Black Optical

About

Black Optical began as a standalone retailer of luxury eyewear out of Tulsa, OK in 2007. Based on their success in building great relationships with their in-store customers, Black Optical opened a new location in Oklahoma City in 2011, and another in Dallas, TX in 2016.

You will never find a conspicuous logo on Black Optical shelves, as they focus instead on independent designers. Each curated pair has enough personality to turn heads but are classic enough to still remain timeless. A founding principle at Black Optical is “Great design never goes out of style.”

Challenge

When Gary Black expanded Black Optical into Dallas, TX, they built a strong following of eyewear collectors and were looking for a way to grow their business, reach an affluent audience, and create a best-in-class online shopping experience.

In July 2020, during the COVID Pandemic, Black Optical watched their in-store sales evaporate and needed to make a change. Tractorbeam began working with them to help grow their audience and drive more sales by using digital marketing.

Our Approach

With all clients, Tractorbeam’s first step is identifying the audience. In the middle of a pandemic, and beyond, we not only needed to identify the affluent audience, but build it locally around each of the Black Optical locations (Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Dallas).

Once we understand who the audience is, we work to discover where the audience is. Where do they spend their time online? How do they make buying decisions? What influences them to purchase a product? What will inspire them to purchase our product?

We work with our clients to understand their revenue goals, then we map those goals to the marketing channels their audience is in.

Execution

We began with moving the legacy website from Drupal to Shopify, which allowed for an improved user experience, a better shopping experience, and more payment processing abilities.

We worked with Black Optical to create a content marketing strategy that focused on eyewear designers and collections. We redesigned the email marketing program to better showcase the Black Optical value proposition and eyewear, and constantly engage the audience.

Then, Tractorbeam implemented Google Ads, Google Shopping, social media ads, and retargeting, all aimed at an affluent audience in the markets Black Optical could easily deliver.

With constant optimizations and refinements, we grew Black Optical to new heights.

Results:

Black Optical has experienced continual revenue growth since our campaigns launched back in July 2020.

Additionally, Black Optical has now grown from three stores to seven, with multiple locations in St. Louis and a new store in Fort Worth.

Tractorbeam’s success strategy for Black Optical remains the same: identify the affluent audience and meet them where they spend their time online.