Can your business offer a subscription?
More and more, subscriptions are becoming a common way to pay for products and services. Generally tech enabled; streaming service subscriptions, subscription services for basic goods like razors and toothbrushes, free shipping subscription clubs, newsletter and podcast subscriptions, monthly clothing subscriptions, gaming and e-sports subscriptions, creator subscriptions, food of the month subscriptions, coffee of the month subscriptions, wine of the month subscriptions, Amazon Web Services, reoccurring donations, subscriptions, subscriptions, subscriptions. There’s a lot of subscriptions, and there’s a reason for it! Subscriptions are a fantastic way to keep customers engaged with your business and offer them the flexibility of being able to cancel their membership at any time.
It may be hard to remember, but the primary way of making money on Apple’s App Store, a $64 billion business, used to be selling access to an app as a one time purchase. It was only in 2011, when Apple started offering subscriptions for apps on the App Store, four years after the iPhone was announced. Back in the early days of the App Store, developers would usually sell their apps for 99 cents, or more if the app was a professional grade app or premium service. This was great at the time, as it was a new way for software developers to monetize their work, and a brand new way for consumers to find and buy apps for their cellphones. As smartphone adoption became the mainstream, app stores became common and subscriptions became standard, Apple’s App Store and others like it became platforms that enabled whole new industries that created billion and trillion dollar companies.
If you sell an expensive product or service, can you turn that price tag into smaller monthly payments? Photoshop used to be an extremely cost prohibitive software for people to use, or let alone buy to see if they like graphic design. Because of this, graphic design was much more expensive and difficult to find people with experience. As more people started using computers, and Adobe introduced a new monthly subscription plan, more people are now able to download creative software, and figure out if that’s a skill that they’d like to learn.
Software isn’t the only business that is going to a subscription model. Panera Bread, known for bread bowls, bagels and baked goods is now offering customers a coffee subscription plan. For the cost of a couple cups of coffee a month, subscribers can get unlimited coffee. This keeps those customers coming back for their coffee in the morning, where they now may now buy a breakfast sandwich. That customer may now go to Panera for lunch now too, because of the free coffee refill. Subscriptions can be any part of your business that keeps your customers engaged with your business.
Most website platforms that offer commerce tools also offer a subscription plan for businesses to create. You can get creative with what you offer, like a surprise of the month club, or use a subscription to collaborate with a local nonprofit, like a book of the month club for a local coffee shop. If you’re a yoga studio, can you offer a subscription to unlimited classes, or virtual classes? If your business has an expertise, then maybe you can create a paid newsletter for information and advice on your domain. What will your subscription be?
Don’t have time to blog? Aggregate!
Blogging is a fantastic way to develop a presence online. Blogging gives your customers, audience, followers, donors and readers something to read that can inform them about your brand identity. Blogs can be used to publish information, lifestyle content, pure entertainment, art, embedded videos or podcasts, or really any other form of media can be made into a blog. Blogs are the building blocks of a website, and as such websites with a lot of blog posts are generally ranked higher in search results. Blog posts can also be posted onto social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Reddit, bringing readers and potential customers into your website through published content.
Blogging is great for businesses. Pretty much the only downside to blogging is actually taking the time to blog. Blogging is writing, and writing can be a grind if you aren’t already a good writer or really enjoy the process of writing. Blogging for people who don’t like to write can be a lot of staring at a computer screen without typing, frustration, and procrastination. Blogging means that you have to think up a bunch of different random ideas that are related to your business, brand or organization, then think up 250-1000 words on a subject. Then you have to find images that go along with what you just wrote, while also being on brand for your organization. Blogging is great, unless you don’t like to write or don’t have the time to sit down and write.
The good news is that if you don’t want to blog, or don’t have the time to write, you can still gain some of the benefits of blogging for your business. Services like Google News don’t actually publish anything. They aggregate links and curate content. You still think of Google News as a news source, as it “publishes” a list of algorithmically curated news (that pulls a short excerpt from the article), much similarly to an actual newspaper.
Your business, brand or organization can do this same content aggregation with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. You can even quote from articles to incorporate into a video or image post for Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. By acting as a curator by aggregating content, you can still inform your customers and following of topics relevant to your operations and gain domain credibility. The only thing different than blogging, is that when someone clicks on a link that you aggregate, the reader will go to a news site instead of your own website.
If you absolutely have no time at all to blog, or absolutely do not want to publish blog posts, then aggregation can be the next best thing for your business, brand or organization. You can still aggregate content on your social media accounts (or website by embedding), and still build your brand. Aggregation keeps you in conversation with your audience, and if blogging isn’t a possibility, it’s easy to start. Figure out what topics relate to your business and start Googling for some links. What does your business do?
