Feeling stuck selling our product, not sure what to try next

[steel-potato]

Hi all,

In the last year we launched our first product and business called According to Aegle (According to Aegle). We sell a skincream that combines retinol and niacinamide, products that are often sold seperately and for a rediculous price tag. We genuinely believe our product is of a very high quality but I'm feeling a bit lost as to the next step in growing the business. So far we've received a lot of positive feedback from friends and family who have been open minded to try it - to the point where we've had friends of friends asking about it and wanting to buy it. We've harassed pretty much everyone on our contact lists to support us and have now got about 28 x 5 star reviews on our website.

We've tried selling at a local market with little success, but it was probably the wrong type of market for the product. We're setting up shop in a market more suitable for our product soon. We've also tried putting letters in letterboxes in our neighbourhood, we're doing our first stint at door-to-door sales this weekend, and we've tried instagram outreach with some limited success. One influencer agreed to post about our product if we send it to her. We put a small amount of money into boosting a post on IG, but we aren't good at content creation, and our IG presence needs work. So it didn't really reap any results. When we're competing with L'Oreal, and all we've got is 3 dudes with a camera, it can be difficult making engaging content or making our brand look legitimate.

Generally, tall poppy syndrome has hit us hard here in Australia, and many girls are extremely reluctant to try something new when it comes to their skincare. They only trust big brands and there is a lot of skepticism.

In short, we've tried a lot of different things when it comes to selling our product. Meanwhile, my IG feed is littered with guys saying they quit their 9-5 within 5 months of doing day trading, Andrew Tate type get rich easy ads, people selling their e-com drop-shipping course, ect. One thing that I thought is that even if those businesses are scammy, they at least know how to sell a lot better than us. What else can we do to start making genuine, online sales? To start growing our business faster so we don't spend hours at a market to make 2 sales, or knocking on peoples doors? I know eating shit is a part of the journey, but I feel like there are some knowledge gaps, and things we could be doing better.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

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[PRESENTUR]

Hey. This can be THE Australian skincare success story! I am just doing presentations ok, I use a lot of parfumes but I am no expert in skincare. But maybe this helps from my presentational perspective:

Your current Strengths:​

• Clear Benefit Focus: The website highlights key ingredients (Retinol, Niacinamide) and their benefits (reducing fine lines, hydrating skin).
• Customer Testimonials: Genuine-sounding testimonials build trust and social proof.
• Earth-Friendly Angle: Focus on recyclable packaging is a plus for environmentally conscious consumers.
• Australian Sourcing: Mentioning the Australian origin of ingredients adds a sense of quality and trustworthiness.
• Satisfaction Guarantee: This reduces the risk for first-time buyers.

Your weaknesses compared to Big Brands:​

• Brand Story & Founder Persona: Missing a compelling brand narrative and a strong founder presence. Big brands heavily invest in crafting a story that resonates with their target audience.
• Visual Presentation: Website design and product photography lack the sophistication and aspirational quality of luxury brands.
• Target Audience Clarity: The marketing feels somewhat general. It's not laser-focused on a specific demographic with clearly defined pain points.
• Transparency on Production & Allergies: While ingredients are listed, there's limited information about the production process, allergy testing, or suitability for sensitive skin.
• Limited Content Marketing: Lack of blog posts, skincare guides, or educational content that positions Aegle as an authority.

Your target audience?​

Target Group: Health-conscious Australian women, aged 30-55, who are experiencing the first signs of aging (fine lines, dullness) and are seeking effective, natural-leaning skincare solutions without breaking the bank. Yes?

Their pain Points:

• Overwhelmed by the sheer number of skincare products and ingredients.
• Concerned about harsh chemicals and artificial ingredients.
• Seeking visible results without expensive treatments.
• Want a simple, effective nighttime routine.

Your marketing Interventions:​

Here's where we roll up our sleeves and get to work.

