Case Study:
5.11 Tactical
Tactical Gear Retailer Gets Strategic About Influencers
The Challenge
5.11 Tactical knows that influencers move retail mountains. Get your gear on the right person in the right shot, and sales shoot up.
Finding influencer signal in all the cultural noise is hard, though. Social media isn’t a free channel, and picking the wrong influencers wastes budgets, creative energy and brand equity.
We’ll say the quiet part out loud:
You can’t “trust your gut” on influencer marketing.
It’s a data-driven channel — or can be!
Here’s a quick gut-check (hah-hah!) for you. Who do you think the top influencers are for a retailer that sells tactical clothing, footwear and accessories for men and women?
Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, he won’t be back.
Scott Baio? Sorry, Chachi.
David Goggins? Stay away, hard!
5.11 Top Influencers
Despite the tac/ems/tough-gear product line, the top influencers for 5.11’s most interested consumers are business executives, “techies” and academics:
#1 - Sundar Pichai (Google CEO) - 298
#2 - Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) - 285
#3 - Atul Gawande (surgeon, writer, researcher) - 267
#4 - YCombinator (tech incubator) - 254
#5 - Shit Academics Say (academic humor) - 249
How Social Signal Figured This Out
Understanding how these surprise influencers bubble up takes a deep-dive into the consumer segments who like and follow 5.11.
#1 - F04 Military
#2 - A06 Tech Titans
#3 - G02 Silicon Nation
#4 - E06 Eastern Heritage
#5 - E04 Fashion Fusion
Aside from F04…not quite what you were expecting from that gut check?
That’s the magic AI uncovers from massive nationwide data. There’s always a surprise.
The Approach
Armed 😁 with these insights, 5.11’s influencer and social-media focus:
- Follow these top influencers as 5.11 - like, comment and share their material.
- Delve down in the Autopilot data for influencers that reach these segments and pay-for-play.
- Crass but practical - send some killer 5.11 duds to the top folks. One viral photo can move ten thousand shirts.
- Pitch a celebrity modelling opportunity — Atul Gawande may not look like the models on 5.11’s catalog pages, but who cares?
- Offer YCombinator swag for their next cohort.
Mathing The Results
It’s all about the upper-right quadrant — consumer segments with affinity for your brand and income for your products. Those A06 Tech Titans can snap up $380 duffel bags. Chasing that enormous G02 Silicon Nation contingent to bring their spend up above average could generate 4x the revenue vs F04 Military. (Conversely…who’s the slam-dunk target for a loyalty program here..)
Looking for YOUR profit math?
Talk to us
Social Signal can find the gold in your customer data, fast.
