[Hot] How to Inspire Trust in Your Brand: Shopify, Paid Ads, & the Enduring Effectiveness of Organic SEO
The Atlantic recently published a piece by Alexis Madrigal that explores The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed-- online storefronts which are "simply middlemen for Chinese goods, built in bedrooms, and launched with no capital or inventory."
Of course, many Instagram brands are legitimate, but Madrigal's article reveals an entire "emerging ecosystem" of low-budget (or no-budget) brands that use common digital marketing techniques to attract--and fleece--unsuspecting customers.
Madrigal himself was attracted by one of these brands, West Louis, which was selling a camel coat--the Business-Man Windproof Long Coat. Madrigal ordered the coat, which retails in the double-digits, only to discover, upon receipt, that "the material has the softness of a Las Vegas carpet and the rich sheen of a velour jumpsuit. The fabric is so synthetic, it could probably be refined into bunker fuel for a ship."
Madrigal probably got what he deserved--after all, he ordered a sub-$100 coat from a no-name brand he discovered on Instagram. But apparently enough people buy into these brands to sustain a growing population of "turnkey stores."
"All these sites use a platform called Shopify," Madrigal writes,"...the Wordpress or Blogger of e-commerce, enabling completely turnkey online stores. Now, it has over 500,000 merchants, a number that’s grown 74 percent per year over the last five years. On the big shopping days around Thanksgiving, they were doing $1 million dollars in transactions per minute. And the 'vast majority' of the stores on the service are small to medium-sized businesses."
These brands have little to no connection to the products they sell; what they sell, in fact, is an image optimized by "a digital environment that encourages [people] to buy whatever piece of crap [is] put in front of them."
Digital Marketing & Branding
Both Madrigal's and O'Dell's articles are worth a read, not only for the intrigue but the digital marketing implications. In essence, these turnkey shops are performing the same branding you might see anywhere.
"What you can charge depends on the story you tell," Madrigal writes, "which on Instagram means well-lit photos in coffee shops lead directly to higher prices, especially if they feature an 'influencer' with a lot of followers."
The challenge for legitimate brands, those who have strong connections to their products and sell for a fair price, is differentiation--branding in a way that inspires trust.
How to Inspire "Trust" in Your Brand: Organic SEO
Most viable brands use some form of paid online advertising. What is similar to all of these turnkey brands is how they leverage paid advertising to sell consumers worthless products.
Madrigal writes: "All of them have been pulled into existence by the power of Instagram and Facebook ads combined with a suite of e-commerce tools based around Shopify."
This is a problematic situation for reputable smaller to medium-sized businesses who use paid advertising--especially on Instagram and Facebook.
After all, if anyone can build a storefront from their bedroom, and optimize the shop to look and feel like a legitimate business, how do consumers, who are inevitably pressed for time, differentiate the good from the bad?
The hope, of course, is that consumers perform secondary research on brands.
Indeed, instead of blindly clicking on any given Facebook or Instagram ad, Like Madrigal, many consumers do perform research--on Google. Google is the singular online space for presenting a brand as viable and reputable. Any given Google search will return a host of first-page results more valued and trusted than ads--by a margin of 94% to 6%.
The key for any brand, small, medium, or large is to ear placement on Google's first page--and the only way to do this is to prove to Google that your brand is viable and reputable--in other words, to perform organic SEO. Google's goal, of course, is to increase the quality of organic results. Organic SEO works with the search engine algorithms to produce quality content that satisfies the algorithm.
Inspire Trust: Stepman's SEO Can Help You Optimize for Google
To inspire trust in your brand, you may need an SEO company that understands how to effectively partner with the world's biggest search engine, Google. We suggest contacting our sponsor, Stepman's SEO: 215-900-9398.
Stepman's SEO combines traditional marketing methods and organic SEO--with an emphasis on natural website optimization--to design thoughtful, inspiring, and effective marketing campaigns.
