Summary: A case study on how we marketed the Beach Ring from launch to $40,000 in sales.

The COVID-19 pandemic was devastating to many businesses. However, there were many opportunities for companies to get creative. One such company was Coolbreeze, LLC, which invented the Beach Ring, a 12 foot in diameter ring that will mark a social distancing ring around you and your neighbor in public spaces like a beach or park. 

The owner, Peter Siano, came to Migman Media to build the website and market the product. We launched in time for the July 4th weekend. We had to pencil in that date because the finished product was being shipped from overseas. 

The Challenge

We knew that we had a tiny window for this product. Considering that majority of uses for it were outdoor, summer activities. Once Labor Day weekend was over, the opportunities were going to diminish. There were also no other products like this on the market to compare it to, and we didn’t have much time to do market research to see if there was any interest. We needed to make a big splash quickly with a limited advertising budget for a product that we weren’t sure people would buy. Our best option was to use the PR distribution service, PRWeb.

PRWeb would give us a distribution of more than 100 online outlets that would usually pick up a story from them. We hoped that there would be enough interest in the product as the beaches were starting to open up, and towns asked people to remain socially distant while on the beach.

The Results

The release went out on a Tuesday around noon. The first order came in on Wednesday morning around 6 am, and they kept going. We had 168 orders in two weeks!

We had news stations pick up the story. Some weren’t as kind reviewing the product as others, but it was all still good exposure. The owner, Pete Siano, was also featured on Good Day New York. In total, we had well over 300 orders for a product that sold for around $40 per piece. The story, however, doesn’t end there.

A Secondary Market Opened Up

As schools and universities started to open for the fall, there was a need to remain socially distant on these campuses, particularly in-person events. We started getting bulk orders from Harvard University, Seton Hall University, Marquette University, DePaul University, and the University of Miami, to name a few. Many of their staff found the stories distributed by PRWeb back in June and reached out for orders.  

Conclusion

The success of the Beach Ring was the right product at the right time as well some outside of the box thinking. The knee jerk reaction would have been to do a social media campaign or put the product up on Amazon. Both of those options would have blown through the marketing budget quickly. 

As of this writing, total sales were well over $40,000, most of that we attribute to a single press release at the right time and with the proper distribution. The press release cost us around $800 to distribute. We were then able to supplement exposure and sales with a social media campaign at a much lower overall cost. The client was ecstatic with the results, and we were fortunate to work on this project with them.