When I first started my business, I anticipated it to be a
local business selling ethnic jewelry to people in my city. Two years later, I
reached 1000+ customers across 23 states, 80% of who live outside my State..
This would not have been possible without the use of Digital
Marketing strategies and Social Media tools to create awareness and generate
Demand. What follows now is a few learnings I gathered along this Journey and
strengthen my resolve to make a career a Digital/Social Marketing Professional.
The first few months of my business was mainly local. But
then, through word of mouth and customer referrals I started receiving calls
and emails from outside town. This prompted me to take my first step which was
setting up a Facebook Business Page. I spent some time designing the page and
uploading my products on the page and tagged my local customers and friends (with
their permission of course).
Quickly it reached about 100 likes in span of 2 days and
most people were friends and “friends of friends”. This is where I first tried
advertising on Facebook. I had some free Facebook Bucks and I thought I would
use them on Facebook ad’s to increase my LIKES. I spent $5 of those bucks and
in 3 hours I had 2000 likes. And most
of those profiles did not even seem real.
I stopped the Facebook campaign; painstakingly deleted the
likes generated by this 3 hour campaign and started working on other means of
increasing my audience organically.
Then I started tracking and analyzing the data Facebook
provides for business pages. I started identifying which of my posts are generating
customer conversations and having an impact on the popularity of my page. I
also started tracking the sales, especially after specific posts/promotion.
After identifying what worked, I made it a regular practice
to create posts that generate customer engagement – these included regular
contests, giveaways and seasonal sales. I also created the ability for my customers
to post their photographs wearing my product and that has very positive impact.
I posted my product videos on YouTube and provided clickable links for my
Facebook page and my website. I applied principles of SEO to add the right kind
of key words into my website.
Over two years, I got my hands wet applying various Digital
and Social Media Strategies, figuring out what worked and did not. I learnt a
lot along the way. This experience demonstrated the power of utilizing these
strategies to drive customer engagement and was one of the core reasons why I am
currently pursuing roles in Digital Marketing & Media. This is also the reason why I completed the
Digital Media Specialist and Strategist Certifications in Cisco to support my
practical knowledge with the science behind Digital Marketing.
Posts
