If there is one thing that is plaguing small business owners right now, it’s attempting to leverage social media for business growth. Since 2022, we have seen some major upheaval in the social media space as well as the birth of new platforms. The ever-evolving information feels overwhelming, to say the least. For many small business owners wearing all the hats it leads to frustration, resentment and burn out.
I would love to tell you that I am immune to these feelings with all of my experience, knowledge and personal success under my belt – but I am not. Much like many of you, I sometimes find myself grasping more at the things that I “know” than reaching for the “unknown”. The unknown feels scary, hard and confusing. When we don’t see the results we expect right away, we reach back to what we know… even when it’s not working the way it once did. As a big fan of human psychology, I can firmly tell you that this is just part of human nature. It’s the way our subconscious tries to protect us from those feelings of failure that fear.
One thing we focus on around here is helping you understand the “why” behind everything. Why does your business structure matter? Why does social media matter? What is the impact and importance of any number of things that encompass growing a business? We are constantly creating content to help you be smarter, strategic and more successful.
Going into 2025, marketing through social media is looking VERY different from what it has in recent years. The good news is – it’s getting somewhat easier! Recently we started putting to the test everything that we will be focusing on teaching in 2025 and saw a record-breaking 12000% increase in reach in the process. Let’s talk about what I did differently, what it meant and why it matters.
Let’s Clarify the Numbers
A 12000% increase in reach is the number of people exposed to our content. Followers and likes don’t matter if they don’t translate into sales. Sales come from exposure of your content to your target audience. We don’t want to attract anyone to our businesses – we want to attract the ideal customer for us. With this reach, we saw a 17% increase in sales as well – which is really good numbers and means our content is working. Did we gain followers? Yes – but not by any big numbers.
The end goal is always sales revenue. The right content hitting the right audience members will result in instant sales but also bring in followers for long-term selling. A strong, consistent marketing plan and refined business structure will nurture both avenues that ultimately lead to sales.
Where Did We Start?
This magical 30-day growth wasn’t the result of just 30-days worth of effort. It was the culmination of our 90-day marketing plan. Nothing about effective marketing leads to overnight results. The goal of marketing is to create a conversation with your audience that invites them into your business. Marketing nurtures that connection and leads people to becoming customers. Marketing is the essential foundation for big sales when you run promotions – and consistent sales in-between. Our success is always the byproduct of the work we do with intention.
The days of being able to send out a quick sale email or post and generate revenue easily are long gone with the many changes of social media, status of the economy and modifications in consumer spending. As small business owners, we need to be focused on bringing what our audience wants and needs in relation to our businesses if we want to drive up sales and truly grow.
If you have been delaying the inevitable shift in your business; the letting go of the things you did years ago that aren’t working anymore in favor of doing something new – then now is the time. That being said, we started at “ground zero” to make these results happen. We took a break from social media, regrouped, researched and hit the ground running with new goals and strategy.
What Did We Do?
Marketing is all about the conversation we create surrounding our business and products. We don’t want to simply show and sell our product – we want to influence our audience with information that creates value around our products. There are many ways that you can do this for a craft business depending on your niche.
I kicked things off by giving my business a full audit and re-evaluating my 5 and 10 year goals based on the Make & Grow Blueprint. I quickly realized that I had quite a bit of loose ends to tie up and needed to streamline many areas of business to get back on track with where we want to grow. I created detailed plans for how we will be moving forward, everything that needed to be addressed through the end of the year, and crafted a new schedule that offered better work/life balance. Lastly, I started implementing a priority matrix to make sure that I am staying focused each day on what needs to be done and checking off our list of to dos.
With new goals and focus in mind, I started crafting our ideal marketing plan.
Crafting a marketing plan can feel complicated to some people – but I promise, it’s not. We actually have a step-by-step guide to help you Create Your Own VIRAL Marketing Plan in the Sub That Learning Library App complete with a printable worksheet. Effective marketing is about connecting with what is important to your audience. My audience cares about new tutorials, work/life/business balance, and how to grow their craft business. The amount of content I can create with all of this is VAST. We currently have over 500 videos in the Sub That Learning Library App and many, many more to come. But a BIG failure on my part has been assuming that because we had the content, people were actually streaming it and learning from it.