What is your business’ lifestyle?
Every business, brand or organization has a lifestyle, or a story that can be told to describe itself. Some businesses have an easily identifiable lifestyle, like a hotel or travel brand. Brands that are lush in experience can readily show what time spent at those businesses may be like. Businesses that are less focused on vacationer hospitality, and say tax preparation or other professional services, have a more challenging task when determining how to visualize the story of their brand. While difficult, telling a brand story about a hypothetical client success story about a business that is up to date on all of their paperwork, and how that business can now focus on their core operations. Every organization has a story to tell, a way to show how their operations work, and a community that it exists in. Even a vending machine exists in a place, and that place has a story, and people that live within it. Every business, brand or organization has a lifestyle and thus, a story to tell.
You may already be aware of lifestyle bloggers, or lifestyle social media influencers, or people who create content surrounding the life they live. Lifestyle bloggers or influencers generally work with brands to make content that promotes products and showcases how to use them. Lifestyle bloggers or influencers also typically rely on monetizing the audience that follows them, either through advertising, brand collaborations, sponsorships, or events. If you think of your business in the same way, you can start to think of how your business entity might tell these same stories. Are you a retail storefront? You can make the same how-to content about the products you sell that an influencer might make on their own. You can even hire lifestyle content creators to work with you on how to best create a brand lifestyle.
So what is your lifestyle? Think about your core business operations. What do you do and what industry are you in? Do you sell things, offer services to others, or are you a community organization? Where are you located, do you work online? Think holistically about your business, brand or organization and really zero in on what makes it what it is. Your business isn’t just a list of products, think about what people who shop at your store do with what they buy.
Now that you have an idea about what the lifestyle of your business, brand or organization is, you can begin to create content surrounding that thesis. Posting on social media is a great way to reach existing customers, social media platforms will also share your content algorithmically, heling you reach new people. Blogging is another great way to communicate with customers. Blogging helps you go a little more in depth on a subject than a social media post, and can also be shared by Facebook or email. Blog posts will also be indexed by search engines, so people can find your business when they search online.
Think in terms of campaigns or content franchises. A dentist can create a campaign about low sugar foods and post new recipes regularly. A bank could run a quarterly spotlight about their business banking clients, showcasing the successes and stories of their clients. The best content franchises can be run evergreen and are simple to understand. Don’t start by thinking you’ll do something daily or weekly, because you might find that it’s hard to generate that number of ideas while also running a business or organization.
You don’t need to be trendy in your communication or follow what lifestyle bloggers and influencers do. Stay true to what your business does, or what your operations are. By communicating to your customers through storytelling and valuable content, you will show that you know what you’re talking about, and if your business operates well, customers will return. Lifestyle content keeps customers engaged with your brand, because it gives people something to read, watch or listen to that is related to, or presented by, your brand, but not necessarily explicitly transactional, like only posting an image of a product and asking for people to buy it. When the time for a purchase decision arises, your business will be in you customers’ minds, because they have been engaging with your lifestyle content.
Lifestyle content and multimedia storytelling benefits from longevity. Stick to what works and adapt to what doesn’t. Pay attention to what your customers say and how they engage with your content. Monitor analytics provided from your social media or website accounts, and let them tell you where to potentially focus. Be regular, but don’t burn yourself out. After some time, you’ll begin to notice a depth and range to what you’ve been posting and your business’ lifestyle will start to be readily communicated to anyone visiting your online or marketing presence.
Every business, brand or organization has a lifestyle and a story to tell. Communicating in a way that draws customers in by showcasing your operations and community will go much further than simply stating what you sell. Show existing and new customers how your business operates, give people how-to’s or walkthroughs to inform them beyond a product listing, keep engaged with your local community and how your industry interacts with it, visualize a lifestyle for your audience and how what you sell will help them achieve it. Lifestyle content is simply showing people what your business does in a way that communicates more information than price and purchase. What is your business, brand or organization’s lifestyle?
Are you advertising on Facebook yet?
Facebook’s advertising platform is probably the best way to reach customers right now. If haven’t yet tried using Facebook to advertise, then you should consider incorporating it into your marketing strategy, as you can reach exactly who you need to as a cost effective price. You can “boost” posts within Facebook’s app, within a few simple steps. Just tell Facebook where you want your ad to show up, and to whom. Facebook lets advertisers access their knowledge of Facebook users and shows ads to the people who are most likely to engage with an ad. Since Facebook makes money when ads are successful, they are highly motivated to help you achieve your business goals.
