I used to work for a small family owned jewelry store. The owner is an immigrant, who does everything the old fashioned way and still refuses to enter a receipt in the computer and instead wrote his out by hand. It shouldn’t be surprising, that even though he has been working as a goldsmith for over 50 years, when I first got hired by him he still didn’t have a website. Now, the main reason why I was hired was to help with marketing. Since this was the position that I was in, I had to get creative. I had to reach out to social media.
Social media was free, and thus a great price point for a person who was very concerned with the bottom line. I started to spend every waking moment on building Facebook, but not watching videos of cats. I was studying the competition – the ones with the beautiful website, and a full blown social media campaign. They were posting photos from their website, and interacting with their customers. They were creating contests and driving engagement. I was watching an A+ performance and wanting what they had.
So, I started doing it. I took it on myself. I walked into the back where the goldsmiths were working, and started taking photos. I cataloged the pictures that we had from our vendors. Then I did the revolutionary thing: I posted them. Not only did I post them, I posted them 3-4 times a week, and I monitored the results incessantly. I started to learn which posts did well, and how to target my key demographics.
Something amazing happened, I started to see people I had never seen before and they wanted to see what we were making. Soon, they were calling, asking if I still had the piece I featured on Facebook. Then I had customers coming in with their cell phones showing me photos of my own posts telling me to make them the same piece!
With no website, no marketing budget, I was personally bringing in over $10,000 every month, using only Facebook. This wasn’t a fluke only one month, this was the lower end of my range. I had months where I would only deal with my Facebook customers and sell $25,000+.
Eventually, I began spreading out to different social media platforms and experimenting with which ones worked for my business and how to best engage those different groups. Soon, I had a full campaign, and was training others in the business to do what I did.
I say all this to say, your business might be doing okay right now. It might even be great, but could it be better? Could launching a social media campaign do for you, what it did for me? Are you throwing 10 grand away, every month by not using your Facebook? If you already have an active Facebook account, could another platform boost those sales even more?
If you are wondering what social media might do for you, please email me and I would love to do a social media analysis for your business.
Written by Theresa Potratz, Social Media Marketing Specialist for Techna Digital Marketing. Theresa started in promotions and marketing for Red Bull. She has created and implemented many successful social media marketing campaigns for small businesses.