Lessons

Lesson Info

Use Social Media to Increase Awareness

Let's talk about them ways to use social media to drive traffic to your email list and we're gonna talk more about this in terms of specific campaigns to but the first thing is, make sure your email sign up form is prominent on the page you link to from social media, so we talked about you know, if you haven't sc shop or if you have something where you can't put your own email sign up form, I would send them directly to an email sign up form. If you have your own web site, I would not send them just to email sign up form, but I would send them to a page that super optimized for email. Sign up there's! No question that when you get to meghan omine dot com I want you to join my list. There is no doubt there's no it's what I want you to dio but if you get there and that's not what you want to d'oh, you can still browse my products and learn about my brand. So you want to give people this is what I really want you to do, but I understand that you might not exactly want to do that right at ...

this moment so it's okay, you can get to the other things, so if you're going to dio you just straight to that male chimp form put a field in there or put a link that says not ready to sign up, continue onto my etc shop that way. If they're not quite ready, they can move on, but we want to try to get them signed up first mentioned benefits to mailing list members on social media use social media is talk about how cool it is to be on your mailing list. They get exclusive access, they get special deals, they might get a discount, but whatever it is they get, they get to shop first and that's, really the key is we want to treat our mailing list as a special club, so always give first priority whatever that means to mailing list members, not social media followers, so that could go a ce faras saying, you know, I'm running a sale and only mailing list members get the coupon code social media members don't what I d'oh is, I always just give my email list first access I'm having a sale, they get to shop an hour before everybody else, the new product launches, they get to shop before everybody else. He was seen there, they had shot first because you want the people who are most excited to buy, and the people are most excited by one of my first, and then I'll come back an hour or a couple hours later. And I'll give the link to my social media followers or I'll give them the code so they can still get it in a lot of cases, but what I want to happen is I want them to get to my website and see how much they've missed out all the stuff is already sold out I missed it better join email list for next time, so make the email list feel like the special because it is that's what's driving the sales that is your special club, so we also want to make sure that we're planning our social media marketing in terms of the customer holiday buying cycle. We talked about what that looks like we want to align that was something that I use, which is the cycle through of awareness, anticipation and action we live in this dream world where we think that people are going tio suddenly become aware of us and make a purchase all in the same moment does not happen, they become aware of us and then sometimes down the road, they take action and what I have found is the best way to bridge that gap is to do something in the middle that creates anticipation that makes them feel like they have to take action when they finally can, so we want to align this and I talk about this this idea, this awareness, anticipation action piece when we in the hall in the boot camp that make a living, we make we can talk about how to do this for launches, but we'll talk about it a little bit here, too, in terms of aligning with the holiday buying cycle, so we're going to focus on awareness in the lead up, you kind of july to october, period, I don't try to sell a lot in july and august online, I'm already reaching out to my stories, but they're not buying for july and august because especially online, things slow down, right? They people are on vacation, it's nice out, they don't want to be glued to their computer, they want to go to their phone, so we're trying to increase awareness, but we're not trying to drive a lot of sales were trying to get them excited, so we can make money down the road so that I'm going to use october, november, and and you're going to use this depending on how you structure your, your big holiday sales events, which we'll talk about to build anticipation to get people excited and it's the anticipation that really gets people on the email list, and then in the last few months, we're going to do very strategic things to drive action, so that means that your awareness is going to probably be mostly social media focus, because that's kind of where we've all been trained to our marketing and it's where people are hanging out but it might also be pitching stores or pitching media there's a couple other awareness activities but then anticipation is about moving them from social media to your mailing list and then our action which is going to be our calls to action are mostly happening through the mailing list that's when we're finally saying, hey go by this thing so awareness focuses on follower growth and highlighting current products just reminding people hand your hand still here maybe you should tell your friend that I'm still here too it's just making sure people remember and see and learn about you so here's some examples ls of awareness social media activities these are not the be all and all but there's some of the kind of kinds of posts and kinds of content you should be creating during that awareness phase so pending products to pinterest if you're hoping to sell from pinterest in november and december, july august september is when you need to pin your products most I think it's something that most website clicks happened two and a half months after the initial pin and sales or something like three and a