Hasta La Creative!

Amid all the gloom and doom about a potential “retail apocalypse” and threats from digital-savvy challengers, it’s clear that to survive, traditional brands desperately need to fix their leaky marketing funnels. The problem of a disconnected discover-to-buy consumer pathway is especially prevalent in the mid-to-high-end fashion category, where vulnerable old-school contenders are being outsmarted by young guns with social media chops.

Traditional brands have invested a ton of money on awareness and brand building, only to realize that they’re not positioned for how people discover brands and buy products today. Companies make basic errors with their social media strategy, like not adding shoppable links to their posts or learning from challenger, indie, direct-to-consumer brands. The upstarts are often “shoppable-first,” with brand discovery and purchase leading everything they do in marketing. Many traditional brands — especially in mid-range and luxury categories — are way behind in thinking about how millennial consumers actually want to interact with and purchase from brands.

Most upscale brands invest heavily in paid search. But this leads to unintended consequences when they end up not sending traffic to their sites but rather to resale or discount sites, which have outbid them on AdWords or out-priced them on Google Shopping. In a lot of cases, high-end brands don’t actually “own” their keywords across every channel they need to be in. Search for any luxury brand, and you’re going to find dozens of places to buy it.

Continue reading at AdAge.com