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Social Media for Pre-Holiday Marketing

So let's talk about the role that social media can play in your pre holiday marketing because even though it doesn't drive sales that doesn't or doesn't drive sales directly that doesn't mean that it's not important we just have to understand where it falls in our customer acquisition process so they learned earlier on ly one point nine percent of online holiday sales came from social media last year tiny email drove twenty three percent I'm clearly you guys all got that point because everyone's top to do us item is email which is great I love hearing that but we can still use social media to build awareness to create connection and to drive potential customers to your email list and this all could be part of your pre holiday marketing strategy I want to talk about how to use social media to do these things so how do you social media to increase awareness because that's really the first step right? We're trying to get more people to find out about us so the first one is post great plat...

form specific content you can't just post the exact same content on every single platform you have to know what responds what works and people respond to each platform that said pick one or two and focus on those let the rest go but then spend time seeing what people respond to and posting that great content then you want to interact with your ideal customers so interact with people that means certainly interacting with people who comment on you but you can also go out and find people on social media who are your ideal customer and interact with them now I'm not talking about going out and finding someone who seems like their ideal customer and then commenting on their instagram hey follow me you would like my stuff that is fami instead, if you see someone and you think this person looks like a great fit, maybe you saw them cause someone else posted about them or maybe you found them through a hashtag go in like some of their stuff combat positively the shoes air adorable I love your hair if they really seem like someone you want interact with follow them, build a relationship so it's amazing how a couple of likes and follow can be a non spam e way to get you out your customer to find you on instagram by finding those people I get it here increasing awareness use hashtags that are relevant to your customers and not your peers gonna ran for a second here. So all of those hashtag that you guys were using on instagram that are like jeweler metal smith instead smithy whatever I'm sorry they're not doing the job that you want them to dio just going to be honest because your customers aren't clicking on those your peers are clicking on those and while it could be fun to grow your followers, if your followers are going to buy, they're not useful. So think about the hashtags that your customers might be using. What are they talking about in their day? And again, this depends on the platform so obviously hashtags air heavy on instagram. They're heavy on twitter, pinterest doesn't actually like them, so don't worry about it. They're there think about what things your customers were searching for your facebook kind of hole somewhere in the mill, so they may and may not be part of your strategy, but if they are part of your strategy, think about it for your customers and not your peers, and then you can always run targeted ads. I buy ads on facebook, you know why? Because they make it so easy to find my ideal customer. I can create pinpoint, specific customer profiles and aiken target them with not a lot of money I spend. I did the math yesterday twenty twenty five thousand dollars every year doing trade shows to try to connect to stores to connect to my ideal customer. Why wouldn't I spend a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars a year on facebook to directly target my ideal customer and all of this other stuff takes a lot of time. This does take time to get right, and I'm guessing there's, probably some pretty good classes, and the long about facebook, advertising and pinchers has advertising as well to twitter. It does take a little time to learn, but if you know who your ideal customers and you can hyper target, this is going to raise awareness faster than probably a lot of these other things so it's worth thinking about. So the other thing that I think a lot of people think they're going to use our giveaways, I'm gonna do a giveaway, right? Tio help increase awareness. So is this something you should d'oh? Maybe, but if you're going to do a giveaway to increase awareness there, a couple of guidelines that you should follow the first one is avoid the buying season don't give products away when people are most likely to buy them, because what happens is they're like, I want to buy that right now because maybe I'll win and then they don't win, then they forget so no giveaways in november december take it off your calendar it's not even an option. Giveaways should happen in the awareness stage, which is way before we get to the buying stage, if you're going to give you what you need to actually give away your product or something super related to your business. Don't give away cash and people an ipad don't give away, you know, a gift card to target, because none of those things are going to attract people who like your products, they're going to track people who want a free ipod don't use generic, give away or whatever when this don't use those generic hashtags, because those were just going to attract people who are looking for giveaways. So it's okay to run a giveaway that generate some excitement, but you want to do it with in your existing customer base to use it to find other customers like them, not people who are interested and just finding giveaways. And then I think it's really important. If you're going to do a giveaway, make people give you a little level of commitment, make them follow or subscribe, however you give away a structured don't just be like, I'm going to do give away, and if you like this post, your entered takes two seconds to, like a post for me, that's not enough commitment, I want them to follow me, or I want them to tag three friends, or, you know, depending what you're running, you might want them to sign up for an email list, I probably wouldn't do that, even though email captures our main