Posted Nov 9, 2022

Marketing

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Marketing

How Does Nike Win at Marketing-led Design? [In-depth Analysis]

Marketing

Marketing

How Does Nike Win at Marketing-led Design? [In-depth Analysis]

1. Sell the Benefits, Not the Product

If you’ve seen any Nike ads or a commercial, you must have noticed that they hardly ever mention their products. 

The focus isn’t on the product at all. 

Instead, they trigger their audience's emotions by showing a product's benefits.  

What’s more, those benefits exceed just the functional ones.

Nike took it a step further by selling psychological benefits: you can do it, you’re unstoppable, and there are no limits for you.  

When you watch a Nike ad, you are probably overwhelmed with the same feeling, feeling that nothing can stop you.

Nike sells a better, healthier version of each of us. And that is what people buy through Nike’s products.

This type of emotional branding does wonders. Combining it with great storytelling and visuals gives you a formidable force that guarantees success. 

2. Tell the Story

Storytelling is one of the most compelling assets you can use to boost your sales and target your audience. Nike’s campaigns tell meaningful stories that their audience can relate to. 

It goes hand in hand with addressing your customer’s pain points or struggles. And  Nike does it in an absolutely extraordinary way.

 There aren’t many brands that cater to such a diverse audience: rich, poor, professional athletes, celebrities,  “ordinary” people, and different communities, and yet manage to tackle all of their pain points.  

How can Nike manage this? Because it doesn’t sell the product but benefits combined with storytelling.

 And benefits are the same for everyone. Starting from the most obvious one, having good quality footwear, to more motivational and inspirational ones, where we all get to be heroes and invincible.

3. Use the Power of Social Media

To attract or expand your audience, you need to know where to find them and where they gather.  And what better place than social media?

It is implied that you don’t have to post on all of them. It will hugely depend on where your audience is. 

When it comes to Nike, the brand is the most active on Instagram and Twitter. Not only that, it has the greatest number of followers. 

Besides collaborating with high-profile people, Nike stays consistent across all the platforms. It tells the story and creates user-generated content with beautiful visuals.

What do we mean by user-generated content?  It means that Nike caters to different segments of its audience, and it takes part in supporting various movements.  

Nike runs over 300 social media profiles. Nike has separate pages for its products, customer support, and geolocation.

For example, there is a Nikewomen channel.  It targets women from all walks of life. Nike's main message for women is about loving themselves and taking good care of themselves.  

Just like on Instagram, Nike has separate Twitter accounts for each of its subsidiaries where they reply or engage with the audience.

Not only is Nike active on social media in terms of posting, but it engages with its audience, too. For Nike, it is a two-way street.  

Many CTA’s and special offers trigger a response with their audience.  Fans are regularly presented with interactive challenges and campaigns. 

This way, the audience spreads the word further, resulting in a great number of Nike mentions and tags. 

Nike has mastered storytelling on social media by providing fun, short,  punchy, and inspirational posts that the audience loves to share.  All of this enabled Nike to build an army of loyal followers and an impressive community.

4. Provide the Ultimate Shopping Experience

“Just” having amazing products isn’t enough if your eCommerce store or website doesn’t look attractive or if it doesn’t match your brand voice and doesn’t provide all the relevant info for your customers. 

So what details should you pay attention to?

1. The appearance

In the case of Nike, their website imagery corresponds to the message Nike wants to convey: You can do it. 

Whichever page you go to, you’ll see equally high-quality photos that tell the stories of inner battles, removing obstacles, and living a vibrant and fruitful life. And this mental image is what stays in mind and hooks your audience.

2. Product filtering

This is one of the features that considerably improves the eShopping experience.

 Your customers can sort products based on size, brand, colors, material, dimensions, etc. 

3. Similar Product Recommendations

Suggesting a similar product to the one your customers bought or were interested in will provide an excellent shopping experience and keep visitors longer on your platform.