Facebook lets you “boost” posts that you’re already making. You don’t have to create an individual ad, or think up a catchy slogan or memorable concept. You can just promote the posts that you already make, visible on your profile, putting them in the newsfeeds of others who don’t follow you. As Facebook owns Instagram, you can advertise on both platforms seamlessly. You can boost your posts within the app simply by clicking the blue “Boost Post” button beneath a post. This will bring up a menu where you tell Facebook your objective for the ad, who to target, and how much you want to spend.
Objectives for Facebook and Instagram ads are simply telling Facebook what you want to get out of your ad spend. Do you just want more engagement on the posts on your business profile? Do you want to gain more awareness from people who don’t follow you? Do you only want to reach people who already follow, and are already engaged with your business? Do you just want video plays, or are you trying to optimize for a click-through to your webstore, ending in a sale? Keeping your objective in mind while advertising will help you achieve your goals, while minimizing wasted ad spend.
When you start to advertise more on Facebook and Instagram, Facebook’s algorithm will begin to learn who responds to your ads the most, and start to show your ads to them more organically. You can also save a custom audience of people who respond to your ads, or even those who make a purchase after clicking an ad, to target future ads later. Making a custom audience like this helps you target your most engaged customers, in a cost effective way. You can also create a “look-a-like” audience of this group or people, where Facebook creates a new audience of new customers who are similar to those who already engage with your brand.
Another great thing about Facebook advertising, is that you get access to Facebook’s Ad Manager, which is an extremely in depth, robust, tool to advertising on Facebook, Instagram and beyond. With Ad Manager, you are able to reach much more targeted audiences of people, and track metrics of advertisements to inform future ads. You can measure who sees your ads by demographics, who engages, and who purchases. You can see how many people saw an ad, how they engaged with the ad, and how many times people saw the ad. Facebook Ad Manager will tell you exactly down to the fraction of a cent how much it costs to achieve a business objective, like a sale. With Ad Manager, you can clearly see how someone finds your company, how long they engage with your content, and if they make a sale.
By knowing if your ads are working and if people are engaging with the content, and not clicking or scrolling away, you can iterate and build better ads. This knowledge also helps you post more relevant and better content, as you’ll see exactly what your audience likes and responds to. Knowing this can help you make business decisions too, and help with planning. Maybe people engage less with a seasonal sale that you would have hoped, or people really respond to limited “drops” of products. If you blog as a part of your marketing and brand strategy, keeping tabs on which articles perform best will help you write more.
By advertising on Facebook, you also have access to advertising on several prestige publications and websites that can help you gain more reach, with no additional effort. Facebook has a service called Audience Network that acts as a display advertising network for publications to use on their websites. Publications like Buzzfeed, Vice and the Huffington post all use Audience Network, meaning your ads can run on the articles published by those outlets. The media brands have a deal with Facebook where they get paid to generate traffic, and Facebook extends that access to its advertisers (you!).
Advertising on Facebook is a powerful tool that help any business reach new clientele, as well as speak directly to those who are already customers. Advertising on Facebook doesn’t have to be a tech-intensive difficult process. You don’t have to know how to code, or even have a lot of budget to spend on ads. You can start advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and their Audience Network today with as little as $1. You can spend as much as you’d like as you become more familiar with the tools. You can also stop your spend at any time. Testing Facebook advertising is a win win if you have a specific goal in mind, or just want to get your business out there a bit more.
Are you posting your art on social media?
If you aren’t posting your art on social media, you should consider starting. Not only does posting your work on social media give you a digital space to showcase your work, but it also gives you the ability to create a following for your art as well as give people you meet at art fairs/galleries a place to find you and follow along. Social media is somewhere where a majority of people spend at least a little bit of time online. Since it is free to post, you can essentially use a platform like Instagram as your own personal digital gallery.
If you haven’t yet started posting your artwork on social media, consider starting an Instagram profile to start building your online presence. You Instagram profile is a grid of photos three images wide, that can scroll as far as photographs you post. Posting to Instagram is as simple as choosing an image from your smartphone’s camera roll, then clicking “share.” You can write a cation for your work, add a location tag, or tag another account. If you want to, you can edit the image you choose to upload, and add hashtags to help others find your artwork.
When you start your Instagram account, you can start by posting your past work in however order you like. You can group images by series, or create carousel posts to showcase multiple sides of a work within one post. Create text posts to give information and context about your artwork to anyone viewing your page, or post behind the scenes photos of your process to show people how you make your art and find inspiration.
An Instagram account can be a great low barrier to entry way to start building an online presence for your work. You don’t need to start building a website for your work, and can build at your own pace. Instead of trying to create an entire art career online over night, start slow and build over time. Showcase your artwork on an Instagram profile, use the tools to find a following, then start to decide if you want to build a website or online store.
