailer their progress as well as how they stack up to other retailers promoting co-branded campaigns. One of the coolest features on the new dashboard is the Boxx Score for retailers. This score ranks each retailer based on campaign activity – a retailer’s score is calculated based on how many times they’ve shared on social channels, and how many consumer interactions they’ve generated. We love a little bit of friendly competition here at Promoboxx, and we think that retailers do too!

Enhanced Reporting for Brands

Ok, so we’ve updated the retailer experience in Promoboxx, but what about new features for our brand users? We want our brands to run successful campaigns co-branded with their retailers, and gathering reporting is essential for optimizing those campaigns. With the enhanced campaign reporting that we’ve introduced for brands, we hope to provide the metrics that brands need to track measure the progress of their campaigns, and provide actionable insights into how brands and retailers can optimize their co-branded campaigns.

Share Options for Retailers

We think that one of the most important aspects of a successful co-branded campaign is cross-channel sharing of content. We’ve encouraged retailers to share co-branded content on Facebook, Twitter, and their websites, and now we’ve included an enhanced option for sharing via email. With the new and improved Consumer Email capability, brands can create an HTML-rich email which is co-branded with each retailer’s information. Retailers can then send this email to their customers, either by using a list of leads captured through a Promoboxx campaign, or by importing their own list of leads.

We’ve also heard that sharing images on Facebook can be pretty darn effective in driving view of business and campaign pages. So we’ve given retailers the option to not only share a link to their co-branded campaign, but also to include a share image. These wall posts show up in the newsfeeds of a retailer’s followers and fans, and provide a visually interesting hook for consumers to click on and view co-branded campaign content.

Are you a Promoboxx user? What new features would you love to see?

Brand marketers are becoming increasingly more concerned with how their retailers think. These brands place a high value on knowing values, goals, and concerns of retailers to understand how those retail partners market themselves along with the brands they sell. Every effort made is to gain additional insights into how retailers are growing and strengthening relationships with customers. That’s because both brands and their retailers have something in common: everything starts with the consumer.

In the automotive industry, we all know how it works: Automotive brands market to shoppers, shoppers buy at dealerships, dealerships order more from their automotive manufacturing brands. It’s the circle of life. It’s why automotive brands are so concerned with helping their dealers more effectively forge strong relationships with consumers. Because ultimately, the dealerships control the shopping experience for the majority of national automotive manufacturing brands.

When it comes to automotive brand marketing, Volkswagen is a thought leader. This past October, Volkswagen of America took its dealer marketing programs to the next level by launching its first dealer-focused online marketing initiative. Dubbed “VW Stories,” this initiative allowed VW dealers to take national “Why VW” content, customize it, and share on their local online marketing channels via Facebook and Twitter – for free. All with the purpose of drawing new consumers into the Volkswagen experience.

To further leverage its “Why VW” program, VWoA is using Promoboxx to engage its dealerships across the United States by encouraging them to co-brand and share new VW multimedia content such VWoA commercials. VWoA even brought it’s dealers into the fold of its highly anticipated Super Bowl XLVII commercials via “Why VW Stories.” An example of one VW dealer, Coastal Volkswagen of Hanover, MA pictured below:

“Promoboxx gives our VW dealers a quick and easy way to market VWoA national content locally on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve always been dealer-focused, so this is just another way for us to support our local dealerships.” – Sara Devine, Manager, Brand Marketing, Volkswagen of America

Ben Carcio, CEO of Promoboxx adds, “The advertisements around Super Bowl always cause lots of excitement in the media, especially for a brand like Volkswagen. So, we were thrilled to work alongside its agency, Edelman, to help VWoA dealerships become more involved.”

In 2013, manufacturing brands like Volkswagen will need to focus on localizing marketing efforts to achieve goals and surpass competition in today’s digital world. With 85% of consumers searching for local businesses online, brands can’t afford to ignore how important it is to engage dealers in order to cater to local consumer audiences.

- Sonciary // Co-Founder, VP Client Marketing // @shonnoll // sonciary [at] promoboxx [dot] com

Back in December 2012, Promoboxx partnered with Kia Motors for their Test-Drive for Tickets campaign to activate their central region dealers in Chicago and Cleveland. Promoboxx launched the brand-to-dealer online extension of this campaign, giving consumers an incentive to test-drive any new Kia vehicle in exchange for a pair of tickets to either a Chicago Bulls or Cleveland Cavaliers game. The goal was to increase the online conversation around this special offer and raise awareness of where to buy Kia vehicles locally.