1. Craft a Compelling Brand Story:
   
   • Founder's Journey: Feature the founder prominently. Share her personal story – what inspired her to create this cream? Was it a personal struggle with her own skin? What's her philosophy on skincare? People connect with authenticity. With YOU! 😀
   • "From Mystical Land" Narrative: Play up the Australian angle. What makes Australia unique in terms of natural ingredients and skincare traditions? Is there a specific region or ingredient that's central to the brand? What about sunscreen and protection?
2. Elevate the your Visual Presentation:
   • Professional Photography: Invest in high-quality product photography that showcases the cream's texture and luxurious feel. Lifestyle shots featuring the target audience using the product in a relaxing, natural setting.
   • Show your happy girls using it before after smiling bright! Show people! Real people, make them send you pictures!
   • Website Redesign: A cleaner, more modern website design will enhance credibility. Focus on user experience – make it easy to navigate and find information.
3. Sharpen the Messaging:
   • Address Specific Pain Points: Tailor the copy to speak directly to the target audience's concerns. Example: "Tired of fine lines stealing your glow? Aegle's Night Essence combines the power of Retinol and Niacinamide to visibly reduce wrinkles and restore your youthful radiance, naturally."
   • Focus on Simplicity: Emphasize the ease of use. Position it as the "one-stop night cream" that replaces multiple products.
4. Amplify Customer Testimonials:
   • Video Testimonials: Nothing is more powerful than seeing and hearing real customers rave about the product.
   • Before-and-After Photos: Encourage customers to share their results with before-and-after photos.
   • Loyalty Program: Reward loyal customers and incentivize them to share their experiences.
5. Increase Transparency:
   
   • Detailed Ingredient Information: Provide a comprehensive list of ingredients with clear explanations of their benefits and origins.
   • Production Process: Share insights into the production process. Highlight any unique or sustainable practices.
   • Allergy Information: Clearly state if the product is free from common allergens (parabens, sulfates, fragrances, etc.). Mention any allergy testing that has been conducted.
6. Content Marketing Powerhouse:
   • Blog: Create valuable content related to skincare, aging, natural ingredients, and healthy living.
   • Skincare Guides: Offer free downloadable guides on topics like "The Ultimate Nighttime Skincare Routine" or "Understanding Retinol: A Beginner's Guide."
   • Social Media: Engage with your audience on social media. Share tips, answer questions, run contests, and showcase customer results.
7. Strategic Partnerships:
   • Influencer Marketing: Collaborate with relevant beauty and lifestyle influencers who align with the brand's values.
   • Local Businesses: Partner with spas, salons, or health food stores to offer samples or sell the product.

Addressing the Production and Safety Concerns​

Currently, the site mentions sourcing ingredients from Australian wholesalers but lacks specific details about safety measures and allergy testing.

Recommendations:

• Certifications: Obtain relevant certifications (e.g., cruelty-free, organic) to build trust.
• Allergy Testing: Conduct allergy testing and clearly state the results on the website.
• Manufacturing Standards: Highlight adherence to good manufacturing practices (GMP).
• Contact Information: Provide clear contact information for customers to ask questions about ingredients or allergies.

Conclusion:​

Aegle's night cream has a solid foundation with its effective ingredients and positive customer feedback. By implementing these marketing interventions – focusing on brand storytelling, visual presentation, targeted messaging, and transparency – we can elevate Aegle to compete with the big brands and capture the hearts (and faces) of its ideal customers.

All the best!
Ed.

 

[TheWiseGuy]

I'm in the same boat as you. So much traction that's not being converted into hard proof- cash. You said your friends and family bought your product-- how many sales came in the form of a stranger?

First off, buy yourself a book called "The One Page Marketing Plan". You'll need to get organised with your offer. It's the best marketing book in existence. Bar none.

Secondly, you need to stop neglecting your social media presence, especially Meta (Facebook, IG). Boosted posts SUCK, I learned this the hard way. You NEED to use the target audience you created in your one page marketing plan and focus ads towards them.

I don't want to flood you with information, but you need to learn how Meta ads work. It's not as simple as boosting a post and crossing your fingers. You need to get yourself a PC and login to Meta Business Suite, make yourself a Pixel and CHOOSE THE RIGHT CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVE. I burned through cash by choosing the wrong campaign objective. Meta optimises based on your decision. If you want clicks, it'll find people who are highly likely to click. If you want engagement, you'll get just that. It sounds intimidating, but I suggest you really sit down and learn Meta advertising.

Lastly, use TikTok to find smaller, aspiring influencers. Remember- they care more about what YOU can GIVE THEM. Focus your offer on what you can provide (passive income using affiliate marketing). Imagine a 20 year old girl being offered money to sell a skin care product on TikTok. You will probably infect them with the entrepreneur bug.

Your product has the advantage of being replicable and you can generate positive customer life time value.

