That’s quite an impressive figure, and on the face of it, it probably sounds like hard work – but actually, achieving that sort of result is possible once you know what you’re doing. And since then we’ve gone on to achieve over 3,000% returns in recent months! Social media really does give us the tools to grab attention and boost sales and it’s just up to us to make them work for our own businesses.
So how did I do it?
I worked with my client, a designer and maker, from January 2016, mainly on Facebook and Instagram. After getting to know about her, the way she works and her ideal client, I created a social media strategy to fit her profile.
We used clever Facebook advertising and accurate targeting, along with some of her gorgeous product photography to achieve over £6000 in sales in just one month!
Getting an insight
The key to achieving the results was using Facebook insights. I studied the types of social media posts that appealed to the business’ fans, and made sure I posted similar types of post, regularly. Facebook analytics are fantastic for this, for absolutely nothing you can see exactly who looks at your posts, when they are online, and gauge what type of images, posts and videos get you the highest number of likes, comments and shares.
We worked together tweaking & honing the types of things we posted, based on the reactions we’d already had to similar posts.
The Birthday Unicorn that got 33,000 likes!
Just one example of our many successes together was a few months ago, in Aug 2016 – she was away for a couple of days celebrating a birthday and we posted a simple “It’s my birthday!” image with a unicorn – people love unicorns. We said that we were celebrating 13,000 page likes…and the post achieved 33,000 likes with NO boosting or ad spend whatsoever. The client occasionally boosts posts when they are already getting organic reach, and this has worked in the past too, but if in doubt post a birthday unicorn!
Other tips and tricks
Videos are still performing really well on Facebook so make the most of those.
Giveaways always work well if you have a product-led business, use your best quality images to promote the products you’re giving away and don’t go for overkill. Giveaways at times like Mother’s Day, Christmas and similar work really well. Follow the Facebook rules (check these out if you’re not sure what they are) and make sure that your decision is seen to be fair. Rather than using third party competition or giveaway apps, we decided to go for a comment-based competition where we could choose the winner based on their reply. That way, the decision is completely transparent.
Getting a following on Instagram is harder to do, but if you have plenty of good images you’ve got a head start. Use images of you at work as well, don’t just limit them to product shots. Use apps like Canva.com to help you customise and add fun captions, get creative to attract attention!
We found that cross-posting on Facebook with links to Instagram helped – every Saturday I posted an ‘Are you on Instagram? We are!’ style post with a link to our profile, which encouraged people to follow. It’s sometimes considered to be slightly more difficult to sell through Instagram than through Facebook, as you can’t post a simple link… but you can refer people to a link in your bio, or to your Facebook page where they can buy a product.
Using hashtags carefully will help your posts get to the right audience so look at your competitors on Instagram, see what tags they use and use them yourself. Also pick one or two that are unique to your business & reflect what you do.
Using these social media tactics helped the business to grow Facebook page likes from 3200 to 13,600 (and rising) and Instagram from 190 to 690 in just 9 months. Those figures have now (Feb 2017) risen to 20,600 on Facebook and 1,300 on Instagram – wow! All in just over ONE year.
Sales profits were also increased by directing people to the client’s own website instead of to the commission-based portal that she had previously been selling a lot through. She now sells 60% of her products through her website, meaning she doesn’t have to lose all that commission on her hard work.
If you’d like advice about how to make social media work for your business, please get in touch! Or you can download a FREE guide to Getting More Sales Using Social Media here.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with growing your audience and the returns you’re getting on your investment, so do leave me a comment below, or pop over and say hello on Facebook