half months after the initial pin you have to get your products on their sooner so that they've had time to gain some momentum to get found in search and I do also happen to have a pinterest class in the creative life catalog so if you want more details on that you can check that out you know, posting lifestyle images to instagram twitter so don't save those lifestyle images for the holiday season post them now so people start to see how the product can be in their life you know whether it's the pillows in their home or the sauce on their table you know post those lifestyle images and use customer focused hashtags so you know what air the hashtag that people who are looking at so you know for you find out who the kind of key bloggers are that might cover your aesthetic you know I was renamed just tina blake inlay yes so who was following her? What hash tags are they using those are the ones that you wouldn't be using too one that indicate the style or the aesthetic you know she has that book the modern boho so I'm I'm sure there's a hashtag or a couple of hashtags related to that so those are the ones that you want to be using and that's a good place to start if you're like I don't know what hashtag I'm giving you another question I don't know what hashtag my customers they're using you know find the influencers if the media start you start with the magazine go all the way back if you have no idea go to a bookstore those still exist go into a bookstore look at the magazine section every magazine now is pointing people back to social media who was the magazine saying the magazine that you think your customers like you reading who are they saying is the influencers on social media? Who are they telling you to follow? Go find those people what hash tags were they using? Click on some of the people who are commenting what hash tags were they using? Just give yourself a day say I'm just been a whole day diving into hash tags I'm gonna make a list I'm going to keep a list in ever note of my hash tags you're not going to use a million, but you're going to start to see kind of where your products might fit and those are the ones you want to use. Running a facebook ad campaign is an awareness campaign and I know a lot of people try to use facebook ads to drive traffic to their site and get a sale like doesn't work I give up that's true you're right, it doesn't work get social media doesn't drive sales, so what I do is I run a lot of facebook at campaigns for awareness, but I start by running facebook like campaigns just to pull out someone who might be interested who has that quick aesthetic response to my product then I boost campaigns so the people who have liked my page I boost post people have liked my page and those posts say this is coming go join the mailing list so it's a multi step process in awareness so all I'm doing an awareness in the awareness face and I'm just running facebook like campaigns to get them to become aware of my page that's all I'm asking them to dio and then in future steps I'm moving them down the chain encouraging your followers to tag a friend or fellow family member this is a big one here's a new product hey guys, do you want one like it tagged them or here's something new or here's something that I think would be great for holiday if you wanted on your wish list, why not tag someone and tell them now that you want to encourage them to share your content sometimes it's just a simple saying please do this you know you could also do something like how this product works or how to style this video on periscope thought something that you've been using so there's all kinds of things that you can d'oh to really drive that awareness yeah, we're also in addition to facebook ads asking about google ads, do you do those as well? I have not that doesn't mean that they can't work again what I found for me that my customers aren't using search to find me, so trying to run ads based on keywords doesn't work very well for my product, which is why I like facebook ads, because I know my customer profile really clearly and that's how facebook lets me target I do run pinterest ads, because I feel like there I have a better handle on how search works so that's another one that I would recommend looking into is pinterest ads on ge again, if google has worked for you there certainly an option as well, but it all depends on your brandon kind of what's working. Thank you. Awesome. Oh, yeah, and twitter has ads, too, and I believe where lets you target so whatever platform you're on, you you know, if there's an ad option, look into it, because it's another way to build awareness kind of more quickly over time and set of overtime. All right, so then the next stage is anticipation, and this is where we're kind of getting people excited about that build up to the holidays, and in this case, we're going to work on some specific events and some specific reasons to get them on which we'll talk about in our next session, but we want to do is get followers excited about an upcoming event, whether that's, the new product launch or a sale or you're shipping cut off get people excited about that too this is the last chance to buy on drive traffic to an email list so here are some examples of anticipation so some social media activities so posting behind the scenes images of an upcoming product design was a lot of what the start of my campaign was for the contra collection this is coming it's not done yet but look how cool it's going to be and then think oh by the way you should join the email list maybe you create a pinterest mood board for an upcoming collection so one of the mistakes I see people make on pinterest is that they just pin their own products and they never put them into context so you could create a pinterest mood board where you're posting the other things that could be related this is the vibe of the new collection you know this is the house is that those pillows could go into this's the things that I would wear with this