Hi everyone!
I just wanted to share something I am struggling with as a consequence of being too dependent on Instagram as a marketing channel so you can avoid making the same mistake.
My business partner and I run an ecommerce kids fashion brand selling mainly in Spain directly from our website. We launched at the end of 2019 and have been growing fast (with a brief hard stop during the lockdown months). Despite we have a lot of repeating customers and are growing a lot via referral from our customers, a very big chunk of new clients find us via Instagram (partly through microinfluencers and paid ads but mostly organically). Also, Instagram is the main way of communication with our public (with email marketing coming second).
We have tried other marketing channels but this has been the most effective by far so we kind of went all in ("marketingly" speaking) and that strategy was paying off... until recently.
During the last 4 months we have noticed the organic reach was decreasing, but the last 2 have been brutal, our posts and stories generally reach 4% of our followers (sometimes even less), and in best cases 20%. Considering we received around 30% of our sales via instagram organically (probably even more indirectly), you can imagine the effects...
We are exploring new channels more aggresively now and are even broadening our business model (we only sold B2C but we are starting to sell B2B as well and will open soon in physical thorugh a very well located niche shop in exchange for a % of the sales).
The thing is that this could have been avoided if we have diversified channels more and were open to new revenue streams within the business.
I was aware of our dependency on Insta and explored other channels (but not too hard i must admit), do not make the same mistake.
Also, I was a quite stubborn about not selling b2b as a business strategy. It is true we generally have stock issues to be able to serve demand, but it could have been solved if I really wanted to find a way. Now we are getting in touch with some stores who have showed interest in the past to sell our products (we receive plenty of queries actually, which should have made me reconsoder earlier!) and we are starting selling outside of our main market first and we will see from there.
Also, we are focusing further in email marketing and will increase budget in fb ads (we spend very little but we have very good ROI on those) and we are starting with with google ads. We also dipped our toes on tiktok with a result os zero views in most of our videos so either our public is not there or we are terrible at creating content users like. In any case we are leaving that for now.
We are also organizing popup sales with complementary brands more often (which bring good sales and are an excellent way to connect with our customers and receive direct and unvaluable feedback on our products). If the experiment of the physical store on comission goes well, we will look for similar alternatives in other strategic cities and, who knows, even consider opening our own store.
Any other ideas are welcome!
In conclusion: I just wanted twi share these two lessons I learnt the hard way, 1) Do not get blinded by good results and rely too much in a single channel outside of your control. Fortunately is just a channel (not the business model) and it can be solved, but it is being painful; and 2) don't be closed minded, don't discard potential opportunnities out of stubborness like I did.
I hope you find this helpful
I just wanted to share something I am struggling with as a consequence of being too dependent on Instagram as a marketing channel so you can avoid making the same mistake.
My business partner and I run an ecommerce kids fashion brand selling mainly in Spain directly from our website. We launched at the end of 2019 and have been growing fast (with a brief hard stop during the lockdown months). Despite we have a lot of repeating customers and are growing a lot via referral from our customers, a very big chunk of new clients find us via Instagram (partly through microinfluencers and paid ads but mostly organically). Also, Instagram is the main way of communication with our public (with email marketing coming second).
We have tried other marketing channels but this has been the most effective by far so we kind of went all in ("marketingly" speaking) and that strategy was paying off... until recently.
During the last 4 months we have noticed the organic reach was decreasing, but the last 2 have been brutal, our posts and stories generally reach 4% of our followers (sometimes even less), and in best cases 20%. Considering we received around 30% of our sales via instagram organically (probably even more indirectly), you can imagine the effects...
We are exploring new channels more aggresively now and are even broadening our business model (we only sold B2C but we are starting to sell B2B as well and will open soon in physical thorugh a very well located niche shop in exchange for a % of the sales).
The thing is that this could have been avoided if we have diversified channels more and were open to new revenue streams within the business.
I was aware of our dependency on Insta and explored other channels (but not too hard i must admit), do not make the same mistake.
Also, I was a quite stubborn about not selling b2b as a business strategy. It is true we generally have stock issues to be able to serve demand, but it could have been solved if I really wanted to find a way. Now we are getting in touch with some stores who have showed interest in the past to sell our products (we receive plenty of queries actually, which should have made me reconsoder earlier!) and we are starting selling outside of our main market first and we will see from there.
Also, we are focusing further in email marketing and will increase budget in fb ads (we spend very little but we have very good ROI on those) and we are starting with with google ads. We also dipped our toes on tiktok with a result os zero views in most of our videos so either our public is not there or we are terrible at creating content users like. In any case we are leaving that for now.
We are also organizing popup sales with complementary brands more often (which bring good sales and are an excellent way to connect with our customers and receive direct and unvaluable feedback on our products). If the experiment of the physical store on comission goes well, we will look for similar alternatives in other strategic cities and, who knows, even consider opening our own store.
Any other ideas are welcome!
In conclusion: I just wanted twi share these two lessons I learnt the hard way, 1) Do not get blinded by good results and rely too much in a single channel outside of your control. Fortunately is just a channel (not the business model) and it can be solved, but it is being painful; and 2) don't be closed minded, don't discard potential opportunnities out of stubborness like I did.
I hope you find this helpful
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