Thinking outside the box

If you want to promote your business what do you do?

Do you place and ad or, even better, try and get some editorial in the fashion magazines? Do you advertise on the Internet? Do you put up posters and get leaflets printed to publicise your latest promotion?

Well, one small e-commerce site Shoes of Prey have taken a different tack. The site, which allows you to design your own shoes, enlisted the help of a 16 year old YouTuber - Blair Fowler. She made a video extolling the benefits of the site and introducing a competition with a pair of their shoes as a prize. It received over 450,000 views and 90,000 comments - that's a lot of potential customers for a business that is less than 6 months old!

The Shoes of Prey site received almost 500,000 visits in the week the video launched and achieved something amazing. The brand buy in of all those people visiting the site and taking part in the competition and the increased brand awareness must have been a dream come true but there was one problem...

Blair Fowler's fans are primarily 13-17 year old girls. The shoes themselves cost between £115 and £180. How many 13 years old girls do you know with that kind of money? Well, not many and it shows. Although the site did receive huge numbers of visitors not many of those visits converted into sales. According to the site's owners traditional media coverage is still better at driving actual sales.

But, there is still a lesson to be learnt here. Thinking outside the box has resulted in a huge amount of coverage not only from viewers of the YouTube video but the traditional media who have covered the success of the campaign. Yes they paid Fowler but I'm pretty sure it was worth it.

However, if you want your advertising to increase sales straight away you have to put your target audience at the forefront of your mind. There is no point in attempting to publicise your site, store or brand through a channel your customers don't use. If however you are able to take a broader and longer term view, thanks to the Internet, the possibilities are endless.

And after all those 13 year old girls will get older and many will be able to afford £180. And if the brand experience was a good one, you can bet they'll remember the site when they are looking for that perfect pair of shoes.

Visit the Shoes of Prey site by clicking here

Read more about the YouTube campaign on their blog by clicking here