You can do it. And remember, this part of entrepreneurship is the "dark, lonely road with no signposts" that MJ spoke of.

 

[bc0510]

Hi all,

In the last year we launched our first product and business called According to Aegle (According to Aegle). We sell a skincream that combines retinol and niacinamide, products that are often sold seperately and for a rediculous price tag. We genuinely believe our product is of a very high quality but I'm feeling a bit lost as to the next step in growing the business. So far we've received a lot of positive feedback from friends and family who have been open minded to try it - to the point where we've had friends of friends asking about it and wanting to buy it. We've harassed pretty much everyone on our contact lists to support us and have now got about 28 x 5 star reviews on our website.

We've tried selling at a local market with little success, but it was probably the wrong type of market for the product. We're setting up shop in a market more suitable for our product soon. We've also tried putting letters in letterboxes in our neighbourhood, we're doing our first stint at door-to-door sales this weekend, and we've tried instagram outreach with some limited success. One influencer agreed to post about our product if we send it to her. We put a small amount of money into boosting a post on IG, but we aren't good at content creation, and our IG presence needs work. So it didn't really reap any results. When we're competing with L'Oreal, and all we've got is 3 dudes with a camera, it can be difficult making engaging content or making our brand look legitimate.

Generally, tall poppy syndrome has hit us hard here in Australia, and many girls are extremely reluctant to try something new when it comes to their skincare. They only trust big brands and there is a lot of skepticism.

In short, we've tried a lot of different things when it comes to selling our product. Meanwhile, my IG feed is littered with guys saying they quit their 9-5 within 5 months of doing day trading, Andrew Tate type get rich easy ads, people selling their e-com drop-shipping course, ect. One thing that I thought is that even if those businesses are scammy, they at least know how to sell a lot better than us. What else can we do to start making genuine, online sales? To start growing our business faster so we don't spend hours at a market to make 2 sales, or knocking on peoples doors? I know eating shit is a part of the journey, but I feel like there are some knowledge gaps, and things we could be doing better.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

All the suggestions you have gotten until now seem super useful. I will just add few points:
1. For your brand social media is very important, not just for sale but a brand awareness. You need to collaborate with influencers who can sponsor your product during their videos/shorts etc.
2. Paid Ads - Facebook, Insta, and others
3. Have you tried selling on marketplaces like Amazon and any other available in Australia?
4. Have you tried contacting supermarkets and adding your products to the display shelves?
5. Adding your own content with or without your face showing on the videos - how to etc videos.
6. Does your product have any medicinal benefits for the skin? If yes, you can also contact some pharmacies in your area to put your products with them. Give the pharmacies a bigger margin so they are attracted to sell your product when a customer wants a similar one.
7. Content - write and publish nice articles related to your product, benefits etc on a regular basis.

 

[focusedlife]

Small ad budget?

Lots of grit?

Check out these "Walk the dog" strategies that I found on substack.

→ Click here

In fact, after checking that post out, do a "publication" search on substack for "marketing: and "growth hacks."

That dude should be grateful, my 3rtd party recommendation probably gets him some subs.

The point?

You probably want to give the same amount of value.

Best of luck.

Hope it's useful.

 

[Johnny boy]

Here’s how to sell. Be as ethical as you want but this is what will convince people, as we are all so desensitized to ads that we only take action when we see miracles nowadays.

Sell shit to people who have money

Old ladies (27 and up)

What do they want?

To look younger

Your cream does that.

Crazy insane before and afters.

Increase their dream outcome, increase their perceived likelihood of achievement. Decrease their perceived risk. Decrease their time, effort and sacrifice.

Don’t sell the flight, sell the vacation.

Here’s the perfect offer

“The sixty day skincare solution”

Show insane before and afters.

Give glowing testimonials

This increases their dream outcome

Things to increase their perceived likelihood of achievement:
1. Their other attempts at solving skin issues didn’t work because they used (insert the top 2 most common compounds) so the majority of the audience identifies with it
2. You have something special and proprietary and exotic. (High value, exclusive) which is different than the standard solutions that didn’t work.
3. Show some stats. Clinical trials and doctors and some actor in a lab coat

Think of every reason they wouldn’t get it and demolish the objection right there

1. It’s safe and natural (worried about chemicals)
2. It works with their type of skin problem (they think their problem is unique or not fixed by your solution)
Etc.

Then, add in a call to action

But wait, there’s more!