Of course, many Instagram brands are legitimate, but Madrigal's article reveals an entire "emerging ecosystem" of low-budget (or no-budget) brands that use common digital marketing techniques to attract--and fleece--unsuspecting customers.
Madrigal himself was attracted by one of these brands, West Louis, which was selling a camel coat--the Business-Man Windproof Long Coat. Madrigal ordered the coat, which retails in the double-digits, only to discover, upon receipt, that "the material has the softness of a Las Vegas carpet and the rich sheen of a velour jumpsuit. The fabric is so synthetic, it could probably be refined into bunker fuel for a ship."
Madrigal probably got what he deserved--after all, he ordered a sub-$100 coat from a no-name brand he discovered on Instagram. But apparently enough people buy into these brands to sustain a growing population of "turnkey stores."
"All these sites use a platform called Shopify," Madrigal writes,"...the Wordpress or Blogger of e-commerce, enabling completely turnkey online stores. Now, it has over 500,000 merchants, a number that’s grown 74 percent per year over the last five years. On the big shopping days around Thanksgiving, they were doing $1 million dollars in transactions per minute. And the 'vast majority' of the stores on the service are small to medium-sized businesses."
These brands have little to no connection to the products they sell; what they sell, in fact, is an image optimized by "a digital environment that encourages [people] to buy whatever piece of crap [is] put in front of them."
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| A watch from "Folsom & Co," a supposedly San Francisco-based company, which offered the watch on Instagram for free with $7 shipping. Jenny O'Dell wrote about the provenance of this watch, in what Madrigal calls "the touchstone investigation into this world" of turnkey shops. |
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| As O'Dell notes "the Internet is rife with with poor reviews of Folsom & Co. watches." |
Digital Marketing & Branding
Both Madrigal's and O'Dell's articles are worth a read, not only for the intrigue but the digital marketing implications. In essence, these turnkey shops are performing the same branding you might see anywhere.
"What you can charge depends on the story you tell," Madrigal writes, "which on Instagram means well-lit photos in coffee shops lead directly to higher prices, especially if they feature an 'influencer' with a lot of followers."
 |
| A page from the website of Folsom & Co. "looks" legitimate enough. |
The challenge for legitimate brands, those who have strong connections to their products and sell for a fair price, is differentiation--branding in a way that inspires trust.
How to Inspire "Trust" in Your Brand: Organic SEO
Most viable brands use some form of paid online advertising. What is similar to all of these turnkey brands is how they leverage paid advertising to sell consumers worthless products.
Madrigal writes: "All of them have been pulled into existence by the power of Instagram and Facebook ads combined with a suite of e-commerce tools based around Shopify."
This is a problematic situation for reputable smaller to medium-sized businesses who use paid advertising--especially on Instagram and Facebook.
After all, if anyone can build a storefront from their bedroom, and optimize the shop to look and feel like a legitimate business, how do consumers, who are inevitably pressed for time, differentiate the good from the bad?
The hope, of course, is that consumers perform secondary research on brands.
Indeed, instead of blindly clicking on any given Facebook or Instagram ad, Like Madrigal, many consumers do perform research--on Google. Google is the singular online space for presenting a brand as viable and reputable. Any given Google search will return a host of first-page results more valued and trusted than ads--by a margin of 94% to 6%.
The key for any brand, small, medium, or large is to ear placement on Google's first page--and the only way to do this is to prove to Google that your brand is viable and reputable--in other words, to perform organic SEO. Google's goal, of course, is to increase the quality of organic results. Organic SEO works with the search engine algorithms to produce quality content that satisfies the algorithm.
Inspire Trust: Stepman's SEO Can Help You Optimize for Google
To inspire trust in your brand, you may need an SEO company that understands how to effectively partner with the world's biggest search engine, Google. We suggest contacting our sponsor, Stepman's SEO: 215-900-9398.
Stepman's SEO combines traditional marketing methods and organic SEO--with an emphasis on natural website optimization--to design thoughtful, inspiring, and effective marketing campaigns.