jewelry and then once your product is made or in a state where you can photograph it, then you can start seating your product into that mood board but that could be a great way to kind of build anticipation and then of course sending sneak peeks of upcoming products to your mailing list so now that we're starting to drive traffic to our mailing list we don't want to just build anticipation on social media we want to get the people who are most excited to buy to have that sense of anticipation too so we can send out e mails that are really simple you know, my anticipation emails are images that I pulled from social media so a lot of my marketing for my brains just easiest to think what can I shoot for instagram? And then I take the same image and I posted on my facebook page and then I pull the ones that get the best response and I put a couple of them in an email and I said that to my list this is our people are following you and all those platforms and even if they are, if it's a good image, they won't mind seeing it more than once, so send it to all of those places it doesn't have to be new content everywhere no crop it vertically for pinterest and you're good and you're good to go they they get square for instagram it's fine it can all be the same image so anticipation activities should all have a strong call the action and the incentive to join the mailing list so go join the mailing list because because mailing member list members get to shop first because I'm on ly sending them the coupon code whatever it is mailing list members get free upgraded priority shipping called action plus incentive and we're gonna talk more about this in the next session as well and then the action phase it's just send the email that sells so action e mails if we've done all the anticipation building could actually be short and sweet the new collection is here one or two images click here to shop it that's the whole email same thing with a sale the sale is on there you know what you're talking about because you've built that anticipation but even if we're not building anticipation for a specific event, you can still send really actionable emails throughout the holiday season highlight a great gift or best seller these hearings are the perfect holiday gift everyone loves them click here to buy them doesn't have to be any more complicated than that son actually emails that remind customers of order deadlines this is my ship and don't wait until the last day to send those you know a week or even two weeks or even three weeks before then an email that says this is the last day to buy if you have gift cards mentioned those in an email and here's what I want to emphasize this is one email this is one email this is one email this is one email this is one email this is one email every single one of these ideas is its own email that's the other mistakes people make with email marketing I will tell you about all of these things in one email and then I'm never going to email you again that's what they're going to do nothing so every single one of these is own email maybe it's free shipping or free gift wrap these are all examples of action emails now how often should you send action e mails during the holiday season at least once a week at least and we're actually gonna build this into your calendar. So abby talked about all of those details and email marketing and now we're going to sit down and schedule this is the day I'm sending an email that highlights a great gift this is the day I'm sending an email about gift cards, whatever it is you want to focus, we're gonna put those on your calendar now, but at least once a week not now we're gonna do and in the fourth session, but we're going to do it today. So then the other thing that we want to do is we want to build the store and press outreach into your pre holiday marketing plans and again, we're not going to talk about the how of doing store in press outreach because there's a lot of great resource is for that in the creative life catalog, but I want you to put it on your calendars now so plan on reaching out to stores and press in july and august, put those on your calendar so that means that you're going to set target completion deadlines for your pre holiday materials, those line sheets and press ready images for june and july. Now, so can you still pitch stores or the press? If you missed those deadlines this year, I'm sure we're going. You guys are all right now that I'm sure reading that there too. So the answer is maybe some deadlines are fixed december issues of magazines go to press the beginning of september or, you know, usually smith september at the latest there's nothing we can do about that, but he had online media they're working on a different deadline, so if you miss those and it's important to you, prioritize getting the pre holiday piece is done and then pitch even if you're a little late because you never know again not magazines, they have a fixed cut off, but everybody else same thing with the store stores are doing the bulk of their buying in july or august, but if they see a cool product that they love and you know september or october and it's perfect as a holiday gift item people absolutely still right in order, so even if you sort of missed them, you can still get caught up, but you want to put those into your schedule now all right, so I want to give you guys just one piece of homework as we head into our break because I like people to take action on. I realize that not all of you have your email sign up set up, but hopefully if you were falling long in abby's class, you can at least go and pull that sign up link from male chimp that you can send people to sign up page I want to create an anticipation post that encourages the email sign up if you don't quite have the email sign up created anticipation post anyway and then we'll create another one once you've got theme outside up, but create something that lets people know that something exciting is coming maybe it's a new