EPISODE 13 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: THE POWERFUL TOOL A LOCAL BUSINESS OWNER USED TO DRIVE 20K WORTH OF SALES IN LESS THAN A MONTH
Sonya M.:
Today I am here with Desiree from Fashion Fingers and I'm so excited to be interviewing her because I've actually been using her business, which is in Albury-Wodonga my hometown as an example. It's part of my social media workshops for about two years now. So it's great to finally connect and sort of get a bit of intel on what Desiree has been up to on the back end of her business with social media. Thanks so much for joining me Desiree.
Desiree:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really, really excited about this.
Sonya M.:
Yes, we sat down a couple of weeks ago actually and just spoke all things sort of chatbots and how your business is absolutely transformed with social media and Facebook and advertising online. So excited to dive into that with you today. But let's start with you telling us a little bit about your business, Fashion Fingers and the transformation that it's been through.
Desiree:
Oh, awesome. So we've been in business for 14 years now and at the start business was really easy. There was no such thing as social media. We used the newspaper. Now we had the signs at the front and we did old school advertising. And then as time went on this amazing thing called Facebook came about. And I had a very young staff member at the time who was like, "Oh my God, we need to get on Facebook." And I was literally, it was I think the week or two before my wedding. And I was like, "What is this Facebook thing? And I don't want to be part of it." So she went ahead and set it up anyway. And it seemed to be a bit of fun at the time and it was really slow. But obviously now Facebook is the biggest form of advertising, I believe in the world. But over the years we've just, grabbed Facebook and taken it and used it to every full capacity that's possible and switched over to Instagram now. And it's just for us, it's completely transformed our business.
Sonya M.:
So do you remember what year it was that this staff member set up your Facebook page?
Desiree:
Yeah, so it was a 2008. So it was just a couple of weeks before I got married. I think Myspace was a thing. We did have a MySpace account. Not that I had any clue what I was doing with that, but it was about October, maybe September, 2008. It was just before I got married. So yeah.
Sonya M.:
Wow. So how did you go from sort of being like, oh this young staff members set up this page to then taking it and doing what you are with it now? I mean it's a massive change from just having a little dabble to realizing its full potential.
Desiree:
So I think I just realized very quickly that majority of people wanted to be social without having to buy a newspaper or leave the comfort of their home or the couch. And everybody likes to share everything as we know on the internet these days. So we realized very quickly that that was the place where we needed to position our business, it was the clientele that we had in our business. It was the clientele that we wanted to attract. And so we realized very quickly that that was where we needed to spend a lot of our time. And it's paying off tenfold all these years down the track.
Sonya M.:
Yeah. That's awesome. Tell me a little bit about what you used to do on social media versus what it looks like now. Because I know it's changed a lot over the years for you.
Desiree:
It has changed a lot. So at the start Facebook was, the more you posted, the more people saw. So at the very start we didn't do a lot because we didn't know what we were doing, but as years went along we would post a lot and horrifyingly enough, there was a stage where we would post sometimes, we would schedule posts for every hour of the day before Facebook advertising-
Desiree:
I know it's terrible. Before Facebook advertising was really popular, you could just post all day and the newsfeed was according to the time that people were posting. So we would schedule posts for, eight hours of the day, every hour on the hour of different posts just to get in people's faces. And then as the algorithm started to change, we realized that Facebook hated us for doing that. So we did cut it back and we now are in the cost. We actually post twice a day now, which is still a lot. But for us it's very consistent and that's what our, I guess our viewers are used to seeing. So we keep that really consistent now.
Sonya M.:
Yeah, that actually blew my mind that you're posting every morning and every single afternoon. And I want to talk to you a little bit about the strategy behind that. Because I sat down with Desiree and we're sort of looking through her feed and the rates that these posts are getting organically in the engagement. It's insane. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. So what is your sort of theory behind why that's working and can you tell us a little bit about the posts that you are putting out there on Facebook versus Instagram as well?
