push the envelope.

Wow this 8 weeks really went by fast. But I can honestly say that I learned more in this 8 week course than I did my marketing class in high school that was an entire semester long. Anyway, I for one can always learn more, but I know that I have learned a lot of information and gained so many ideas in order to be successful now that I am in charge of the marketing department at Cooney’s in Appleton. I like the marketing side of things, of course my passion and my major is graphic design but I know I will always lean toward the digital side of things because I have learned so much from this class. I personally get very anxious and stressed when it comes to being successful, but with all of the information that I have learned from this class I have a plethora of new great ideas that I can implement on Cooney’s social media.

I for one am better with the creative side of the posts and had a hard time trying to understand the numbers and analytics side of things (let me know if you guys are the same, or have a different thought process and what your success stories are in the comments… or unsuccessful stories and how you’ve learned from them). Anything dealing with the thought process on the left side of my brain, I usually tend to make it way too complicated… thanks mom. Getting back on track here, I know this is the area that I will need to work on in addition to one major question that I have, and have always had… How do you know what the right amount of posts are? I mean I work for a clothing company so I am constantly looking at PACSUN’s instagram (https://www.instagram.com/pacsun/) and Urban Outfitter’s instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/urbanoutfitters/), and they post a couple times a day. On the other hand I do remember at the beginning of the marketing class our first interview was with the marketing director of von Stiehl winery, and Captain’s Walk winery. She had mentioned that you only want to post usually once a day, the reason being is so people don’t get annoyed/bored with their feed being constant posts of the same company. The other thing that I keep in mind is that we are marketing two completely different products. Let me know what you guys think.

The things that I think about the most though is the content that I will actually be posting. I have learned so much from this class, maybe not about the actual content that I am going to post, but how to post it and gain traction. It was almost an ah ha moment for me, because since covid hit, PACSUN posts on their instagram story every day… a poll, multiple polls actually. This or that? Which one would you buy? What pants would you match with this shirt? They make it interactive for the viewer, and it’s not like they reinvented the wheel by any means but I just never thought of doing something so basic. But it’s working, and it’s working well. 

The other tactic that I love is something I learned, or I should say something that I looked into more after learning about traction with instagram posts in this class. Another clothing company that I follow is Tilly’s, and they actually have someone that works for them do instagram stories as a day in the life of a Tilly’s employee. What designing a shirt looks like, what it looks like to outport a shirt, and how they market the new merchandise. They also will do a huge sale and the someone who works for Tilly’s will go on Instagram Live, and let everyone know how the sale is going, and “oh look at the turnout! OMG this is 50% off! Come on over to Tilly’s and buy it!” I love that tactic and I hope to implement the same strategy at Cooney’s.  

To wrap things up, there is so much more to marketing that I hope to learn in the near future hopefully when I start my career after college. I plan to take my career to California in hopes to work for a clothing company that I have followed my whole life. A company who’s clothing inspires me. Cooney’s is great but in the end I feel like I am succeeding in what I am doing there, and I need to “expand my horizon” holy shit that sounded cheesy, and I don’t even eat dairy haha. Typing this is bringing everything into perspective, like my time in Wisconsin is almost done. I feel like bringing my knowledge to California will challenge me more. I want to finish one last year out at Cooney’s, and continue to push the envelope there because god knows they need it. That sounded rude haha. I will explain. I want to continue to push the envelope at Cooney’s in the marketing department, because I want our posts to include more diversity. That is the one thing that I withheld from the marketing strategy. We talk about age, “oh are we trying to reach the 20 somethings? Or the grandparent?” My personal goal at Cooney’s is to change the question to; What communities can we reach? What community can we reach in February? What community can we reach in June? With the ads that I push out I want to be totally inclusive. You want to appeal to an audience? Then appeal to all of them.

“What separates good content from great content is a willingness to take risks and push the envelope”

Brian Halligan, CEO & Co-founder, HubSpot