Goodr is a sunglasses brand that has *checks notes* five different Instagram accounts. As Avril Lavigne once said, ”Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?”
According to Goodr CMO Kelley Puckett, they’re all part of an effort to foster communities within different sports since the company creates sunglasses designed for running, biking, golfing, and crossfit. In addition to its main Instagram, each of these sports has its own account.
“We really saw an opportunity to connect with those communities on a deeper level,” she told Marketing Brew. “While all speaking to the brand, there’s different aesthetics for all the pages. Obviously, the conversations we’re having [across pages] are very different, and it’s really to create community with those different sports.”
Goodr isn’t alone; over the past few years, brands, especially DTC ones, have increasingly focused on community-building efforts as part of their marketing strategies.
“We saw the response to…the community that we were building with runners, and I think we realized there was just a huge opportunity to have these separate conversations with these sports on their own pages,” Puckett said.
Out the gate
For starters, there’s a different community manager to handle each Instagram account. They’re tasked with driving engagement, Puckett said, but also are looped in across the brand’s marketing efforts—like events, paid media, and PR—in order to make sure Goodr remains a cohesive brand.
When Goodr opened up shop in 2015, the brand was primarily focused on runners, Puckett said. In 2018, the company rolled out its “Beast” line of sunglasses inspired by crossfit and obstacle course racing, including its first Instagram account dedicated to one sport in particular. The next year, it followed the same playbook for bike, and then golf. By 2020, run had its own page, too.
Naturally, the main Goodr page remains the most popular by follower count, at 200,000. Run follows with close to 36,000, then Beast at about 21,000, bike at about 11,000, and golf at about 8,000. To promote brand new accounts, Goodr posts about them on its main page and existing spinoff pages, Puckett said, and community managers collaborate with other brands and athletes to increase awareness.
But engagement is the most important metric, according to Puckett, and each account has different benchmarks that determine its goals based on different seasons, given that “each sport has different seasons where activity is more prominent,” she said. Puckett declined to share specific engagement numbers.
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Community managers rely on content from an in-house creative team as well as user-generated content to populate the social pages. Chloe Towns, the run community manager, said in an email that she’s focused on “highlighting unique faces and leaders in their respective niches (road, track, and trail) while also continuing to celebrate the 5k runner” to increase follower count and engagement by making everyone feel represented.
Doug Orey, the bike community manager, said in an email that he’s doing something similar “by showcasing the awesome things our fans, athletes, and event partners are doing in the cycling world.”
According to Orey, the account’s “straight-up marketing posts do well, especially with engaging copy and fun images, but things really take off when our audience gets to see themselves on the page.”
Cross-training
In addition to running their Instagram accounts, Puckett said community managers weigh in on Goodr products, suggest athletes the brand could partner with, and suggest events to get involved with.
They also help write copy and engage with the brand’s 350 ambassadors in separate Slack channels for each sport, according to Puckett. The ambassadors are unpaid, must apply to join the program, and get free sunglasses throughout the year, she added.
Additionally, Puckett said community managers work with Goodr’s paid media team to determine what sort of events and content the brand should be advertising alongside. Goodr runs paid campaigns throughout the year across platforms including Google, Meta, TV, podcasts, and terrestrial radio, she said, with “targeting specific to cycling, to running, etc.”
Basically, it’s a packed job description.
“This is actually a really difficult position to hire for, because they’re not only an expert in their space, but they are essentially in a marketing role. You’re trying to find this kind of unicorn of a person who can do all of those things,” she said, later adding that “it’s not just social that they’re building that community on.”