Desiree:
So as I said before, we realized really quickly that people wanted to be social. So I know for myself when I'm on the couch and I go on Facebook, I don't want to see advertising from a business every single post. So we realized really quickly that our business model, I guess was fun. And our clients, that's why they come to us because it's not a typical spa situation. So we played around a lot to see what got the most reach on our page. And after quite a few months of tracking all of that, we realized that anything entertaining or even slightly a little bit naughty was getting the biggest reach. So now we schedule a post every single morning at 7:00 AM, sometimes earlier because people are in bed at that time, they're on their phones. It's always something really entertaining.
A lot of the time it is a little bit naughty because it gets people's attention and that's... People are on there to be social. So that works really well. And then we found at nighttime it was generally something a little bit more informative. So every second or third day it might be a sales related post, but majority of the time it might just be an image of our work or a product that we have in store, something that's going to help people more than entertain them. So that seems to work really well for us. And across Instagram it's just totally visual. So very rarely do we sell on Instagram. We might sell a little bit by our stories, but majority of the posts are photos of clients or products that we have in the salon. Photos of what we're up to. It's totally visual. It's not buy my stuff all the time. Yeah.
Sonya M.:
Yeah. I love that. So speaking of naughty posts, can you tell us about this story about your real estate agent texting you?
Desiree:
Yes. Her husband is a real estate agent who I know through different avenues of things that I'm involved in and about a month ago now, we put these posts up on Facebook that I knew would be hit or miss. It did annoy a couple of people. But the reach was, it's astronomical what the reach was. So we posted it at seven in the morning and by the time I went to work, I think it had reached about 3000 people by like nine o'clock and then it got to about 11:00 and I saw his name pop up on my phone and I thought, "Oh, that's a bit strange. I wonder what he wants." Like he's not actual real estate agent. And he texts me and he's like, "Hey Des, I think you've posted something on your business page by accident instead of your Facebook page." And that had a screenshot of the posts that we put up.
And I sort of panicked for a minute thinking, "Oh my God, what have I done?" And then I realized, no, that's, like that was actually intentional. We scheduled that quite a few weeks ago. And then I went back to our page and looked at the reach and by I think 11 o'clock in the morning, it had reached like six and a half thousand people. So I just texted back and I said, "No, that wasn't a mistake. It's purely intentional. If you go back through our page you'll notice we're a little bit shaky with that part and the reach has just going through the roof. And that's I think why Facebook is so popular, because people know that we are a little bit risky and it's fun and it's not a typical beauty salon. And that's why people enjoy it. So we do get that a little bit actually.
Sonya M.:
It's so funny. I love it. But I think what you've done really well, your posts on Facebook aren't all beautifully branded. They're naughty. They're a little bit tongue-in-cheek. But what you sort of said to me was like, you've really worked out your target market. They know that they can come in, they can have a glass of wine, they can talk casually in the salon. It's that kind of feel. It's not a super high end like uptight kind of place. It's somewhere that you want people to feel really relaxed and comfortable and I think that really translates onto your social. What I've really-
Desiree:
That's true yeah. We find so many businesses have this, they have this persona on social media and then you go to the business and it's completely different. And we wanted to make sure that what we were putting out on the internet is exactly what we're portraying inside. Once they walk in the door, it's exactly the same set up and there was no surprises for anybody and then knew what to expect before they walked in the door. Yeah.
Sonya M.:
And I think that highlights that you are completely on brand with everything. So it might be that your graphics are in your brand colors and fonts and things like that, but it goes so far beyond that and you're so consistent with everything. So I think that's why it works as well.
Desiree:
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Sonya M.:
And what I love about what you're doing, particularly on Facebook is that you are using a lot of different post types, sorry, in my workshop, something that I use as an example. You do live video, you do pre recorded videos that are edited, you do posts with multiple images, you do polls, you do all of the different things that Facebook allows us to do. I think a lot of businesses will just do like a single image with some text as their post and it just doesn't get the cut through.
Desiree:
Yeah.
Sonya M.:
So I think that you sort of nailing it in terms of that. Can I ask, what have you spent your time on marketing wise that has made zero difference to your business versus what has actually moved the needle?
Desiree:
I think for us, the thing that that really poses us is doing what everybody else is doing. So I think we've learned along our period on the internet is that, everybody seems to be doing the same thing. Everybody is so serious about their marketing and it's all textbook and it's all very serious and we learned very quickly that Facebook, Instagram, we even doubled in Snapchat for awhile. Anything there that people are doing, people are going there to relax. So you need to keep in mind that it is a social platform.
