In the ever-changing world of marketing, boutique owners are constantly on the hunt to create new ways to bring in customers, attract attention to their products, and promote both their online and brick-and-mortar shops.
As of late, the most popular and lucrative method that boutiques are taking on include hiring and partnering with celebrities to act as endorsers and ambassadors for their brand or boutique.
Working with celebrities helps to draw people into your boutique –whether online or physical – by providing awareness, credibility, and promotion.
Figuring out the correct and most lucrative ways to implement celebrities in your marketing strategies can be confusing, so we’ve laid out some of our tried-and-true methods for celebrity utilization to promote your boutique.
Keep in mind that strategies will differ slightly depending on what type of boutique you have – the nature of online boutiques versus brick-and-mortar boutiques are different, so you can expect that your strategies with working with celebrities might be a bit different as well.
How to Utilize Celebrities for Your Boutique’s Promotion
Before we break down the individual strategies for each type of boutique, we’ll go over some blanket advice that applies to both.
Before you decide to commit to a celebrity, and they to you, it’s important you’re asking yourself if they’re truly the best fit for you. Ask yourself, “does this celebrity have the morals, brand association, and following that I’m looking for?” If you can answer yes to those questions, and you have a celebrity on board who you’d be proud to be associated with, it’s time to get going on your strategies.
First though, we recommend having a drawn-up contract laid out for both you and the celebrity that determines a mutually beneficial agreement. Lay out what they’ll be doing, what they’ll be receiving, what you anticipate receiving, what you expect from them, and how you plan to compensate them as well.
Now that you’ve got your basic bases covered, it’s time to work on strategies for each type of boutique.
Online Boutique Strategy
In a digital-run world, having an online boutique can be a blessing and a curse all at once. You’re able to develop new ways to promote traffic to your website, like using a celebrity, but you’re usually battling far more online shops than you would with your brick and mortar boutique – there’s good and bad, it’s just the nature of the beast.
When it comes to celebrity strategy for promoting your online boutique, there are a few different approaches you can take.
Social Media Takeover
One of the best ways to draw people to your boutique is to utilize a celebrity’s reputation and have them do a social media takeover. This means that this celebrity will run your social media accounts for a specific amount of time – a day, a week, a month – giving people the opportunity to interact with them on your boutique’s account. This will draw attention toward your online shop as people are typically drawn to interacting with celebrities they follow and admire.
Have the celebrity post this on their account, and post on yours as well in the days leading up to the takeover. Make sure you’re using a specific hashtag and your celebrity is tagging your boutique’s account in all of their pre-takeover and post-takeover posts.
Endorsement Ad and Product Review Series
A creative way to drive traffic to your online boutique is to feature special videos, commercials, and ads exclusively on your boutique’s website that feature your select celebrity.
You can set up a variety of different campaigns, but one of the best strategies is to have your celebrity do a string of endorsement videos for your boutique and products, and even do online review videos of your products as well.
Feature these exclusively on your boutique’s website so people have to visit your site to see them, but definitely make sure that you and your celebrity are promoting these ads on your social media and letting your followers know where to see them.
Guest Appearances and Guest Talks Online
Another wonderful way to get customers to your site is to promote special, boutique-exclusive videos of the celebrity on your boutique’s webpage.
You can feature your celebrity on video, in your boutique, answering questions, talking about their lives, and promoting your boutique’s products.
People love to hear what their favorite celebrities have to say, and they trust their judgement. Having a celebrity people trust discussing your products in a free-wheeling, casual way adds credibility to your boutique and your products, encouraging people to visit your site in order to watch.
Brick-and-Mortar Boutique Strategy
Although this type of boutique is a bit more traditional, you can still think of innovative, effective ways to use a celebrity to promote your physical boutique.
Guest Appearances
Just as you’d schedule a social media takeover with your favorite celebrity, it’s important, if you’re a physical boutique, to schedule events with guest appearances from the celebrity you’re choosing to work with.
Assigning a specific time and date where your celebrity will be in boutique, answering fans questions, signing autographs, and talking about their favorite products from your brand can increase the traffic to your boutique immensely.
This won’t just apply to that day, either. If properly promoted, people will flock to your boutique before, during, and after the celebrity promotion.
Photo Posting and Promotion
You can still utilize a celebrity on your social media to draw people into your brick-and-mortar boutique.
If you’re not promoting about a special guest appearance, you can always take photos of the celebrity you’re working with inside your physical boutique. Show your followers that the celebrity they admire goes into your physical boutique to buy products, hang out, and find their new favorite items.
People tend to copy celebrity behavior and seeing a star in your boutique is likely to encourage them to pay your boutique a visit as well.
Physical Endorsement Ads
Not everything is all about social media these days, though. You can run successful celebrity endorsement campaigns through old-fashioned billboards, commercials, and even photos in your boutique.
If you hang photos inside your location with the celebrity you’ve chosen to partner with, it’s likely that word will get out that that celebrity shops there. This will drive traffic to your boutique because people find celebrity opinions credible, but also because they’ll want to try to get a peek at the celebrity shopping at the same time as they are.
Our Final Thoughts on Celebrity Promotion
Above all, it’s important when you’re choosing to work with a celebrity, you’ve done the hard-work beforehand determining whether you and the celebrity will be a good fit. Partner with someone who fits your brand, has a positive reputation, and will gain a following you’re lacking.
Whether you’re looking to attract clientele to your online boutique, your brick-and-mortar boutique, or both, it’s important that you’re carefully strategizing and creating effective campaigns to fully utilize the partnership you’ve agreed upon.
Work together with the celebrity of your choosing, heed their advice, but above all, create custom campaign strategies that will work best for your boutique.
Billy Bones is the founder of Booking Agent Info and Moda Database. Booking Agent Info provides businesses with the contact information for the official agents, managers, and publicists of celebrities. Moda Database provides businesses with the contact information for the stylists of celebrities, in addition to the brands that they have worked with and agency info.