If you are already posting your artwork on social media, but aren’t advertising, consider boosting your current posting with a bit of ad spend. You can promote the posts of your art that you’re already making for as little as $1 and gain more audience for your work. Are you showing at an upcoming art event and want to make sure your followers know when and where you’ll be? Post and promote a notice of your upcoming event to make sure it’ll be a success.
Advertising on social media can be done simply. On Instagram, you don’t even have to leave the app. Underneath any post that can be promoted, there will be a blue button that says, “Boost Post.” Click this button, and you can tell Instagram who to show your post to, by location, interest, behavior, and other demographics of your choosing.
Having an online presence gives fans of your artwork a place to stay up to date with what you’re working on. If you’re someone who sells art at local art fairs or exhibits at a gallery in your area, having a web presence will give the people who see your art at a physical location a way to follow your artwork, and potentially make a purchase if your have an online store set up. Platforms like Instagram also have built in ways for your artwork to be found by people who you may not reach otherwise. If you haven’t yet started posting your art on social media, you can build a gallery for yourself today.
Try Instagram Reels for more organic reach
Instagram is a great medium to tell the story of your business, inform customers of new information or to reach new customers. Since it is free to post on Instagram, you can post as much as you need to, showcasing new products, bring customers behind the scenes, and promote limited campaigns. As time goes by, Instagram organically distributes your content on the Explore feed, putting your content in front of people who might not already know about your business or organization. Instagram was once a image sharing social network solely, and as Instagram develops new ways to post, Instagram rewards posts made with new features with more organic reach. This reach brings in more traffic to your business’ profile, potentially bringing in new business.
via Facebook
It pays to keep up with the new features that Instagram introduces, as Instagram is generally releasing the new mediums to keep up with their competition. In August 2020, Instagram released Reels, their response to the short video based social network TikTok’s rise in popularity. Reels let users upload short vertical videos that can be made on platform with a simple to use video editor. Instagram users can play the latest popular music, or anything else from an in depth music library, over their videos, and utilize a few other editing tools that create a surprising range of video styles.
“More than 50 percent of people use Instagram’s Explore page in a month, Stein said, and now there’ll be a dedicated hub for Reels.” -The Verge
Instagram has created several surfaces within the Instagram app for Reels to be played, organically distributing Reels content to Instagram users who’s interests align with subject matter. Use a few hashtags when uploading, and you’ll help Instagram show your content to people who will most likely want to engage with it. Instagram has made Reels the default content medium to show at the top of all hashtags, and have allocated a similarly high traffic section for Reels within Explore. Because of these Reels dedicated locations within the Instagram app, as well as an organic promotion in Newsfeed, Reels are getting a massive amount of organic engagement.
Utilizing Reels increases your chances for your content to reach more people on Instagram, and if you use hashtags relevant to your business, you’ll likely reach the right people. If you are a local business, tag nearby towns or the hashtag that a local media outlet uses, and you’ll have a good shot at reaching a lot of people in your area, as these hashtags are generally less populated that more general ones like #smallbusiness or #boutique.
Instagram is currently promoting Reels in direct response to TikTok’s rise in popularity. As Reels is essentially the same video format as a TikTok, Instagram (who is owned by Facebook) hopes to slow user attrition to another app. Instagram still has more users, and even more daily users, than TikTok, so it will pay to make the most of Instagram’s reaction to TikTok’s success. Your content, and thus your business, will reach a wider audience. In addition, Reels is an information rich way to post content, so you’ll benefit just from higher fidelity communication with your customers.
“We are getting better at using ranking signals that help us predict whether people will find a reel entertaining and whether we should recommend it.” -Instagram spokesperson Devi Narasimhan
Video is a great way to communicate with your followers and potential new customers on Instagram. A picture tells a thousand words, and video tells 30 pictures a second. Baseline, utilizing Reels helps you tell the story of your business, inform your audience about what you do, and promote events, campaigns or sales. The added bonus is the Instagram is organically boosting these posts to stave off competition from another company. Utilizing Reels will be a win win of showcasing better content, while reaching new audience.
Instagram Shops brings your retail store online
If you’re a retail storefront and don’t sell online yet, Instagram Shops might be a good first step into ecommerce. Instagram Shops helps you utilize the effort and design you have already put into merchandising your storefront by making Instagram posts shoppable. If you’ve never sold anything online before, you can list a batch of initial products that you sell in your store, and sell them through your Instagram profile. You don’t have to list your entire inventory and can list your products with Facebook, if you don’t have a website. As you get comfortable operating an ecommerce channel, you can add more products and advertise your listings.
