Business Strategy – Riley & You

Marketing Strategies of Premium Retail Brands

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Premium retail brands don’t happen overnight or by accident. They are often carefully crafted to fit the markets they are trying to reach. Affluent consumers comprise 20% of U.S. shoppers but account for 40% of consumer spending. These affluent shoppers are making purchases online, and 59% of the traffic to luxury retail sites comes from mobile users. If your brand is ready to step into these markets, we have some secrets that can help your product find its own space as a premium retail brand.

First, you need to have premium branding to reflect a premium product. This probably means you are not trying to do your own graphic design or hiring your nephew who likes to draw. The good news is that because of the advent of social media and email marketing, you don’t have to spend most of your budget on getting the marketing campaign in front of the consumer through expensive direct mail campaigns or buying television time. Instead, you can focus those dollars on creating high-quality and premium branding. Consumers want products that look and feel luxurious, and that starts with branding.

Secondly, you must always remember that you are marketing a lifestyle, not just a specific product. Consumers want to know that your product will help them achieve their best life, which is reflected in the images, copy and slogans you use in your marketing campaigns. Marketing has shifted from inspiration – being inspired to purchase a product because of a celebrity endorsement – to aspiration – creating the idea that a luxury lifestyle is attainable by anyone who aspires to achieve it.

Finally, brand loyalty remains important. You want consumers to buy into your brand and find a piece of the lifestyle they are looking for at their price point in your store. The research shows that affluent customers justify their purchases by passing over pricier options because it makes them feel like they are being responsible. The luxury items in your store window or center stage in your online video tell the consumer that your brand can deliver the lifestyle are looking for, and when you can deliver a great product, you become part of their new lifestyle.

Our team of experts at Riley & You has the experience you need to take your brand to the next level. We know how to brand your business, so it is positioned as a luxury brand. We also have a team that can create the photos, videos and online marketing tools you need to give your consumers something to aspire to. Let us help you tap into the brand loyalty of your market so that they will keep coming back and grow your business by spreading the word about your product.

The R&Y Difference: An Integrated Approach to Marketing

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At Riley & you, we have an Interactive Marketing Team that focuses solely on online marketing so that you don’t have to. We manage social media sites, create websites, manage blogs and help develop content – among other things. “Online marketing” is what everyone is saying you need to have a successful business and marketing plan and our team is awesome because they stay on top of all the latest trends and deliver great results for our clients.

But we don’t JUST do that.

When you work with Riley & You, you get an Interactive Marketing Team that also works closely with our entire team, including our project manager, consultant, and strategists. It’s important to us that we don’t “silo” our marketing efforts. We believe that long-term success requires an integrated strategy – one that incorporates multiple channels of delivery and considers every aspect of your marketing strategy.

“Really good integrated marketing is about more than just having the same slogan, identity and brand colors splashed across every marketing channel. It weaves a coherent story through everything the brand does.”

An integrated marketing approach is one that combines online and offline marketing tactics in order to execute a single marketing strategy. Instead of having those elements work independently, we coordinate our work across all channels to deliver results for our clients. This integrated approach allows small businesses to pull ahead of the competition and get the results they expect.

If you rely on different people or agencies to separately manage your offline and online marketing and they never talk or coordinate, you aren’t harnessing the power of truly integrated marketing. According to Robert Allen, “Really good integrated marketing is about more than just having the same slogan, identity and brand colors splashed across every marketing channel. It weaves a coherent story through everything the brand does.”

As we’ve experienced time and again with our clients, an integrated approach leads to better results. Expert Laura Lake says, “Consistency is key in making sure that consumers understand your marketing message, the consistency in that message will lead to better results on getting them to take action and ultimately impact your return on your investment.” When you choose Riley & You, we help you develop a consistent message across different marketing platforms to give your brand a truly integrated marketing strategy. Our team will monitor the behavior of your consumers and adjust when needed. We stay on top of it all, so that you can focus on running your business.

If you are ready for a more integrated approach to your marketing strategy, contact us today.

The R&Y Difference: Our Marketing Consultant Goes Above and Beyond

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Hand drawing rockets on a chalkboard At Riley & You, we strive to offer the best service to all our clients through our expertise, integrity, and experience. Although most companies claim to offer these same things, we go above and beyond to foster and maintain our client relationships. One way we do this is that we provide clients with direct access to their marketing and branding consultant. Most business owners believe that consultant and account manager are interchangeable titles; however, we know the difference and want you to understand as well.

An account manager, while handling several projects and tasks assigned to an account, is usually not involved in developing comprehensive strategies or helping you dig deeper into issues specific to your business. Account managers, while having an ability to deliver projects on time, tend to be reactive to the client’s directives and requests for deliverables. While there is a need for account managers in the marketing industry, at Riley & You we believe that the best success comes from working directly with an experienced marketing consultant.

A knowledgeable consultant can offer the insight and experience required to take your business to the next level. A consultant is proactive with your business needs, often uncovering and solving problems before the business owner even recognizes them. While an account manager focuses primarily on maintaining the account, a good consultant concentrates on the overall health of the business and maximizing the ROI by crafting, implementing, and continuously adjusting a comprehensive strategy aligned with your personal business goals. A marketing consultant has the resources, availability, and expertise to manage this strategy all while helping you balance your business needs and maximize your effectiveness for stable, healthy growth.

At Riley & You, our secret consulting weapon lies in our lead marketing consultant – who just happens to be heavily invested in the reputation and success of our own company as well as yours. Chris Riley is the president and owner of Riley & You. He is the fearless leader and visionary behind everything we do. He meets with clients regularly and works closely with his team on every project.

