In the early stage of cross-border e-commerce independent station market, the importance of brand building was often ignored when the distribution mode was popular. More independent station sellers have joined the DTC brand camp, especially some ones with supply chain advantages. They have established their brand images through overseas marketing quickly and gained the first batch of seed users.

According to Lavy, head of brand operation of Yeahmobi E-commerce Solutions, the changes of brand independent stations in recent years can be summarized in terms of scale, station group and branding. “Some early sellers who grasped the overseas dividend of cross-border e-commerce,like SHEIN, have formed their own scale advantages and the moat of back-end supply chain. The stations still have profit space, so some sellers will continue to pursue the short-term benefits of the model. What I want to emphasize is branding, or DTC branding, which tends to focus on vertical segments. They are small and beautiful, with unique highlights in product and user experience. It has always been a trend.” said Lavy.

LUXATO HEARING CORP, a hearing aid e-commerce company founded in Chicago in 2018, went abroad in the business model of DTC brand. Yeahmobi Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yeahmobi) was in charge of all aspects of Luxato’s brand development, such as brand strategy formulation, marketing content, channel management and creative optimization. The program Luxato Overseas Integrated Marketing Case of Hearing Aid Expert LUXATO planned by Yeahmobi successfully won the Bronze Award of Overseas Group at the 23rd ROI Festival which ended recently.

What is ROI Festival? As one of the most representative awards in the advertising industry, the biggest difference between ROI Festival and other marketing creative awards is that ROI (return on investment) is taken to be the evaluation standard. In other words, the marketing projects winning the awards at ROI Festival have great reference value for domestic sellers in successfully realizing the brand going abroad. 

In communication with Ebrun, Yeahmobi revealed in detail how Luxato Overseas Integrated Marketing Case of Hearing Aid Expert LUXATO could increase the transaction volume by 200%, increase the number of orders by 4 times, and increase the recommended purchase orders by 3 times during LUXATO’s activity with a budget of 200,000-500,000. 

01 Challenging the Monopolized Hearing Aid Market

Yeahmobi found, during the preliminary investigation, that the competition in the hearing aid industry in the United States was fierce and there was a significant trend of homogenization among products. The main competitive products entered the offline market more than 40 years ago. In the mainstream market, the share of the products of giants was as high as 70%. LUXATO, which entered the United States in 2018, was facing the pressure from the offline market being monopolized by giants. 

In 2017, the new law signed by then US President Trump required the FDA to add OTC hearing aids category. Adults with mild to moderate hearing impairment were permitted to purchase OTC hearing aids directly through the Internet, supermarkets and pharmacies. Before that, any patients with hearing impairment had not been permitted to select hearing aids unless they had been tested and guided by professional hearing health-care personnel. It meant that a new door of the monopolized hearing aid market was opened. 

The relaxation of OTC drug sales policy can make LUXATO, a hearing aid brand, avoid FDA barriers and achieve a breakthrough through online sales. “However, middle-aged and elderly users account for a large proportion of hearing aid products. They are not used to buying products online, but also attach importance to product experience and after-sales service. In addition, the unit prices of hearing aid products are high, so only online marketing is not enough.” Spring, who is in charge of the LUXATO project of Yeahmobi, pointed out to Ebrun, “Because of the market structure faced by the brand and the characteristics of the target users, LUXATO needs online and offline efforts in specific marketing programs.”

“Different from FMCG or fashion clothing products, hearing aids belong to a relatively special vertical category, so the specific marketing means should be different.” Spring said.

02 Stage Test Data Guiding Online and Offline Marketing

In terms of online promotion, LUXATO has carried out short video publicity on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter and other major social platforms with the communication theme as the core, maintaining high-frequency and high-quality interactions with fans. In terms of offline promotion, according to the characteristics of users in the U.S. market, LUXATO sent letters (Direct Mail) to regular customers, and carried out brand promotion in regional magazines, industry professional magazines and television media. Through online and offline multi-channel exposure, LUXAT’s marketing effect was very obvious. 

In terms of TV media channels, LUXATO chose to carry out public relations publicity through News, Finance and Economics, Technology and TV, as most LIXATO users are over 50 years old, who like political news and pay attention to lifestyle and life quality.