So we are always very mindful of everything being social and fun and not, everything is on brand I guess. But for us it doesn't need to all look the same. We want people to come to our page and realize that every single image doesn't look the same and it is fun. Like their personal newsfeed was. And that was the thing, that's been the turning point us is realizing that it needs to be social all the time. So we try and really, we steer away from doing everything by the book because we know that those things just don't work for us anymore.
Sonya M.:
Yeah. Such a good point there. Now you have been doing amazing things with messenger bots. Can you tell everyone about how you use that for this new skincare line that you got in? Because this just blows my mind. Incredible results.
Desiree:
Yeah. So I've actually, I've went back and got all the figures for you and I'm more than happy to share them.
Sonya M.:
Oh, thank you.
Desiree:
So for us, messenger bots, we took on messenger bots about a year and a bit ago now and it was still relatively new and people were very apprehensive about it. But I thought, well, if I can get into people's inboxes versus the emails that then they never check. Like I know that I never open my emails out. Email open rate is about 20% and apparently messenger bots we're going to be the hot new thing. So we realized very quickly that our open rates for messenger bots was very rarely below 85 to 90% so we worked really hard to build up our database of messenger bots. We ran some competitions and over the space of about six weeks we landed, I think about 2000 people in our messenger bot system.
Sonya M.:
Wow.
Desiree:
So we did that in the lead up because we knew that we were bringing in a new treatment. We had wanted to take on this new skincare line for quite some time. We had their sister brands performing really well in the salon and they were handing us to take out the brands that we had in currently and replace it with their sister brand. So we've worked really hard behind the scenes for quite a few weeks in the lead up to that building our database. Once the database was at a really healthy point, we took on the skincare line and we brought in a new machinery so we could do microdermabrasions and take back facials and all that sort of stuff on. So we decided that we would do a really low barrier entry. Also, it was something that we hadn't done before in that whole process.
We'd had random sales and that sort of stuff, but we set up a whole program where we were going to do a lead [inaudible 00:14:11]. So it was a $47 deluxe microdermabrasion treatment. For us normally it's around the $89 mark for that treatment. So we had all of the skincare ready to go in the salon we'd taken on, I think at the time we took about two of each product. So there wasn't a huge financial outlay to begin with because you don't know how it's going to go and you don't want to be dropping five grand and having it sit on your shelf. So we did, I think it was about a thousand dollar order of products, just the basics that get us started. We had the full messenger bot system set up ready to go, so we had two ways the clients could receive this. We sent out a blast to everybody in our database and we also had a click link on our actual Facebook page and I think we did on Instagram as well.
So we announced that we had these brand new treatment coming. We'd been plugging that there was a new treatment coming for weeks. We'd done live videos and we had it all ready to go. And on the actual launch night, I think it was a Sunday, I just did a prerecorded video in my house of me saying, "Oh my God, we've got this new treatment arriving. It starts tomorrow. The microdermabrasion is brand new. It was really exciting and instead of paying $89 you could have it for $47." But the kicker was is that there was a redeemable portion back on that new product. So they would pay $47 to have the deluxe microdermabrasion, which was a 45 minute treatment, but while they were in salon, they were often $27 cash back on their product. There was only selected products that we had available in the salon and they were all high end products.
So there was never going to be a point where we were going to lose any money. It was, we just had faith in the brand and that people would have the treatment and that they would buy a product. I think it was about 80% of people bought more than one product, multiple products. There was only one or two people who actually bought nothing.
Desiree:
So we did make a slight loss on those. But the figures, if you want to hear though.
Sonya M.:
Yeah.
Desiree:
Because they're huge. So we only ran the promo for about four weeks. I think it was only for one month we ran the promo. But in the first, like few days, the girls were booked out for pretty much the whole month. So we had to turn all the advertising off because we just couldn't keep up with the bookings. Sorry for that. I think about four or five weeks. It was actually, we treated 130 clients with the $47 low barrier lead magnet offer. So that was around the $6000 mark just on treatments alone. Out of those 130 people, 25 of those clients purchased another four of those treatments so we offered them to pre-purchase another four in a pack. So that was another about four and a half grand. And out of those 130 clients, we sold $14000 in retail.
