Graze

Whenever anyone says the word food, my ears instantly perk up.  When someone says "box of food delivered to your house" the lazy girl in me gets giddy.  Graze is a subscription box that offers delicious and healthy snacks. The main place I've seen them advertise is through twitter.  

The company is obviously doing something right since they're getting people to see their advertisement, but personally as a consumer I hate seeing promoted ads. They just clog up my news feed and I end up hitting X of just scrolling past it rolling my eyes.  Graze needs to find its niche on twitter better by either posting great content that is relatable and will make everyone want to retweet it or by finding celebrity endorsers.  If we see our favorite actress or youtuber supporting a product were 10 times more likely to go out and try it.  I think if they approached twitter through this stance they could attract more customers.

BIrchBox

The most common type of subscription boxes are makeup boxes.  Reaching out to customers on the proper platforms is key to the success of subscription boxes.  Below is an advertisement for BirchBox that was sponsored on my facebook page.

Facebook is a smart platform to advertise on seeing as it has one of the largest audiences of all social media platforms.  This past summer BirchBox had a campaign on Facebook of them coming to visit certain cities.  I found out about it from friends sharing and Facebook alerting me that my friends were attending an event near me.  This campaign was incredibly smart because it got them name of the company out to more people.

Personally I prefer a different makeup subscription box seeing as I believe it is worth more bang for your buck, but I cannot deny BirchBox has a great social media advertising presence on Facebook.

GlossyBox

A few days ago I was scrolling through Instagram on my phone and noticed a GlossyBox ad.

When items are being promoted on Instagram they are clearly stamped with the sponsored tag by the account name.  As a consumer I enjoy this because I don't feel tricked by my news feed.  In my opinion advertising like this is incredibly smart.  Before seeing this ad I was vaguely aware of GlossyBox, now I know exactly what the box is and what their theme for October is.  I already subscribe to a makeup box, so they have done well at defining their target market. 

More often then not now ads are seen on instagram.  My only token of advice is to make these ads more entertaining through making them interactive.  I have seen a few Instagram ads that require the user to interact with the ad.  Nine out of ten times I interact with those ads simply because they are so fun to watch. 

Club W

What's better than sitting on your couch drinking wine?  Sitting on your couch drinking wine that was delivered to your door.

Club W, a wine subscription service, first caught my eye when I was browsing Buzzfeed.  Someone in the Buzzfeed community posted a list of 20 great subscription boxes--number 9 was Club W.  As a 21 year old who enjoys a causal glass of wine this instantly intrigued me.  The first thought that ran through my head was, "I can order 4 bottles of wine simply sitting in my bed--excuse me what," with the heart eyes emoji accompanying that statement.  After looking at the website and moving on to the next dozen Buzzfeed articles the box was out of my mind.

A couple of days later the box popped up on my Pinterest page.  Since then I have seen the advertisement for Club W a few times.  In my opinion they are doing a moderate to great job of using social media to advertise their product.  I definately think they have room to expand their paid advertising via social media, but where they are advertising they are doing a good job of reaching their audience.

Ipsy

They say diamonds are a girl's best friend, but that has never been the case for me.  For me it has always been makeup is a girl's best friend.  I was always that little girl that had her box of cheap makeup that she loved pretending to put on.  As I've grown older I've become the girl that has bags of makeup that I love put on--so nothing really has changed except the quality of my makeup and the fact I actually know how to put it on.  A few years ago I heard about a subscription box that allows makeup samples to be delivered to your house and I was all for it.  The first service I signed up for turned out to be not worth it, then one day I came across this youtube video from eleventhgeorgous.  They compared Birchbox and Ipsy, two makeup subscription boxes. This video is what introduced me to Ipsy.  The biggest difference between the two services is that Ipsy offers more full sized products for the same price as Birchbox.

Ipsy has the best social media presence I have seen from almost any company.  First off they have a plethora of youtubers advertising their product.  Most of these youtubers even pay for their subscriptions, so their opinions of the service tends to be trusted more.  Below are just a few videos that focus on Ipsy with the number of views listed below the titles.

 Not only is their youtube presence from others massive, but the company's channel has a large following too.  The company has huge Youtube beauty guru personalities such as Michelle Phan, Christen Dominique, Chrisspy, Desi Perkins, and more acting as spokespeople for the brand.

