There are a lot of different marketing strategies that brands will consider when choosing which platforms to focus on when it comes to promoting their products and services. You’ve got PPC, social, SEO, influencer marketing, word of mouth campaigns, referral programs, and so, so much more.

What some brands forget, however, is that some of these campaigns are strengthened when they go cross-platform, leveraging the strengths of two different channels together.

Rothy’s understands this as well as anyone, as they’ve worked hard to create a strategy that combines social video and word of mouth marketing for a powerful result on brand awareness and increased conversions. It worked so well that they went from 0 to 60, quickly going from a new, unknown brand to making over $140 million in revenue.

In this post, we’re going to break down their strategy, why it works, and how you can replicate it for yourself.

About the Brand

Rothy’s is a relatively new company that makes classic, pointed-toe flats with 3-D knitting. When the company started a little over three years ago, they knew they were facing a tough challenge when it came to breaking into the footwear industry, which was worth 224 billion dollars. 

And yet they did. They went from being an unheard of brand to a hugely popular name about as quickly as you can, and they’ve since rolled out five different lines of shoes. Women under 40 in particular are raving about the shoes, and even major celebrities like Meghan Markle have been seen wearing their Rothy’s out and about. 

Their footware is comfortable and it does have a modern-yet-classic look that appeals to a large number of women, but that’s typically not enough to launch a brand to the kind of success Rothy’s has had in the past few years, so let’s take a look at their marketing strategies.

The Strategy: A Winning Combination of Affordable Social Videos + Word of Mouth Marketing 

One thing to note about Rothy’s is that they went all in on social videos, including both organic and PPC campaigns. The key here though is that they regularly use a massive amount of affordable social media videos, meaning that they’re not dropping 20k every time they want to shoot a new clips for Facebook.

This works in their favor, because their audience sees their content as relevant and transparent, but they’re generating so much traffic and engagement with a next-to-nothing cost that their ROI is through the roof.

The brand stresses both comfort and sustainability, so they don’t need insanely high tech videos to get that point across. The shoe design is simple and classic, and their marketing strategy is, too. The bright colors of the shoes resonate well on Facebook and Instagram, standing out and typically performing well in organic traffic. They’re not paying for these impressions, engagements, clicks, and conversions, and the videos cost so little to make that it’s insane ROI.

Their emphasis on word of mouth marketing works well with this. Rothy’s launched by reaching out to contacts and letting them know about the new products, and they quickly were flooded with orders beyond their wildest dreams. 

Word of mouth marketing has been a huge driving force for them ever since, and this combined with the social videos will keep your audience engaged and give you an insanely effective and low-cost way to reach new members of your target audience. And of course as soon as you do, someone might share your Facebook or Instagram with a friend or even tag them in the comments section, making those social videos work even more in your favor. 

How You Can Adapt This Strategy for Your Brand 

Rothy’s knew that they’d need a long list of videos that would allow them to promote all of their shoes (which is now a lot of them, considering they have 5 distinct collections) and to keep audiences engaged long term. They have an extensive video library on Facebook alone, and are regularly sharing videos to both Facebook and Instagram (feed and Stories).

The key here is scalability. They knew that they’d need simple, low cost videos that could be created en-mass. This would allow for the creation of enough content to keep their social calendars full. You need your social content and your videos to be fresh and to feel relevant to each individual user, which means creating a lot of them. 

All of Rothy’s videos can easily be created with Shakr, giving you the fast video creation needed for true scalability. This, in turn, allows you to maintain content freshness to keep your audience engaged across the board, which can help new customers discover you, too.

The video below, for example, would take just a few seconds to create with Shakr. All you need to do is compile images or video clips that you already have into our custom-made-for-your-brand template, add relevant text, and download it. 

Start with strong social campaigns. Once you’ve got them in place, the word of mouth marketing gets much easier, and you have something for people to reference once they learn about you.

Conclusion 

When we talk to a lot of brands about the benefits of video marketing, they often stress that they worry about the total cost and time investment. They think they need to invest heavily into expensive PPC campaigns and expensive, time-consuming video, but that’s just not the case and Rothy’s is living proof.

Keep in mind, too, that the shoe industry isn’t exactly the easiest one to crack; they had fierce and widely-established competitors, and were still able to make an enormous dent in it with low cost social video and word of mouth marketing. Why can’t you do the same? 

Ready to scale your video campaigns to deliver individualized, fresh content on a regular basis? Learn more about Shakr here.