Nike took it even further by suggesting not only similar or related products but also the full sets(bundle offers) to complete your look.

The benefit here is multifold. Not only does it help a customer find matching clothes or accessories, but it also helps a store owner increase the number of orders and the average order value.

 5.  Create Stunning Visuals

All of Nike's marketing efforts would be in vain if it weren’t for visuals. Every ad, video, or post that Nike creates conveys the story with the help of stunning images and visuals.

Furthermore,  every Nike product online has an accompanying image.

Nike realized the importance of staying consistent and true to one’s vision and mission. 

The photos you see across Nike’s channels are easily recognizable. The colors are a perfect match, and their swoosh logo is enough alone to make you recognize the brand. 

So how can you make it work for your eCommerce store? 

Choose colors that match your brand colors that complement them. Make your logo visible in the photos so that people can immediately associate the colors and logo with your business.

Visuals are a must, no matter how big or small your eCommerce shop is. Especially when we talk about products.

The good news is that there are platforms that help eCommerce store owners create beautiful designs and product images in a flash. 

The even greater news is that you don’t need prior design knowledge. It sounds pretty cool, right?

Let’s see how Glorify helps you create compelling visuals.  Since the main stars of your eCommerce are products, we’d like to show you a few simple ways to raise your product images to a whole new level by:

1. Changing or Removing Background

From our template gallery, you can choose many different designs you can edit further. One of the most popular features is editing the background.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the process. The left-side menu provides additional tools and features so you can add shadows, reflections, change colors, play with contrast, brightness, etc. 

2. Highlighting the product’s features

Thanks to the Glorify annotation tool, you can highlight and emphasize the prominent features of your product.

With the help of this tool, your photos will look much more professional. You will also add a bit of creative twist to them compared to a standard product image. 

Highlighting the most prominent features brings a product closer to your audience. It makes it more familiar to them.  

Always bear in mind that your customers can’t physically evaluate a product. That is why you should  present your products in as clear and detailed way as possible.

By emphasizing the product’s features, you are emphasizing its benefits at the same time. And as you know by now, it is the benefits that drive conversions.

3. Instantly resizing your images

This cool feature enables you to resize your images to fit social media platforms immediately. It is a fully automatic process because most of our templates come in bundles. 

What does it mean? It means that once you download the design, you will immediately get the images that correspond to the requirements of social media platforms. 

But that’s not all. The bundles come with images optimized for email marketing, headers, banners, ads, blogs, etc.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you can achieve with Glorify. 

The most important thing remains to provide your customers with the ultimate shopping experience. 

A satisfied customer will spread the word and refer other new customers to you.

6. Even More Tips

Before we wrap things up, let’s share some practical tips on how to implement Nike’s strategies to your own brand.

  • Start implementing user-generated content in your brand by creating actions, discounts, and special offers. 

  • Ask your customers to take photos of them using your product. Genuine testimonials are one of the best assets to drive conversion because they make your brand trustworthy. As a result, you will attract more potential customers.

  • Choose products that can cater to a larger audience. For example, if you sell shoes, sell shoes for men, women, children, shoes for special occasions, etc.

  • Be active and present on social media. Reply to your customers, answer their inquiries, and don’t hide negative comments but address them to see where the problem is. Make it transparent.

  • Be socially responsible. If your products can in any way support some ongoing campaign or trend, take part in it. Find influencers who are passionate about the cause and would promote your products while doing something right for the community.

7. The Main Takeaways

If we could learn anything from Nike, it would be to:

  • (Get to) know your audience and listen to their needs and pain points

  • Show them the benefits of your product

  • Captivate them with great storytelling and content

  • Create amazing visuals to boost all the marketing efforts

Visuals are like the glue that holds everything together. From engaging with your audience, showcasing your product, and storytelling to posting on social media. You can’t run a profitable eCommerce store without high-quality images. That’s why Glorify is there to cover that part. Signup for free and start creating compelling images that provide a great experience and drive conversions. Just do it.

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