Influencer Marketing, eCommerce and Social Media: A Case Study on Hawkers Led by Alejandro Betancourt
By dougbrown
Hawkers, a company that produces sunglasses fitted with polarized lenses that are styled to impress, began in December 2013. In just two years, the company began to top the “best-of” lists. It’s fair to say that the company disrupted the fashion sunglasses industry. From just a few hundred initial sales, Alejandro Betancourt grew the company into a mega-selling store that, by 2016, moved 10,000 units per day and raked in over $70 million. To do so, Hawkers revolutionized the potential for e-commerce and online selling, but they didn’t follow the standardized rules. Of the $70 million in sales made in 2016, almost $65 million came from social media. Here’s how they did it.
Influencer Marketing
In everyday speech, “influencer marketing” is known as a paid endorsement, but Hawkers and Alejandro Betancourt didn’t start with celebrities, as is the usual practice. They focused on consumer communities and began to place their products with influential social media stars in exchange for sharing photographs of these influencers, not only on the company’s social media platforms, but also on each individual influencer’s platform. Hawkers gave incentives, free merchandise and paid the influencer a percentage of each sale they helped create. Also, they allowed the influencer to offer discounts. Those actions enabled the company to utilize each influencer’s social status and social circles to sell their products.
Moreover, Alejandro Betancourt and his team targeted influencer marketing on college campuses, where they utilized word-of-mouth marketing combined with social influencing. The Hawkers buying community was mostly organic. With the help of word-of-mouth marketing and social leveraging, the company brought members to their buying community from more than 140 countries worldwide.
Today, Hawkers sells 90% of their products online. Their ability to disrupt the sunglasses industry is beyond amazing. The company went from four friends working together to promote one product to adding even more products and many employees. How they accomplished this is simple. They were a new company that needed social influencers, but they didn’t have the budget to book an A-lister. Instead, they looked at the world around them, at the world of social media and its non-celebrity influencers.
Hawkers launched a Campus Ambassador Program that used influencers from social media circles. In Spain, they found 5,000 brand ambassadors on college campuses across the country to help drive sales. They capitalized on the social reach of a variety of students from across the college spectrum, including star athletes, students with lots of friends, and the average college kid. Each student posed on their social media profile wearing Hawkers sunglasses and living the lifestyle of the brand.
Since each student had his or her own circle of friends, word about the brand began to grow. The students went to festivals, concerts, and other events, and their selfies showcased Hawkers sunglasses in some cool venues. People noticed, and Hawkers sales accelerated. Each student’s circle of influence hit the social media world, and from there, …read more
Source:: Social Media Explorer
