What’s Upstairs

Recently, IMAGEHAUS stepped out of our every day routine and challenged ourselves to become even better at what we do. The result was the creation of Hi-Industries, a new company that will develop products focusing on elevating a moment into a memory. Our primary goals in this initiative were to provide us frontline insight into the obstacles clients deal with everyday and to learn about the power of social media. This real-life experience of what it is like to walk in our clients’ shoes has already made us smarter. Our first product is Toast-its, wraps for wine bottles that replace ordinary wine bags and greeting cards. IMAGEHAUS created 25 designs (available at toast-its.com ) that uncork your compliments, letting your gift of wine speak to any occasion.

Through much discovery, research and gut, we realized Toast-its would be popular if we could reach the desired audience. Additionally, we knew the product had a good balance between Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Experience (ROE). After all, it is not a new idea, but a smart improvement of an old stand-by—giving the gift of wine.

Strategically, we decided that we would use only social media to reach the target audience. The day after we launched the site, I posted a message about Toast-its including a link on my personal Facebook page and the entire team at IMAGEHAUS followed suit—driving all of our friends and family to the site. That same day, we started to receive orders. Our next step was to launch a campaign of Facebook Ads. This is where having a simple niche product proved to have a ton of value as it was easy to identify the potential Toast-its audience. We started by targeting fans of wine publications and home entertainment. Later that week we released an eBlast to our IMAGEHAUS contact list. At this point we have spent next to zero dollars and, in the first two weeks after launch, we achieved an average daily spend of $46.00 from a product with a unit retail price of $3.99.

Since our launch one month ago, these efforts, small as they may be, generated the following results: featured on 19 design/lifestyle blogs; found by and featured on Jasmere.com (a site dedicated to gaining national exposure for lesser-known specialty items); and listed on The Dieline as number 1 package design for the week ending 1/15/2010. Lastly, will be featured this Thursday, 1/28/2010, on Daily Candy, the leading trusted resource for the best new products and activities that reaches over 3 million subscribers.

The biggest insight I got from this experience is, when it comes to effective online social media marketing, you will have the most success if you make sure you are talking with your audience, not at them. It is not about selling, but more about sharing. Sharing a good idea, a solution to everyday problems. By making an impact on someone’s life. Which brings us back to the word of mouth being one of the most powerful and cost effective ways to increase brand awareness. It makes ROE as important, if not more important, as ROI.