A recent article featured on FastCompany reinforced that the most important asset to a brand are its customer-facing employees. Stating that “taking full advantage of that ground-level expertise means fostering better communication, and putting resources in the hands of those who face your customers. Technology in 2013 will focus on helping employees do more, more intelligently, and the wisest organizations will invest in this wholeheartedly.” It was exciting to read this, because that is exactly what Promoboxx aims to do for Kia and all of our clients.

Our main job is to help brands understand how to better engage both their retailers and consumers. A good co-branding campaign is a win-win scenario for all parties; a win for the local retailer trying to promote their business and a win for the brand that sells more product, while also strengthening their relationship with their retailers and consumers.

We loved being a part of Kia’s Test-Drive for Tickets campaign because Kia truly understood the value of working with their dealers to better reach their consumers at a local level. Kia focused on generating awareness of local Kia dealerships online and where to buy Kia vehicles locally. They also had a great consumer offer, which allowed Kia dealers to actually see consumer follow-up from this online promotion.

See below for the customized campaign page created by Bill Jacobs Kia:

Kia dealers were able to gain access to new and engaging content from Kia, quickly and easily highlight their dealerships branding and share their customized campaign on all of their online channels – and they loved it.

Check out some of the client testimonials we got below:

“Promoboxx was very helpful, creating an easy way for us to post the details of our promotion on our social networks, which had significant traction and follow-up!”

“Promoboxx is helpful on our online marketing efforts and is very easy to use. We would participate in another co-branding campaign again!”

“Because this campaign was so easy to use, allowed us to do it “our own way,” and had great visual graphic artwork (which was also customizable with our logo!), I would be happy to participate in another co- branding project.”

“The Promoboxx tool had an easy plug-in feeling, and I was impressed with the ability to customize posts and quickly select the exact page I wanted to place the post on (being an administrator of so many pages, this is often a problem).”

These days, there’s an increasingly noticeable focus on local: supporting locally owned businesses, eating locally raised meat and produce, and buying products manufactured in the USA. Currently, 23 million small businesses in America account for 54 percent of all U.S. sales, and their influence is only expected to grow in 2013. So how should brands get involved in this shift in buying trends? We’ve gathered the 3 most important tips to incorporate into your marketing plan for 2013, so that you can reach your consumers at a local level.

1. Help Your Retailers Maintain the Perfect Online Store Front

One of the oldest marketing adages is “Fish where the fish are.” There’s no doubt that customers are “swimming” online, even locally. In fact, 85% of consumers search for local businesses online and 82% of local searchers follow up their inquiry with an in-store visit or phone call. Therefore, brands not only need to make sure their online channels are professional and updated frequently with engaging content, but that those of their independent retailers are too.

How we can help: How are brands supposed to streamline the online presence of hundreds, thousands or even millions of retailers? Promoboxx allows retailers to opt in to the national campaigns of their choice, co-brand content from the brand and distribute it on their online channels, free of cost. Promoboxx even notifies them when new content is available and sends reminders when it’s time to share again. With Promoboxx, brands can extend their reach at to local level and unify their online marketing efforts, while simulataneously driving traffic to the individual retailers’ online channels like Facebook and Twitter.

2. Help Your Retailers Stay Relevant

Concentrate on what works; engaging customers online through rich content. Customers are going online to interact with their favorite brands everyday. Don’t just share content but produce content that asks your customers to express their opinion, give feedback, and take advantage of online offers that drive in-store traffic.

How we can help: Promoboxx understands that creating content to share on online channels can be time consuming and expensive, so we take care of the hard part. By opting into a brand’s national campaign, retailers gain access to all of the marketing content for that campaign, without the price tag or leg work involved in producing it. All the retailers have to do is accept the invitation to participate in the campaign, add their retail information and click “Share.” The best part? Brands don’t have to worry about rogue marketing, because they choose what is customizable.

3. Help Your Retailers Focus on Customer Retention, Not Just Acquisition

It’s not enough to simply acquire a customer; a brand needs to earn their loyalty and keep them coming back for more. Attention has shifted from acquisition to retention, which isn’t so easy with the “daily deal” trends of today.

How we can help: By having independent retailers share professional, new, and exciting content via Promoboxx the brand is able to keep their customers up-to-date with relevant news and promotions that relate to the company at a local level. Ultimately, creating a significantly more meaningful relationship with the customer. The brand will be first in the customer’s mind when it comes to finding the best deals and news about their industry.

We’ve all heard of B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing, but what is this B2R marketing Promoboxx seems to talk so much about?

