Madison Reed・Overview
Social Media Marketing — Here's what I worked on February 2018 - September 2018
Role + Responsibilities
My role at Madison Reed was managing all aspects of organic social media from working on strategy, to creating and distributing posts across all channels.
I worked directly with the CMO to track success metrics across channels and adjust strategy to meet OKRs.
Company Context
Madison Reed is a direct-to-consumer boxed hair dye company, known for their unique formula that is free of harsher chemicals—giving customers excellent color coverage, without the harsh smell and hair damaging effects that are common to drugstore boxed dyes. Madison Reed also has expanded their brick-and-mortar retail locations, with their own Color Bars opening up across the country.
Key investors include True Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Comcast Ventures.
Key Challenges + Insights
When I initially come on to the team, I saw a lot of opportunity to increase following and engagement on Instagram (which at my previous companies was a key channel for us). My original instinct was to first give an aesthetic make-over to the brand's Instagram presence, and bring it into a more modern feel that would fit into channel ethos of the time— as well as reflect the brand's prestige appeal.
I quickly learned this did not work.
I failed to consider that our audience was more mature than the audiences I had previously been targeting at other direct-to-consumer companies, and that their needs were aptly different. At first I replaced less than polished UGC posts with clean, pretty images I took in house, but quickly saw this approach did not resonate with our audience.
It became clear that UGC images performed well because our audience could see real, unadulterated results of the product, on real customers. While audiences I created for in previous roles typically favored more pristine imagery that fit the "Instagram Vibe", Madison Reed's audience preferred to see content that looked like something their friends might post.
Results
While mixing in more polished images helped give a an aura of prestige for product images of our kits or toner, I reverted back to focusing primarily on curating good user generated content, which helped us continue to grow our audiences and engagement rates.
Because Madison Reed has robust data tracking, I could also see a measurable uptick in revenue tied directly to organic social media.
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