Crystal Media

Marketing Clarity.

By Leave a Comment

It’s Never To Early To Plan For Holiday

Already thinking about your holiday sales strategy? You should be! Why? Online shopping is flattening the spending year which means holiday shopping no longer means that crazy week before. In fact, in a 2018 Valassis Research survey found that a whopping 49% of people said that Amazon Prime Day (in July!) encouraged them to get a jump-start on their holiday shopping. 

Facebook also released its Holiday Guide*. Check out these tinsel-turning numbers:

bar graph for when holiday shopping startsstatistic graphicbar graph of different media channels

What does it all mean? That putting off your holiday marketing strategy is a big no-no. In an ideal world, retailers should start thinking about the holiday season in January, but we know that can be impractical. So ensuring that your strategy is tied up with a bow by the summer will help all the pieces of your plan fall into place as the cold weather creeps in. While there is no “right date” to begin your holiday launch, aim for November 1st.

Here are a few other quick tips to help your strategy shine:

  • “Plan” all year long. If you notice other efforts that work throughout the year, take note and include them for the holidays.
  • Spend money to make money. Now is the time to put your marketing budget to use in Facebook and Instagram ads.
  • Think about your audiences. Tap into customers from the previous season through VIP parties, holiday cards or email lists.
  • Have a merry marketing time. Holidays are a time to let creativity shine! Use those fun custom graphics and GIFs, videos or templates.

Thinking about the holidays might make you sweat, but careful planning and execution (with a healthy dose of inspiration and imagination) will help make this the best sales season yet!

*Find the Facebook Holiday Guide here.

By Leave a Comment

Why You Need Up-to-Date Listings

Interesting question. Did you know that someone could be standing within 5 feet of your store, pull out their phone, search for the exact products that you sell, and you might not show up in that search? Does that sound crazy? It does to us! But it’s the world we live in and if your listings aren’t accurate or up-to-date, you’re missing out on foot traffic. Period.

Here are my top 3 reasons to update your listings TODAY and a simple tip on how to do it. 

  1.     To drive foot traffic.  
  2.     To drive foot traffic.
  3.     To drive foot traffic.

Ok, so I only had 1 reason. But I think it’s reason enough. 😁

One simple way to keep your listings up-to-date is to add new images every month. When you change out your Facebook cover photo or create an Instagram post, add a few of those images to your Google My Business, Yelp, and Bing account.

You’ll also want to make sure you’re optimizing the images for search by renaming them with keywords. We typically use the format business name + location + brand name + product (i.e. Crystals-Boutique-Carlsbad-CA-Alex-and-Ani-Bracelet). Of course, you can modify that to be relevant to your type of business. 

But trust us. There’s a lot more that goes into making sure your listings are accurate, up-to-date and optimized, but updating some of your bigger listing sites monthly will help you show up more and higher in rankings. 

Ready to get “update local listings” off your long, daily to-do list? Let us do it for you with Get Listed. Click here to learn more.

By Leave a Comment

3 Instagram Hashtag Best Practices

Instagram Hashtags are still an effective way to get more eyes 👀 (and engagement!) on your Instagram posts. From following hashtags to adding them into your Instagram Stories, I’m sharing with you 3 hashtag best practices you can use to grow your brand and ensure you’re using hashtags strategically to meet your business goals!

Ready to learn how to strategically step-up your hashtag game? Let’s get started!

✅ Use Hashtags That Are Relevant to Your Business

Instagram users have the ability to follow hashtags related to their likes and interests. This is good news for you because it means your content could show up automatically in the feeds of tons of potential new customers. It’s also something to note that users can mark content as not interesting or not relevant enough, and having too many posts marked can negatively affect the rest of the content you share on the platform.

✅ Include Hashtags In Your Instagram Bio

The ability to add hashtags to your bio makes it even more functional. It’s another way to add a clickable “link” to your bio because when you tap on the hashtag users can see all the posts that include that hashtag. It’s a smart and strategic way to increase engagement and increase your searchability. If you have a branded hashtag you use to gather user-generated content or to promote an upcoming contest this is a great place to showcase it.

