Authenticity While Targeting Customers
The challenge: How do we target people on Instagram whom we would like to know about our new watch company while we remain authentic and true to our company values?
The solution: For us, instagram remains a labor of love as well as our primary social media outlet. We have quickly built a small yet highly-engaged base of followers and we spend a good deal of time engaging back with them and providing useful, quality content, rather than simply being in sales mode.
We have enough evidence at this point to understand that our brand resonates more with certain groups than others. For those less familiar with Mission Watch Company, we will quickly recap the brand.
THE BRAND, AN INTRODUCTION:
We are an entry-level luxury watch brand - the relatively new term “light luxury” applies quite well. We know at this point that we have some appeal to people who love watches and have a small or larger collection. We also know that we are hitting a note with people who are looking for their first "great" rather than "fairly good" watch. If you love watches, you remember that moment when you decided to go from maybe a perfectly nice $250 watch to your first $1,000 watch. It’s a big deal. It’s exciting and we want to be a part of it for more and more people.
Please note that the use of “people” here is intentional. We do not make watches for men and we do not make watches for women. We make watches that we feel look great on everyone and that everyone can enjoy for decades because of how well we build them. Given the size of the Mission 1 (39mm) it fits not only the re-emergence of the classic trends which did not include massive watches, but also fits the size of watch with which women are increasingly comfortable. Mercifully, the days of making only tiny watches for women are over.
One of the segments that seem to really like our first watch, the Mission 1, is lawyers. Both of us (the co-founders of Mission Watch Company) are lawyers and a good number of lawyers acquired a Mission 1 in our sold-out pre-sale.
For any watch company, lawyers are a great segment of the watch-buying population. They fit the targets for disposable income and some of the softer qualifiers one would look for. Our watches are extremely durably built, and many lawyers enjoy an active lifestyle and share this on social media.
So if we return to our challenge, how do we let lawyers of all genders, backgrounds, and geographies know we exist?
We tested targeting certain hashtags to see where we could get the most engagement. Our only interest in starting a genuine conversation. So, only as a couple of examples, tags such as #lawyerstyle and #womeninlaw seem to work for us.
Most importantly, they work at a level of authenticity. Through these hashtags we find really interesting people who post things we find compelling. We reach out and engage with them often by first commenting on our own backgrounds in the law and how much we like their post. And we go from there. Sure, the endgame would be a watch purchase, but we know the first step is to get on their radar and for them to see us as we see ourselves as people and as a brand.
So our thesis was and remains that a new brand can set a tone on social media, engage with and attract people who may acquire your product, and do so in ways that are honest and authentic. That's what we have done to date and intend to always do.