How agency Maison MRKT supercharged their growth through digital advertising

How does a startup digital marketing agency go from operating out of an apartment to an office on Park Avenue in just five years? That is exactly what Maison MRKT accomplished, building a client list that includes names like Carolina Herrera and Elie Tahari along the way.

Maison MRKT helps their clients, who are primarily in fashion and ecommerce, reach their digital marketing goals, ranging from driving traffic and sales to increasing brand awareness. The agency was born five years ago in New York City and has had a meteoric rise since then.

According to Lexi, Maison MRKT can attribute its success to starting small, listening closely to its clients, and adapting to their needs.

“We started working with smaller brands on smaller budgets, understanding what clients needed,” says Nastos, “and we were actually able to grow this agency by closely listening to what our clients needed, what they were seeing, and then trying it out ourselves.”

Adapting to a constantly shifting digital landscape

In the short time that Maison MRKT has been in business, much has changed in the way their clients’ customers find and buy from them. The avenues for brand discovery have multiplied, and it’s Maison MRKT’s job to use digital to help influence that discovery and consideration process.

One thing that’s become increasingly important is a compelling brand story, delivered in an engaging way.

“They need to have a reason for being, they need to have a clear idea of who is going to be their loyal shopper,” says Nastos “and then from our side we need to be able to take that and test different unique selling points online to see what people resonate with.”

Maison MRKT has also seen customer loyalty changing in recent years. With so many options available, getting repeat purchases and nurturing customer lifetime value is a much bigger challenge. The agency helps its clients rise to that challenge with data.

“What we’re doing on our side in order to combat that is analyzing the data for our clients for their most loyal customers, understanding the repeat purchase rate of those customers, the lifetime value and then structuring campaigns in order to influence first time purchasers to become repeat purchasers and then loyal clients.”

–Lexi Nastos, Co-Founder, Maison MRKT

Elevating their work with the right partners

As the agency continues to grow, Nastos is most excited about tools and partners that can help free his teams to focus more on strategy and storytelling.

Maison MRKT came to Criteo after a few clients had seen Criteo ads, liked their look, and asked to learn more. Since then, the agency has enjoyed the results and the support of the partnership.

“Our relationship with Criteo so far has been excellent. The Criteo team does a fair amount of the heavy lifting. So, for example, Criteo will implement the tracking pixel on the website for you. Other display solutions don’t necessarily do that,” explains Nastos. “We’ve had dedicated account managers on the Criteo side that have always been available to us and we’ve also made plenty of use out of the accelerate team in order to get things done quickly.”

Being a first mover

To help their clients take advantage of new opportunities in the fast-paced digital space, Maison MRKT adopts a “first-mover approach”. Nastos explains, “It’s our challenge to change their mindset so that they can adapt to the way things are now, but also how they’re going to be in five years, 10, and 15 years.”

Being the first to try new products is a key part of that. “Criteo has also reached out to us with different types of beta products that are available, which has allowed us to then go to our clients, tell them about something new, try it out. Trying out some of these beta products has made a huge difference for us.”