How to Run A Successful Digital PR Showroom
Running a successful digital showroom is part art, and part science. Combining beautiful product with a real understanding of the data is what sets successful digital showrooms apart.
Read on for Flaunter’s five top tips to run a successful digital PR showroom.
Never lose track of a sample.
Lost (or overdue) samples means less opportunity for coverage, expensive replacement costs, and generally makes you and your agency look like you’re not on the ball. While things will inevitably get lost at some point, using an outdated tracking system like an excel spreadsheet, emails and a touch of hope makes it pretty much a guarantee. Flaunter’s sample tracking system allows you to keep track of samples at all times, including what’s overdue, what’s been requested, and what you need to issue an invoice for. Sure, you can do all this with an excel spreadsheet, but just make sure you’re really on top of version control, and that more than one person in the team is across where samples are located, just in case someone is OOO.
It’s also important to track what samples might have been gifted or purchased, so you’re clear on what needs to be restocked.
Make it easy for stylists and editors to request samples from you.
The easier you can make the process of requesting and delivering samples for stylists and editors, the more likely you’ll get repeat requests. Stylists love to peruse your collections at all times of the day or night, and using a tool like Flaunter’s Digital Showroom gives them the ability to select the samples they want to use without having to take screenshots or copy down product names and then send them over in an email to you.
Flaunter’s sample tracking tools allow stylists to select exactly what they’d like to shoot and create a sample request in a matter of seconds.
Prove yourself indispensable with accurate reports for clients
Keep clients or management up to date with what’s been popular, what hasn’t moved off the shelf, and which editors and stylists are loving your product through comprehensive reporting. Flaunter’s digital showroom tool allows you to download all of this juicy data via CSV that you can plug directly into your reporting. Flaunter’s digital showroom tool also lets you track your average loan times and helps you to identify where you might be missing opportunities for coverage with editors and stylists taking longer than expected to return your product to you.
Even if you’re not on Flaunter, comprehensive reporting is crucial to managing any good digital showroom, and you should be able to provide to your higher-ups key stats around product popularity, expected publish dates and engaged stylists and editors.
Set up your online showroom as you would your IRL showroom – beautifully.
We’re all visual creatures, so instead of expecting your stylists to choose from an excel line sheet, create something beautiful for them that they enjoy using. Take lessons from IRL retail and merchandise your digital showroom beautifully.
Proactively reach out to your favourite stylists and editors
As with ANY PR, don’t just wait for the sample requests to come rolling in. Create showrooms targeted towards specific events, trends or new product and distribute them to your lists. Create digital showrooms of products you think editors or stylists will like, even if they haven’t reached out to you yet. The more you can stay top of mind, and prove to be an invaluable partner, the more traction your digital showroom will have.