Sonya M.:
Holy Moly. And that was through a messenger bot campaign. That's insane.
Desiree:
I worked out the average sale per client was around $190 in 45 minutes. So the highest sale was $489 and a couple of them were 47 people were happy just to pay the 47 and have nothing. But there were people that were paying three, four, one lady bought $489 worth products and then because of that we'd sold so many passes for people to come back and have more between November and December. We then ranked number three for that skincare line in Australia for the whole of 2018. So we made enough sales over the space of two months to be ranked number three in Australia for the sales for that particular brand.
Sonya M.:
That's crazy. And you know what I love about this so much is that you didn't just go and do like a cheap intro offer to hope that someone would come back and be a repeat client. You've had a plan behind it. You've had the plan to do the $27 sort of buyback offer with products and then also the packages as well. So it's a real, I guess, funnel that you've put people into with a plan on how to make more revenue from it. And I think that's where a lot of people just look at, okay, well how do I get these leads? But don't look at sort of maximizing the revenue from those leads that you're getting.
Desiree:
And that's exactly why. We'd done the same thing in the past. We'd done the same thing for 12, 13 years where we would go, okay, well let's have this crazy sale and then the client would come in and they would have the sale and then you wouldn't see them again to six months because they were only coming for that sale. So we made sure that when they came into the salon, the girls had a wholesales process ready to go. The treatment was that amazing. They wanted more, they knew what they were missing out on, and then there was even a follow up process. So people who came in and had the treatment, if they didn't buy the pass, they were then offered, I think two days later they girls would get in contact with them via messenger and just say, "Hey, it's whoever did the treatment. Just wanted to double check the offer is still available. You can still purchase a pass."
We even had a link in there for them to buy it then and there and a lot of people did because it was something different for them and we were really making sure the followup was amazing and that they wanted more. And for us, even if they just had the $47 treatment in 45 minutes, you were still making a dollar a minute so you're still making really good money and you were helping people with their skin, which is what it was all about.
Sonya M.:
Yeah. I love that. This wasn't on my pre-planned question list, but I'm just sort of wondering with this transformation with your business over the last few years, have you found that your role within the business has changed a lot? So have you sort of stepped back from training people a lot more to developing these sales systems and processes? Because it sounds like you're doing a lot of training and process driven work with your team.
Desiree:
Yeah, so I have always tried to work in the business about four to five days a week since we launched this last year, I got to... Well a few years ago actually, I got to a point where I just, I couldn't do everything and business owners who work in their clinics full-time or their businesses and then they do all, they said, "Something games and it doesn't work." So my daughter started school this year and I knew that I would have time available to work on processes and doing the things that I really enjoy for the business like, building these chatbots and that sort of stuff. So I stepped back dramatically after that point, especially after Christmas last year.
The girls at my salon all vouch that, I'm only literally there probably 10 hours a week. Now I have my Thursday and my Friday that I do and my Saturday, they're few and far between because I just, I've realized very quickly that I'm better off working on the business. I'm on the computer and letting them do what they're good at and that's treating clients. So I definitely have realized that you need to step back sometimes in order for the business to grow, which is what I've done.
Sonya M.:
Yeah. That's fantastic. So on that note, you are getting a lot of content out. You're doing a lot with these chatbots at the moment. What does that structure sort of look like for you? How are you finding the time to get this much content out?
Desiree:
Yeah, so I guess I'm very lucky. My team know exactly how everything runs. I'm very transparent with my team about how things run on all aspects of the business. So they're obviously on Facebook at night and all that sort of stuff. So anytime they say anything that makes them laugh, they screenshot everything, we have a special messenger system that we all send through. So I at anytime have a full database of things that I can share across our social media. So generally every Sunday night I will sit down and ensure that the whole week is planned ahead. My post, story, like the morning posts, they're done three months in advance.
So when I can see that I'm getting towards the end of that three months, I will just block out an hour or two and I'll spend time finding all those funny quotes and all the funny images and I just sit and make sure that they're solely scheduled because that way they're done and I don't have to think about it and just rushing to find random things at the time because you've forgotten to do it. So I do sit down and schedule quite a lot of stuff and then leading up to things like, we've got Black Friday coming up and Cyber Monday and Christmas. Knowing that those big times of year are coming. I'll allocate a whole day and say, right, today's the day I'm doing Black Friday. We also have 12 days of Christmas, which is fully planned out, scheduled. We have bots attached to every single day, the Facebook process scheduled. Everything's scheduled across Instagram.