B2R (Brand-to-Retailer) marketing is connecting brands with their retailers by providing them with marketing materials they can use to facilitate the sale of their products and services they offer. Brand-to-Retailer marketing also plays a major role in strengthening the relationship between the brand and retailer, ultimately building a strong brand preference with each independent retailer.

Why is B2R Marketing important?

Manufacturing brands spend millions of dollars every year on national marketing programs. The majority of these programs focus on attracting and retaining consumers. In the past, retailers have been neglected in the marketing process. However, as competition has risen, brands need to find new ways to create preference of their products over others. Brands have started to realize that their retailers are their biggest advocates; in the end retailers have control of the products they sell, how they promote them and what they say to their consumers about them. What retailers don’t have, is the bandwidth to market these products and create preference on their own. Through brand-to-retailer marketing, brands give their retailers access to marketing programs that they can call their own and use to market to their consumers locally.

And what does Promoboxx have to do with B2R marketing?

Promoboxx is the glue for B2R marketing programs online. Shopper marketing has been around for a long time. Brands have provided independent retailers with in-store signage, fliers and coupons for years. However, with more and more consumers going online to research products and make purchases, brands are realizing they need to start providing online marketing resources to their retailers as well. When retailers build their presence online they can re-leverage national brand assets and activate consumer engagement throughout the digital path-to-purchase.

Promoboxx makes it easy for retailers to participate in the brand’s national online programs by providing easy-to-use tools to participate, co-brand, and distribute the programs on their online channels (Facebook, Twitter, website, and e-mail).

Want to find out more about B2R marketing and how it can help amplify your brand’s marketing efforts? E-mail us today at sales@promoboxx.com.

As a national brands seek new ways to reach their customers with relevant and engaging content, they use the Promoboxx platform to launch co-branded campaigns with their network of local retailers. Engaging local retailers has proven to be an effective marketing tool for brands, but what exactly makes an effective co-branded campaign? We love helping brands get the most out of Promoboxx, and here are 4 ways that brands are using our platform to launch successful co-branded campaigns with their retailers:

1. Invitations: Invite ‘em to the Party

In most cases, one of the first times a retailer hears about a Promoboxx campaign is in the initial invite email, sent from the Promoboxx Invitation System. The message that brands send to their retailers should be optimized to give the retailer as much information about the campaign as possible: what the upcoming campaign is (the what), why they should participate (the why), and how they can participate (the how). An effective message is essential to high retailer engagement rates.

2. Share Options: Sharing is Caring

Many brands have special preferences for certain social media channels — perhaps consumers like to interact with Brand A primarily via Twitter, or perhaps Brand B finds Facebook to be the most effective way to distribute promotional content to consumers. Promoboxx works with brands to determine which social channels are best to create and share content on, and then helps them to optimize that content around the unique characteristics of those channels.

For example, Facebook content is most effective when it includes strong visual content – photos and videos. Consumers love viewing and sharing visual content on Facebook, so an effective way to optimize Facebook content is to include engaging video and photo content.

On the other hand, content shared on Twitter is “bite-sized”, fitting into the 140 character limit. Tweets encourage dialogue between consumers, brands, and retailers – it’s a conversation, so brands should use it as an opportunity to listen and share. Both retailers and consumers love sharing content via Twitter conversations. Twitter content should be clear and concise to really pack a punch — have your retailers promote your brand, use hashtags, get consumers engaged in current promotions and fit that all into 140 characters!

3. Share Reminders: Share Early, Share Often

So retailers have signed up for Promoboxx, your brand has created engaging content around your current campaign, but how does your brand get retailers interested in sharing that content? Promoboxx helps brands remind their retailers how, when, and what to share — all by sending out consistent share reminder messages specifically tailored to a campaign and the content it has to offer. Promoboxx encourages brands to send share reminders to their retailers regularly throughout the lifetime of the campaign, using the Email Notifications System. Continued sharing helps to keep marketing campaigns at the top of retailers’ Facebook and Twitter feeds.

4. Update Content: Keep it Fresh

Many brands will use the Promoboxx platform to run ongoing campaigns that continue for extended periods of time. In the case of these ‘evergreen’ campaigns, it’s important for brands to keep their content fresh. Promoboxx encourages brands to split their ongoing campaigns into several phases. From one phase to another, content should change. Brands may swap out new photos or videos, and refresh information about promotions – all in an effort to keep the content current and relevant to consumers. To keep your retailers and consumers engaged, you need to keep it fresh and exciting.