goal, because, again, we want people aren't on our email list who are most likely to buy so I usually go for social media follows on to give away, and then I worked down the chain, getting the ones who are most committed onto the email list, but make them stick around at least for a little bit, and then you also want to have a next step in mind, so what's the goal. So you're going to a giveaway to increase momentum, but then what's the goal? Ideally, then you're going to spend the next week trying to get all those new followers on your email list that's a good way to do it? Give away think about what you're going to do next to head of increased engagement so that's the first piece is using social media to increase awareness, but the next one is that you can use social media to build connections with your son sores with your with media that you're looking to pitch, we're going to pitch them on social media, but we're going to connect with them and, of course, your potential customers so you can feel it connections with your stores, both your current stores and stores that you're trying to target on social media by commenting and interacting on a regular basis. Not pitching, we're not putting anyone on social media, we're not saying hey, you should check out my products may be great in your store, but what you can do is if you know there's a store that you think you should be in go find their social media profiles like their facebook page, follow them on instagram and then interact tweet back to them comment on a post interact with them on a regular basis they see you popping up at some point they're going to go back and look at your profile as well just start to build that relationship stores in particular, wholesale, this is a relationship business, so the more you can do to build the relationship, the better. You know, when I was launching the contra collection, my new pieces, I thought for sure I was just going to sell it retail I wasn't I wasn't going to sell my stores follow me on social media, they were like we want it when can we have it? So building those relationships with stores isn't just a pre holiday marketing strategy can really pay off all year round, but it could be a great way to target and find stores for two stores what well, so far, stuff of life in santa cruz and new moon that I just came from in tahoe is all cross promote a poster with mainly they're branding and then I'll send that to them and say can you post this because if you post on their site it'll get buried in the right you know visitor postings whereas that'll show up yeah on their facebook page yeah yeah it's a great way to go can interact and I met someone recently at a trade show who just started her wholesale business it was their first time doing a trade show but she already had thirty stores because she found them and interacted with them on instagram her by your skew a little younger so there clearly are very active on instagram thirty stores before her first trade show simply by finding stores she likes following them on instagram and commenting and interacting so it could be a really, really powerful tool. You could also use social media to build connections with the press same thing I find the press that you are interested in targeting goto a magazine now almost every magazine the person who wrote it either has their twitter handle or their instagram handle depending on I would say how visual the magazine is right so find those people that you know who wrote the gift guide that you liked can you find them on social media now with a lot of the bigger bloggers they're going to have huge social media followings and so commenting and interacting probably isn't going to get you a lot of traction but out of the magazine editors not all of them have those huge followings so those can be great people to interact with me on twitter there on twitter a lot looking for leads and you can also help them by supplying leads that aren't you so you could follow target me on twitter make a list just your targeted media outlets as they're going hey guys I'm working on a story I'm looking for a cool x y z and you know of a cool x y z give them that lead suddenly you're helpful source so that if then the next week ah pitch from you lands in their in box it's not a cold pitch because they saw you on twitter first and you helped them out so this could be another great way to interact with potential media and help increase your chances of having those pitches red and then you can do the same thing to build a connection with your customers so part of it is just what you're posting you know share related behind the scenes content related not this is what I ate for dinner this is my kid this is my dog that's not related related is hey look at the new product I'm developing I'm off to a show here's a cool store that sells my work related behind the scenes content and responding to comments the people who are following you and commenting they are your fans comment back reward them for commenting and interacting it seems so obvious but it's like it always bears repeating and again, if you find people if you see someone online you're like that person should never she should totally where my jewelry or they need my pillows in their house follow them and interact not hey buy my stuff but just interact like people I have people on instagram I have never met in real life, but I feel like I know them we interact like we're good friends that's the power of that and if your customers feel that connection with you, those are the people that buy we any questions in there? Are we good? Well, we we definitely are getting some some conversations around that topic and some people having positive examples of relationships that they built that they were was so unexpected that that person who runs a major brand would interact with them. Yeah, they're people too, right? Exactly every everyone has people too and it's just, you know, that's, I think what we've lost in the last couple of years with social media is it we feel like we have to use it as a promotion tool, but what it really is is a connection tool, you know? So if you can shift the way that you're thinking about that where your interactions are mostly connection and then a little bit of promotion. And that promotion is driving traffic to your email. Us, which we'll talk about a minute. It's, a way, more powerful tool.