So I make sure that I make that time to schedule. Otherwise you just end up doing I guess how fast things and they just don't work. And I like to make sure that it's all planned and that there is a process and a structure behind it all.
Sonya M.:
Yeah, I think that's so true. It all just comes down to time blocking at the end of the day. I know that you mentioned to me when we sat down and had a chat as well, that if you feel like your reach or your engagement is dropping a bit, you'll do a series of live videos. How does that work? So that's on top of the content that you've scheduled?
Desiree:
Yeah, so I did some, when I learned about chatbots, I did some training with an amazing business coach last year. And he actually, I rang him one day and I said, "Look, our engagement's really bad. I don't know what I'm doing. We're doing all the right things." And Facebook was making algorithm changes and he said to me, "Desiree, I'm going to tell you to do something and I know you're going to hate it." And I was like, "Oh my God, what does he want me to do now?" And he said, "I want you to do 30 days of Facebook lives."
Sonya M.:
I see.
Desiree:
And I said this aloud, "30 days of Facebook lives." And I was like, "Oh yeah." And my initial reaction was, "Yeah, no worries." Like I'm not shy behind the camera. I can do that. And I then I thought about it and I rang him back and I said, "What the heck am I meant to do for 30 days? Like how am I going to entertain my stable for 30 days?" And he said, "Desiree, you'll figure it out. Just don't make excuses, just do it." And I literally sat there for hours trying to find every excuse under the sun to do it. There was days where I was sick, there was days where I didn't want to do it and I just thought to myself, no, there's obviously a reason behind this. So I had a quick meeting with my team and said, "Look, obviously I can't do every day for 30 days. It's probably impossible."
So I got a couple of my team members on board that aren't shy and that we're happy to do it. I made everybody have a turn. So even the girls that didn't want to do it, they had to do something and we just sat down and wrote a list of things that we thought that might be of benefit to our clients. So we've literally did things like, one night my kids gone to bed, I put up a tripod in my bathroom and did my at night skincare routine. And we've realized very quickly that people liked to seeing us live. They liked the fact that, every now and then I would accidentally swear or the tripod would fall down or you drop a product in the bathroom or I'd be there doing my makeup at seven in the morning and the kids would come in and the kids would be in their pajamas asking also breakfast, and they liked that, the rawness of it and the, it's like reality TV, but the people that you actually know.
So we noticed if our engagement's dropping off a little bit, we'll pull out a couple of our nighttime posts. We might just reschedule them. Or if the morning engagement's really low, we just reschedule the posts that we have and I'll do a, get ready with me in the morning or if we're doing, if we've got a new product in the salon, the girls would do it alive. And I do have team members that are really happy to do that and they love it probably more than I do. So, get them to do it because they're good at it as well. So we definitely do the 30 days of lives, especially in the peak times as well. It's not just in the quiet times. I don't want people to think that we only do those things to boost engagement because we know that Black Friday, Christmas, all those things that are coming up, people need help and they need assistance.
So we do it just as much in the busy times as the really, the quiet engagement times. We get out there and we put our faces on and like literally I put my makeup on on camera. So I start with no makeup and I finish because people like to see that. And the sales wait for themselves. The days where I do the Facebook makeup lives, people literally walk in the salon and say, "I want everything that she used." And they like it so it works.
Sonya M.:
That's amazing. And it sounds like you've built an absolutely incredible team as well that you know you can lean on to help you with this because it would be very hard to be doing the volume of content that you're doing without having this team behind you for a solo operator, what a challenge.
Desiree:
I think if you team's not behind you with anything, move them along. That's my biggest, I've learned very quickly over the years that if your team's not behind you 100% they're not. Get rid of them. Don't keep them. Because if they don't want to help you, how can you keep them employed? And if they're not there to help the end goal for everybody, then I don't keep them on. So all of my team are 100% all in for any silly idea that I do come up with. They're always in and they're more than happy to jump on board and help out, which is great.