After 20 successful years in the paper and printing industry, Chris decided to take the leap and put his marketing passions to the test. He saw the need for a company that could help smaller businesses navigate the ever-changing challenges of marketing in an electronic age. He wanted to help them grow beyond print marketing and maximize their brand equity in all mediums.

In 2007, Chris began to assemble an experienced team of professionals who are dedicated to one another, to our families, and to the clients we serve. “I love leading this company and engaging with them to create great strategies, designs, and marketing surprises for clients,” he says. With Chris at the helm, the team strives to have integrity in everything we do by being honest, paying attention to detail, and serving our clients well.

THAT is the Riley & You difference.

Email Marketing Delivers Best ROI For Small Businesses

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Email on mobile device Small, independent businesses (for this discussion, let’s call those businesses with annual sales volume under $100 million) are looking to maximize growth, and to do so in a way that provides the best ROI. At Riley & You, we believe that email marketing is one of the best ways to accomplish this for many businesses.

Part of the Plan

Before you mutter something like “but nobody reads email anymore,” and move on to the next thing in your inbox, check this out:

A 2017 report showed a 17% year over year increase in the amount of time people spent checking email.

Email is alive and well, and for small businesses, it’s one of the best ways to engage with current and future customers. Your sales team may be the finest in the country, but they have so many other things to do – quotes, closing orders, and customer care to name a few. Regular communication with customers is way down on the priority list (if it’s on there at all). Implementing a solid, well-planned email marketing strategy should be part of your marketing plan for engaging your customers.

The Biggest Bang for Your Buck

If you have an understanding of the impact of different advertising and engagement tools – like email marketing – then you are better equipped to spend your money more wisely. Most small businesses don’t have the time to figure out where their marketing dollars are best spent. Frankly, they usually don’t even know where to go to get that information.

For every dollar spent on email marketing, businesses can expect a $44 return (and that’s up from $38 the year before).

We get it. Running a business is hard work. But that doesn’t change the fact that you need an integrated marketing strategy to move people through the sales funnel and to conversion. Email should be a part of that plan. Here’s why: The Direct Marketing Association reported that “email has a median ROI of 122% – more than four times higher than other marketing formats examined, including social media, direct mail and paid search.” And Campaign Monitor reports that for every dollar spent on email marketing, businesses can expect a $44 return (and that’s up from $38 the year before).

The Window To Your Customer’s Soul

According to this report, email marketing outperforms all other channels in both customer acquisition and retention. Yet if you aren’t reviewing performance and evaluating KPIs, you miss opportunities to improve. Sometimes the easiest information to gain and leverage to improve business is overlooked on a daily basis. Case in point: We regularly review our client’s email marketing reports, studying open rates and interaction. This type of data is critical, because it helps us understand how customers are interacting with the emails, marketing newsletters, and eblasts that we manage for our clients.

This fairly simple report provides us with so much information about what is of interest and brings value to their existing customers. Just like that, we have the opportunity to evaluate and improve strategy – based on facts, not guesswork – so that future communications will better resonate with their audience.

The email marketing strategy experts at Riley & You can help you craft and implement a smarter solution for engagement with your clients. Contact us and let us help you use email marketing as an ROI winner for your business.

The R&Y Difference: Websites Designed With Marketing In Mind

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The Riley & You team has been hard at work on several new websites in recent months. These projects have given us a chance to dig in with clients, evaluating what they like and don’t like about their current websites. The goal is to launch a new site that fulfills their wish list and sets them apart in the marketplace.

We’ve also used this opportunity to help the clients evaluate their overall marketing objectives, so that we can ensure that their new website is in alignment with those goals. Our design team is top notch, and our developers are great at what they do, but when we start a new website project, our entire team engages in the process. We have a holistic approach that takes the client way beyond questions like “What do you want your website to look like?”

At Riley & You, we truly believe that the greatest opportunity for success comes when our clients embrace a fully integrated marketing plan.

This is a good example of our comprehensive approach to projects, and highlights the value of working with a full-service marketing agency like Riley & You. When you hire us, you’re getting much more than a beautifully designed website; you’re benefiting from the input and experience of our team of marketing and strategy experts.

Every website project starts with an evaluation of the client’s brand.

Your brand is the essence of who you are. Everything about your brand identity should communicate to clients or customers what they can expect from you. It needs to be the rock-solid foundation for everything you do – including the creation of a new website.

In the case of Symspire, we had a chance to start from scratch, with a brand new company name and logo. Once that process was complete, a new website was created that reflected and amplified the new brand. For DNI Corp, we determined their brand was solid, and their logo only needed a slight adjustment to better reflect who they were.

More than a “one and done” shop.

Sometimes new clients come to us with a singular need, be it a new website, a special print project, or promotional products. And we enjoy getting to work on these projects. But where our clients see the most success – and where our team really shines – is when we go the distance. We are engaged in long-term relationships with many of our clients, journeying through annual marketing strategies, regular evaluations of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) specific to their business, and even implementation of new sales strategies for some of our clients.

Looking Through An Integrated Marketing Lens.

For a business looking for help with a new website, there is no shortage of digital agencies and website designers out there. In some situations, it may make sense to utilize a specialist to accomplish a specific objective. But at Riley & You, we truly believe that the greatest opportunity for success comes when our clients embrace a fully integrated marketing plan. The Data & Marketing Association defines Integrated Marketing as “a process designed to ensure that all messaging and communications strategies are consistent across all channels and are centered on the customer.”

Online and offline strategies need to work together, and your sales funnel needs to be aligned so that each step of your customer’s journey leads them closer to where you ultimately want them to be. When we start a new website project, we bring this kind of thinking to the table. Regardless of whether the client is one we have an ongoing relationship with, or if they’ve hired us only to create a new website, our clients end up with a new website that “fits” their brand, their strategy, and their future.