How We Grew Pinkcolada’s Instagram with Organic Marketing
Overview
Based on the sunny shores of Australia, Pinkcolada stood out as one of the most promising swimwear brands to launch with their bright, colorful bikinis and commitment to inclusivity for all shapes, sizes and colors.
The brand takes inspiration from exotic destinations around the globe with color palettes carefully selected each season to pack the most tropical of punches, from sweet, sugary pastels to citrusy brights.
Since launching in 2019, Pinkcolada is steadily growing and brings in about $1.5 million Australian dollars per year and has been featured in Forbes Australia, Instyle and Vogue.
The Challenge
The rise of swimwear brands in the last 10 years made it harder for newer brands to stand out. Now more than ever, the need to be “more than just a label” has become a high demand from customers who expect brands to offer more than just products — but instead, a voice, a statement, a community.
For Pinkcolada, the rise to fame came fast. With a steady following of 100,000 followers on Instagram and over 40,000 likes on Facebook, they have indeed captured eyes through their fun-loving messaging, paired with bright, trendy bikinis. But it seems that vivid, rich images can’t keep a follower happy for too long.
Despite their aggressive marketing efforts, they couldn’t figure out why their posts aren’t getting as much attention. Day by day the follower count continues to fall and engagements went from 500+ likes a post to less than 200. Even worse, their comment section is bombarded with trolls and angry comments from frustrated customers.
With barely 0.5% engagement rate and a flood of frustration, I worked with Pinkcolada to figure out how we can improve their social media presence and overturn the declining growth.
Goals
The first thing to do before every marketing development is to identify your goals to help you get from Point A to Point B.
For Pinkcolada, these are:
Increase engagement and retention of followers
Drive traffic to the website
Build a community of free-spirited fashionistas and wanderlust-filled women
Solution
Navigating complex challenges like this requires a lot of research to figure out the best solution for the brand. It is very important to layout the groundwork for improvement and lessen the impact of the already tainted influence.
Using empathetic messaging and helpful advice, one of the very first things we did was to address the comment section and slowly build connection with the shoppers and followers alike. Whether it was with a sincere apology, a money-back guarantee, an exclusive discount or a detailed response regarding orders, all efforts were made to console the customers.
Next, a more social-based approach was developed to encourage engagement to the content and to start building a community.
We shared likeable posts with appealing call-to-actions to allow fun tags and comments to flourish in the comment section. We also ran exciting giveaways to reward existing shoppers and entice new followers. We also worked with several influencers that aligns with the brand’s ethos to create a series of posts for us and also developed a content strategy to encourage customers to share their buys through user generated content (UGCs).
Results
The feedback we received from shoppers and followers was extremely positive, with many joining in on the conversation on the comments or stories. The engagement has doubled and is still steadily growing to this day.
The set of content created along with the new direction allowed for the brand to continue their rise to fame and with hopes to never waver.