In terms of specific marketing activities, the marketing team launched a limited time promotion of LUXMINI$99.99 from April 24 to May 3 this year accompanied by a series of brand promotion videos reflecting the warmth of families so as to reflect the company’s social responsibility during the epidemic according to the target users’ focusing on topics, experience, price sensitivity and longer experience of online shopping than that of market.  

Word-of-mouth order conversion happened during the promotion

From the end of the promotion to June, the word-of-mouth transformation continued

As for the combination of online and offline marketing, Spring pointed out that the marketing group focused on online promotion in the initial stage of online and offline marketing, but they began to develop offline marketing after the periodic test data reflected the relative specific user characteristics of offline marketing promotion. The on-line marketing benefited from the online feedback, which shortened the exploration cycle of the mode of “combining quality and effect”.

Spring stressed in the communication that the formulation of marketing plan was a process of continuous optimization and we needed to make judgments and adjust marketing strategies based on data testing and user feedback. Through iterative marketing, LUXATO’s 3-month additional purchase conversion rate increased by 20%, and the additional purchase cost decreased by 17%, which were better than the two key data of other competitive products in the industry.

During the promotion period, the transaction volume on LUXATO’s official website increased by 200% compared with the month before the promotion, and the number of orders increased by 4 times. The number of repurchase orders doubled and the number of recommended purchase orders increased by 3 times. The reputation of the brand gradually fed back the sales volume.

03  Making Accurate Portraits of Users with Google Analytics and Other Tools

In addition to the efficient integration of channels, LUXATO project also had obvious effect on the transformation of social media marketing.

According to the public data of ROI Festival, during the marketing period, the short videos of LUXATO were played more than 50,000 times, social media activities (fan stickiness) increased by 2 times and the number of subscriptions and fans (interest in the brand) doubled. For the first time, customers actively released evaluation and played unpacking videos for the brand, which caused discussions. 

Spring told Ebrun that LUXATO gradually reduced and locked the broad market and characteristics of hearing aid users, till accurate user portraits, with Google Analytics, hotjar and lucky orange and the help of the professional data from CEA survey of hearing aids. Then it further expanded traffic, subdivided different types of users, optimized marketing strategies and carried out refined marketing.    

In this regard, Spring explains that the brand needs to use a series of tools to accurately depict user portraits so as to improve the accuracy of marketing and social media delivery because there is a potential stratification between the users who buy hearing aids and those who use them, that is to say, the people who buy hearing aids are not only the people with hearing impairment, but also their relatives and friends, due to the particularity of hearing aid category.  

In addition, LUXATO brand has a Chicago team in the United States, which undertakes the localization of customer service, logistics and content output. The R & D team with more than 20 years of R & D and production experience is a back-end supply chain team with credibility and reputation in the market.Therefore, Spring believes that LUXATO has great potential for DTC brand success. The product strength that can withstand scrutiny and the content creativity of localization are undoubtedly the important premise for creating high-quality social media content.   

It is reported that the core social media content launched by LIXATO is live + short video. The team also holds expert video classes and product operation classes, which are conducive to the extension and upgrading of user product experience. 

It is worth mentioning that，according to Spring，after publishing the content on social media, the team will conduct one-to-one communication and exchange with important fans，and even supplement voice and video communication on the basis of traditional message and text communication. “In this way, the trust between the brand and users can be improved and users always feel that the products and services of the brand exceed their expectations. That is particularly important in the long-term shaping of the brand.”

In conclusion, LUXATO hearing aid project adopted the integrated marketing mode of “combining product and effect”. In the early stage of the design, they carried out detailed preliminary investigation and tried to “feed off-line promotion with offline users” in the testing process. They carried out DM marketing in the areas with good advertising test effect, and combined with multi-level promotion of DM + PR professional media, to constantly deepen people’s impression on the brand. In addition, learning with Google advertising machine, refined positioning of users and incremental promotion in unlocking transformation, they brought an diversified and innovative marketing model to LUXATO. It is a good example for other enterprises in the industry.