Instagram Shops give your business profile the ability to create “product tags,” which operate the same as when you tag another account in a a post, except linking to a product listing instead. These tags make your posts shoppable. This means that you can take a photograph of your retail store, featuring a product, then tag that product in your post, and Instagram users can make a purchase within the Instagram app.
Instagram Shops help you get started with ecommerce. If you already post on Instagram, you effectively are doing the same as you have been, just adding on the ability for people to purchase what you post. You can use product tags on image posts, Reels, and in captions. When someone clicks on the tag, they are brought to a listing page for the product, and they can make a purchase right on the Instagram app. Instagram even offers users the ability to save payment methods, so frequent shoppers can make one-click purchases.
The ability to make your Instagram posts shoppable makes your retail offering that much more robust. If you have a physical retail storefront, you get to be meticulous in merchandising. With Instagram, you get to showcase your work, your products, and use the medium to tell the story of your business in a way that lets customers engage beyond the walls of your store.
You can advertise shoppable posts as well, which amplifies your product listing’s reach to a relevant audience. If you’re an outdoors store selling a water bottle as your first product, you can boost that shoppable post into the newsfeeds of people who are near your retail store, who are interested in hiking. If you are a clothing boutique, you can target to people in your retail storefront’s area who follow the brands you sell on social media.
Shoppable posts and Instagram Shops merges the in depth merchandising of a retail storefront with the efficiency of a digital sales channel, enabling your business to potentially reach new customers by doing what you’re already doing. All you have to do is post about your business, and showcase the products that you sell. Tell a story about your business and inform customers about the intricacies of your wares. Once approved, you can set up Instagram Shops within a day, and scale as you become familiar with selling online.
Is your business on social media yet?
Social media is the easiest way to reach your existing customers, while finding business at the same time. According to Forbes, “driven in no small part by the pandemic, Americans spent more than an average 1,300 hours on social media,” last year. Continuing, “Facebook led the way, where Americans spent an average 58 minutes a day on the app – or 325 hours a year.” Social media is how people communicate, pass time, and get information. If your business isn’t yet on social media, or if you aren’t posting regularly, then you are missing out on the ability to communicate directly to your clientele, and passing up an opportunity to promote your business efficiently.
1) Communicate directly to your customers
Social media gives you the ability to communicate directly to your customers. You can describe your business as you wish, and showcase your work the way that you want. Since posting doesn’t cost you anything, you can speak directly to your clientele whenever you want. Promote sales, use Stories to show how your business works. Go live to give a walkthrough in your retail store, or write a long post on Facebook thanking your customers for their business on a holiday. Social media gives you the flexibility to keep in communication with your audience, which helps keep your business in mind during purchase decisions.
2) Promote specific campaigns
Do you run sales seasonally, or do you need to promote an in-store event with a live musical performance? Do you have a book launch coming up, or throwing a customer appreciation night? You can use social media to promote time specific campaigns, like events or sales and keep customers up to date with special offerings from your business. Use Facebook Events to inform and remind customers of an event or date, and use Instagram to promote and inform potential attendees of the event as well. Social media helps you reach your customers to promote whatever you’re planning.
3) Reach a local audience
Social media is global, but you can also use it to reach a local audience. Use hashtags of your town, surrounding area, local publications, local businesses, your state, county, etc. and you’ll start to reach a local community of businesses, organizations and potential customers. Comment on content within these hashtags that you like or are in a similar industry as yours, or even begin to collaborate with other local businesses. Once you start to get more engaged with your local social media, you will begin to algorithmically surface in the feeds of other media users local to your business.
4) Automate ads
You can also automate your marketing with social media advertising. Find a targeted local audience of potential customers, or promote an online store to a much wider audience. Social media ads help you reach new and existing customers directly in their newsfeeds. You can target your ads by interest, location, or behavior, and the available tools are very effective and cost efficient.
5) Gain credibility in your field
The more you post about your field, if customers and other people on social media respond positively to the content, you’ll gain credibility in your field, as your posting will show that you know what you’re doing and are good at what you do. If you’re an artist and you post daily about your work and process, you’ll showcase that you’re an experienced artist. If you have a specialty retail store and post credible information about your wares, people who visit your profile will pick up on that.
Social media is the best way to reach your customers and find new business, as it’s free to post, and most people are on at least one social media platform. If your business isn’t on social media yet, you really should be, as it will likely only become more a part of how people engage with commerce. You don’t need to get on every platform immediately, and create new profiles on every new platform, but finding one or two platforms that you’re comfortable posting on will go a long way towards establishing an identity for your business online.