product, maybe you're just thinking about running a sale in the future in the holidays. I want you guys to just do a post now that starts to build the anticipation so that you can really start to get your audience excited. We're going todo just a little bit of q and a because anybody in here have any questions and if not, we'll go online. I'll start online and let us now is your hand, so of course a lot of people interested in boosting their email newsletter has given us a lot of things to write about and all those just a couple questions on that we talked about using social media to send people to that for instagram, for example, the question is, how do you make email? Sign up prominent on things like instagram? So that's, where in your profile, that link should go to a page that's prominent, and then when I post something on instagram that says, sign up, you know, to go science for the mailing list, I'll put in princes lincoln profile, so people know to go back, but I will also put go to mega tom and dot com to sign up, and the reason that I do that is because my instagram automatically post to facebook so on facebook. Facebook makes meghan omine dot com a link, but then I also put the lincoln profile for people who are on instagram so that they can know, go to my profile and click on that link. Great. Thank you. I said that a lot. Yeah, look at the look of the link and yeah, file and so do you do water marking? I know a lot of people that's on off a question in terms of those social media, I do not because personally, I find it very challenging to do well on, for me, having a really strong aesthetic and a really strong product and really strong visuals, trump's water marking I want you to know if I want someone to see my piece and know that it's magan almond and that's what I worked to build my brand around now that said I would say instead of water marking what you want to look at is whether or not instilling some of your branding looks right on that platform so on instagram it's really about the beautiful image without all that other stuff and when you start to put all that other stuff on it looks like this's bad marketing on instagram and people don't respond to it now when we did the palin social media what sarah from pinterest was telling us is that people don't respond as negatively to branded content on pinterest because they're going to look for for brands so on pinterest on an image don't if you're going to do it do it don't try toe subtly watermark just put your logo in a way that looks like it's integrated into the design or put the name of the post I always think of really good example of this that's not a brand but is a site is that site tom and lorenzo and they dio like celebrity gossip and celebrity style but every image on their site the little corner just has a red t l a it's like t l o in a little red box it's subtle but you know it's settled unintentional at the same time and it works so that's a good way if you think about that and the same thing on facebook you know, people are I think more willing for more rand feeling content there so you put a bar across the bottom or put the logo you're gonna do it, do it, don't use the water mark because to me it always just feels like, well, remarks feel to me like I'm scared of the internet that's what they say to me I'm scared of the internet brand, you know, strong brand content says I love the internet and also I acknowledge that I am a business yeah, I think a lot of people get caught up on well, my image be stolen or somebody pretend to be me and then not just for my good and not put their stuff out there because of that but I think so that's yeah, so put it out there and you the way tio kind of alleviate that fear is just to build into your schedule that every so often you're going to do reverse image searches so you take your images, you can pop them into google it's you reverse image search now I think there's a site called ten I t I n e y e dot com I believe that lets you do a reverse image search so you put the image in and it will tell you all of the web sites for that image appears, so then you can see ok, here's, someone is using my image, you can also you know, the other thing that you'll see it if you're on pinterest, it'll show you images that are related, and sometimes you'll see if you see your image and it appears not on your site, but you find someone else's reported to pinterest report to their team as inappropriate and then contact the site holder and asked them to remove it. So instead of worrying about that your content out there and then occasionally you know every couple of months, make time to just check or even have an intern or a friend or someone who do it your kid, if they're tech savvy, just check to make sure they're not being used, but don't let that be a reason not to put your product in your images out there. Thank you, it's a good advice. One more question before we go, how do you let I'm sorry? This is from dar rob does making use facebook ads to target small store boutique owners as part of a wholesale marketing plan? I do not because I spend lots of money every year to go to a trade ships to target store owners, and I also don't because it's so easy to find store addresses online and send them much more detailed information. So, you know, I can find any store. I can look them up on yahoo or google or any place and get their address. And then I'm a little more old school when it comes to my wholesale, because my wholesale buyers tend to be a little more old school. And so, then I'll do the postcard, mailing or mail the catalog or mail the line sheet. And for me, that I think is more bang for your bucks and running the facebook ads, I think that's well, easier to hit your customers that way, but I would say, you know, my answer with everything is try and see, so why not try to run a campaign? And if it works, keep doing it. If it doesn't, you know joan, invest a ton, and then you could move on and try it the old school way.