Sonya M.:
That's awesome.
Desiree:
And we do some random things.
Sonya M.:
Oh, dear. You mentioned to me as well that you've in Facebook jail before.
Desiree:
Oh, God.
Sonya M.:
What is Facebook jail and what is your experience?
Desiree:
So firstly, you don't want to ever be there. I always thought Facebook jail was quite a myth and it was, like the Loch Ness Monster that you heard of that it never happens. So when Facebook, about maybe six months ago, started really tightening up on the, I guess the spamming rules and your obligations towards using chatbots and so forth. People had been getting away with things quite easily for quite a long time. So you could literally send out a broadcast to your entire database saying, "Hey Sonya, buy my stuff. It's $99 here's the link, buy it." And Facebook realized that's all people were doing. And there was plenty of warnings out there that you could not initiate a broadcast message that was entirely about sales. It had to be news-related or you had to be approved to do certain things.
So before the whole approval process came through with Facebook that you needed to be approved for subscription messaging. It was very on the fence about what you could and couldn't do. I didn't pay any attention to that because I was getting a little cocky, I guess with what we were doing. And I sent out a broadcast that said, I cannot remember what it was now, but it was basically, "Hey Sonya, we have this amazing sale on it's X amount of money buy my stuff, blah, blah, blah." And a couple of days later, my friend messaged me and said, "Hey Desiree, I don't know what's going on with your Facebook, but the link that you sent me is not working." And I said, "That's a bit strange." So I spent quite a few hours looking into it and Facebook had literally disabled anything in regards to messenger marketing for me.
So I couldn't send out broadcast, I couldn't send deposit links to people, anything that was involved back to a messenger bot, they had black banned me so we couldn't even get deposits of clients and all that sort of stuff. And after quite a bit of investigation, I realized that I was in jail for at least 30 days, if not indefinitely. I sent many emails to Facebook begging for forgiveness. I was in the 24 seven chats with Facebook teams three times a day. And after about two weeks I just realized, look, I give up, I'm just going to have to wipe my time out. And then, a couple of weeks later, it just resolved as often. We're now very careful and we don't break the rules and we do everything that Facebook wants us to because it's very easy to get into Facebook jail. And if you do the wrong thing, not only can you end up in Facebook jail, but you can lose your whole page, which I'd certainly don't want to be losing.
So we're very, very mindful of the rules now and we play by the rules. We do differ from them a little bit and go sort of round the back way to get to the front. But we do everything by the book now. Yep.
Sonya M.:
Yeah. And I mean that would've been scary. You're finally getting all this traction in your business, you're taking payments from clients via messenger. That's the way you're reaching your audience to actually take it from, this funny content on your page that people are engaging with to actual sales. So I imagine you would have been panicking quite a bit.
Desiree:
I literally had a meltdown. Yep. It was like we're done. Like how can we continue? So in the other respect, I guess it was good because we then had to go back to, we weren't as comfortable. So sometimes that's a good thing. We had to sit back and go, okay, let's get back to basics. So we did get back to basics and it was a really big learning curve for us. We took Facebook back to basics, went back to what things are working for us without just being cocky all the time. And that's when, we went back to making sure that our content was really on brands, that it was scheduling everything in advance and it wasn't just sales all the time. So I'm grateful that we were in Facebook jail because we learnt a lot and it was good for us to revisit what we maybe hadn't been doing so well for a little bit of time as well. Yeah.
Sonya M.:
Amazing. All right, well thank you so much for your time today, Desiree. I have learned so much from you and what you're doing and just saying, as an outsider you can sort of see the types of content and posts that you're putting out there. But to see the back end and the organic rates that you're getting without spending money on these posts, like it's huge. I have never seen anything like it. So anyone listening to this, I don't care what sort of industry you're in. Go and check out Fashion Finger's Facebook page. If you can find a post to sign up to the messenger bot as well to see what Desiree's doing. It's fantastic. I feel like you were just light years ahead of throw so many businesses in terms of your marketing. I think this has really taken off in the U.S., but not enough businesses are sort of seeing the opportunities that are still available on social media at the moment.
Desiree:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Sonya M.:
All right. Yeah, thanks again for joining us.
Desiree:
Thank you so much for having me. It was great.