Recognizing that my audience has a lot of repetitive questions allowed me to create an in-depth content topic list to use for social media. Because videos or posts are short and sweet, I am able to offer small nuggets of information that can be expanded upon in our video and audio content. Shifting our content to be less promotional and more informational and educational quickly made a difference in our exposure.
Next, as part of the marketing plan, I created ideas for new lead magnets. A lead magnet is some type of freebie, discount or promotion that drives people to your contact lists. Social media is great but it is fleeting. We must always focus on getting our audience to our websites and email/text message marketing lists. This allows us to keep in touch with them and entice them we new sales and offers in the future. A lead magnet can be something simple such as getting a discount code or early access to product releases for signing up for a text/email list. Or it can be something more in-depth like a resource guide, checklist or newsletter series.
You might be thinking that as a crafter you don’t have anything to offer beyond a sale – but think again. No matter what your niche is, you can offer some type of free resource guide, checklist or newsletter that relates to your products or niche. In order for this to be well-received and successful, you DO need to have an actual niche for your business.
I can already hear some of you sighing at the repetitive nature of this statement.
Sorry… not sorry.
If you STILL have not embraced niching down your business to drive up your sales then it is time to do so. Not only will you create less work for your business and increase profits but you also will separate yourself from the competition. A strong lead magnet helps connect your audience with your business and products. Here are some ideas to consider:
- Recipe series – perfect for businesses drinkware or kitchen items.
- Party planning ideas and easy DIY – perfect for businesses selling party accessories and personal accessories.
- Decorating or styling tips – perfect for businesses selling home décor or clothing.
- Product reviews or event round-ups – perfect for any business that sells items within a niche like reading, coffee, travel or teaching.
- Gift ideas – perfect for any business that sells items for keepsakes, memories or that coincide with seasons and occasions.
- Checklists – perfect for any business as long as its tailored to the product niche.
A lead magnet can be free or low-cost. If you’re just starting out, free is always the best option. Think of a lead magnet like giving your audience a taste of what your business has to offer for their life. One of the key components of marketing is helping your target customer see the picture of how your product meets a want, need or desire in their life. Your social media content should incorporate this accordingly.
In the world of marketing, this process I’m outlining is referred to as a sales funnel. It is the art of creating a point of contact with your content that helps guide your target customer down the path from stranger to repeat and referring buyer.
The next thing that we did was share less content with more intention. If it doesn’t fall within our core marketing plan then it doesn’t need to get shared. Creating less content alleviated a lot of stress. No more scrolling, worrying about the perfect audio or keeping up on trends. These tactics that have worked to capture attention before are dwindled as the average person is burned out from the flash and interested solely in the value of what is being shared. We focused on engaging with accounts that relate to Sub That and strategically sharing high-traffic accounts to our stories that had relatable or useful content for our followers.
Lastly, we started working with UGC (user generated content) and affiliate marketers. We have not fully launched our affiliate marketing and UGC options but we did connect with a few creators to test the waters and refine our plans. Marketing is one of the most time consuming aspects of business ownership. Thankfully, the digital content creator era is growing rapidly and now is the time to capitalize on it for your own business gain. Content creators who value your products can be leveraged to share and promote your products through gifted collaborations and commissions. We have an entire new series rolling out on this topic to help you navigate this new world and leverage it to grow your craft business.
Aside from all of this I prioritized being consistent with marketing. It was easy to achieve this because of how we have restructured the business and refined our marketing goals. If you’re thinking that all of this sounds pretty simple and almost too easy – that’s because it is. As small business owners, we are not commanding a team of 10 marketing professionals to find every perfect trend, idea and ROI (return on investment) metric. For most of us, it’s just one or two individuals. We want to focus on being intentional with our efforts and limited time. The growth and evolution of social media over the course of 2024 has meant that we can truly do less and get more results – if we do it right.
Now that we have “cooled off” our social media again, we are ready to kick it into high gear and thrive in 2025 with big growth. We hope you will be joining us and growing your business, too.
We have plenty of resources available in the Sub That Learning Library App. If you haven’t signed up to be a member yet, do so today and get started. The craft business of your dreams is waiting for you and we are here to help you achieve it with support and strategy.