For taking action now they get not one, not two, but three “treatments” (bottles sounds cheap, treatments is inherently valuable and clinical sounding)

And included in your order today is (insert a few crazy other solutions that are worth a lot by themselves. A dark eye circles fix, the best lip balm ever invented, etc. included for free!

This total package is usually $357 but if you act today, it’s discounted! Not down to $257, or even $199, but only $99! Click below to claim your solution to all your old lady skin problems!

Then upsell the shit out of every other solution you can think of on the backend. Stuff that you charge many hundreds for. Be creative.

This is your funnel. Bring people to it with social media content and retargeting ads. Partner with influencers. There’s only like 100 trillion beauty influencers to pick from to partner.

Want to see some insane stuff?



This cream is like $350

The daughter of a billionaire had it and she would massage me with it when we were dating. It’s still at my house lol.

People pay obscene amounts for stupid creams. Let them pay obscene amounts for YOUR cream. (That’s what she said).

 

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[Jobless]

Some great advice in this thread. I know a bit about this industry.

For skincare brands, there are a lot of them. Thousands. So I think you need to niche down more who the product is for. It's better to do something extreme or unusual I think, rather than to conform what most other brands are doing in this space. Most skincare brands use buzzwords like "retinol", "niacinamide" or "high quality" to market. And their products look visually similar, are sold in similar places, to similar people. It's crowded. So do something different in one of those three categories: PPP--> people, place, product.

I'd go looking for European online beauty stores and pharmacies + European influencers for this. Australia as a country, and Australian skincare (such as sun protection) is very popular in Europe. It has a high reputation. Probably a lot better than Australian domestic market. There are numerous examples.

Go for an "australia" angle (sun, surfing, tanned skin, Bondi beach, swimming, kangaroos, koala) in some aspect and market to cold Northern Europe or America. It has an exotic factor here, and if it came alkl the way from other side of the world, it has to be a great product, right? It has to already have been super-successful in Austrialia. That's what people think.

 

[PRESENTUR]

Here’s how to sell. Be as ethical as you want but this is what will convince people, as we are all so desensitized to ads that we only take action when we see miracles nowadays.

Sell shit to people who have money

Old ladies (27 and up)

What do they want?

To look younger

Your cream does that.

Crazy insane before and afters.

Increase their dream outcome, increase their perceived likelihood of achievement. Decrease their perceived risk. Decrease their time, effort and sacrifice.

Don’t sell the flight, sell the vacation.

Here’s the perfect offer

“The sixty day skincare solution”

Show insane before and afters.

Give glowing testimonials

This increases their dream outcome

Things to increase their perceived likelihood of achievement:
1. Their other attempts at solving skin issues didn’t work because they used (insert the top 2 most common compounds) so the majority of the audience identifies with it
2. You have something special and proprietary and exotic. (High value, exclusive) which is different than the standard solutions that didn’t work.
3. Show some stats. Clinical trials and doctors and some actor in a lab coat

Think of every reason they wouldn’t get it and demolish the objection right there

1. It’s safe and natural (worried about chemicals)
2. It works with their type of skin problem (they think their problem is unique or not fixed by your solution)
Etc.

Then, add in a call to action

But wait, there’s more!

For taking action now they get not one, not two, but three “treatments” (bottles sounds cheap, treatments is inherently valuable and clinical sounding)

And included in your order today is (insert a few crazy other solutions that are worth a lot by themselves. A dark eye circles fix, the best lip balm ever invented, etc. included for free!

This total package is usually $357 but if you act today, it’s discounted! Not down to $257, or even $199, but only $99! Click below to claim your solution to all your old lady skin problems!

Then upsell the shit out of every other solution you can think of on the backend. Stuff that you charge many hundreds for. Be creative.

This is your funnel. Bring people to it with social media content and retargeting ads. Partner with influencers. There’s only like 100 trillion beauty influencers to pick from to partner.

Want to see some insane stuff?

View attachment 63561

This cream is like $350

The daughter of a billionaire had it and she would massage me with it when we were dating. It’s still at my house lol.

People pay obscene amounts for stupid creams. Let them pay obscene amounts for YOUR cream. (That’s what she said).

This is a perfect pitch! Do that!

 

[steel-potato]

Gotta say, I'm blown away by how in depth and helpful the responses have been. This is the best community ever. Lots of things to work on and implement!