In addition to their youtube channel they have a massive presence on instagram.  They encourage their customers to share their Ipsy bags each month.  The only thing you have to do is add the hashtags #(month)GlamBag #ipsy. If you search #ipsy on instagram you get thousands of results, the most recent ones being those of their latest glam bag.

Their social media presence is the most amazing I've seen in a long time.  This is primarily because their presence is driven by their customers.  When potential consumers see that their current customers are happy it drives prospects into becoming current customers.

BarkBox

Truth be told I'm completely kind of obsessed with my pets.  My family has four--yes FOUR-- dogs and we foster for a husky organization, which means on any given week we have 4-7 dogs in my house.  In Athens my roommate has one dog, Ace, who is the most prince-like spoiled dog because of my roommates and myself.  

While I was browsing Twitter a couple of weeks ago a retweet popped up on my news feed.  I follow the account Cute Emergency on Twitter and they kept retweeting things posted by BarkBox.  The retweets were effective in explaining what exactly the box is, so instantly I wanted to know more about the service.  Barkbox is a subscription based box that sends sends you new dog toys, treats, and more dog related items once a month.  Their twitter account is simultaneously one of the best and worst used twitter accounts.  

Above is a screenshot of their twitter account home page.  The only obvious mention of their service is in the description.  I scrolled back over 3 weeks into their tweets to find that past the description there is no real sales pitch of their product.  In my opinion thats where their social media went wrong.  What they have done good so far is they promote their content along with other dog related content.   

If I wasn't on a college kid budget I would 100% order this for Ace.

Bean Box

Coffee lovers everywhere rejoice!  You can now get a variety of coffee beans delivered to your door each month! Coffee is a universal language.  It's used for every situation from old friends reminiscing to the drink that greets your lips every morning.  If you're anything like me coffee isn't just a drink anymore, it is a further extension of oneself. When I heard that there was a subscription box for coffee I immediately looked into it.

Bean Box is a coffee subscription company headquartered in Seattle, which I like to refer to as the coffee capitol of the United States.  The first time I heard about Bean Box was when I was surfing the everything page on Pinterest.  It was then that it dawned on me that Pinterest is one of the best advertising outlets a company can use. Not only is it basically free advertising, but it is promoted by the consumer.  When other consumers promote a product, it's viewed more favorably by all.  This random stranger's promotion of this box prompted me to click further to the website to find out more information.   They offered customers $5 off the first box, which hooked this caffeine addict immediately.

Nature Box

The one thing that brings everyone together is food.  Now a days everyone is pushing towards being health conscious.  So long are the days of gushers and fruit roll ups and say hello to the days of fruit and veggies.  There's one subscription service that has decided to take a stance on healthy food does not have to be boring.  Nature Box is a company that aims at making snacking delicious and healthy. Out of all of the food subscription boxes there are out there how does Nature Box set themselves apart? Youtube.

Nature Box has extended their marketing out to Youtube personalities.  They give the personalities a free subscription to their box in return for an honest review.  This type of marketing is genius.  These youtube personalities have anywhere from 500 thousand to 5 million views on each of their videos.  This means that even if everybody watches the video twice thats 250 thousand to 2.5 million more people knowing your company name and the quality of your products.  I personally fall into that category.

A year ago I was browsing through youtube looking at different videos and came across a vlog from the ShayTards channel, which has 3.73 million subscribers.  I started mindlessly watching it when they brought up Nature Box.  The father of the family, Shay, along with his wife tried the food on camera and attested to how good the food was and how it was actually healthy in a completely unforced nature.  Then they presented a 50% off code for the viewers to use to try Nature Box, which was later changed to your first box being free.

As a vegetarian who finds it hard to find healthy, delicious food I was instantly hooked.  Immediately I went and ordered a box. After a week of waiting the box finally got to my house.  The food was beyond delicious and I would have never ordered it if it wasn't for the Youtuber recommending it to me.

At the time of this blog post the video has around 3.43 million views, which means anywhere between 1.715 million people to 3.43 million people viewed that video and were exposed to the company.  The ShayTards and dozens of other Youtuber's have been tapped to introduce Nature Box to the market.  Not only did the company come up with a creative way of advertising, but they came up with an extremely effective one that made themselves stand out from their competition using a form of social media.