Gear2Compete is an e-commerce sporting goods company based in Buchanan, New York, that specializes in wrestling shoes. When I joined the team, they had 23 followers on Facebook and 63 followers on Instagram, and they did not have a TikTok. Today we have 317 Facebook followers, over 2,500 Instagram followers, and over 17,000 TikTok followers. We also have over 1,200 subscribers on our email list. Along with the increased social media presence, we have seen a rise in conversions. Our sales have nearly tripled in the past year compared to the previous year, and this is due to our increased brand awareness.
The first thing I did to increase brand awareness was to incorporate the company’s logo and logo colors in social media posts, as well as specific fonts and content styles. This allows audiences to be able to tell if it’s our post–even if the username was covered. By doing this, it gave Gear2Compete a stronger brand identity.
Next, I incorporated boosted posts to our target audience using Meta Ads. I targeted those in the wrestling community and other sports, as well as parents of young athletes who are likely buying their gear. This created more engagement and reach on our posts, which led to more followers.
To take the company to the next level, I knew we needed to tap into an audience that we were missing–TikTok. Along with TikTok, I shared the videos on Instagram Reels, which helped increase our Instagram presence. I incorporated trending audios and made them relevant to our brand, as well as shared footage from wrestling events we sponsor. The most growth we saw on TikTok was when we worked with a college wrestler. I would give him content ideas, and he would film them and give me the footage to edit into the final product. This organically attracted our wrestling audience because the videos were relevant to wrestlers, whether it was lifestyle or techniques.
Lastly, I incorporated email marketing using Mailchimp. With our growing email list, many of whom are returning customers, I started sending emails to attract people to our website. For example, we saw great success when we held a sale in which customers only received the coupon code if they signed up to our email list before the sale started. Email marketing is a great tool because it keeps you fresh in customers’ minds, and you can reach people in a way that’s more exclusive than social media.
Gillian Rainville 