NOTE: Always make sure your most important business information is listed first before including a branded hashtag. 

✅ Add Hashtags to Your Instagram Stories

There are two ways to add hashtags to your Stories. You can use the text tool to type them out (which lets you include up to 10) or use the hashtag sticker to add a single hashtag of your choice. By adding hashtags to your Stories you now become searchable on the Explore Page and anyone searching those hashtags can see your story.

Pro-Tip: If you don’t want to clutter your Stories with a bunch of hashtags, hide them! You can do this by making the text smaller and hiding them underneath a GIF or sticker. Or, use the color dropper tool to match the color with the background and watch them disappear.

By Leave a Comment

4 Tips to Get The Most Out of Conferences or Online Training Events

I attend a lot of conferences, whether I’m there to learn or teach. Whether you’re attending an in-person conference or an online training event, I wanted to share 4 tips on how to get the most out of what you’re learning. Let’s dive in!

  1. Show up. Ok, so this tip is more a pre-event tip, but you have to first invest time and sometimes money to attend events. I believe in continuously learning and evolving as a business owner and marketer, and I hope you have the same belief too. You have to show up, learn, and implement what you learn to stay competitive in today’s world. And I’ve heard from so many attendees that show up to my events, “I forgot about that!” or “I used to do that and I stopped for some reason. Not sure why, because it worked! Glad you talked about this.” They would have never remembered those tactics if they didn’t show up in the first place. So first step, invest in yourself and your business and GO to the event!
  2. Have the right mindset. If you’re in a seminar or webinar and the presenter is talking about something you already know, don’t think to yourself, “I know this already” and tune out or pick up your cell phone. Instead ask, “HOW can I use this? Are we fully leveraging this idea?” Or if you hear something that you think doesn’t apply to you, instead of tuning out, ask, “HOW can this apply to me?” Changing your mindset and asking the right questions will help you get more out of the content, even if you’ve heard it before or you think it doesn’t apply to you.
  3. Label your notes. If you’re like me, you take a ton of notes. While I’m taking my notes, I’ll label each note with either the initials of the person on my team that I want to research or do that task or I add the initials A.I. which stands for Action Item. After the event, I type up all the AI notes, and put them on my calendar to get done. If you don’t implement what you learn, you’ll waste your time attending the event. Make it easy to take action by labeling your notes.
  4. Prioritize. There’s a good chance you’ll have all sorts of ideas and Action Items to get done. Start with the things that will make the biggest impact, that also tie into your business goals. A lot of the AI’s probably don’t need to be done right away. You can save those for a few weeks or months after the event, but make sure you prioritize everything and then get to work 😊

Is there something you do that is helpful for when you attend conferences or online learning events? If so, share it with me in a comment below!

Here’s to hopefully seeing you on the next online or in-person event that I teach!

To the future,

Crystal

By 3 Comments

3 (easy-to-fix) Mistakes You’re Probably Making on Social Media

I’ve been working closely with about a dozen retailers on our new Success Package offering and it’s been awesome. Truly. What an honor to work with amazing people and collaborative clients. I can’t wait to do more.

One of the first steps in the Success Package process is a deep dive audit of the client’s social media. While I’ve been doing these, I’ve found the same three mistakes on every business I’ve come across. The good news? They are easy to fix! The better news? They’ll make you look like a pro compared to your competition.

  • Using hashtags on Facebook
    • Just don’t do it. People don’t search hashtags on Facebook and it makes your posts look sloppy. Also, posts with less text generally perform better so don’t waste your text character count on useless hashtags. One caveat to this: It’s OK to use a branded hashtag for a contest or promotion, but that’s it (IMO). If you’re sharing a post from Instagram, go to that post in FB and remove the hashtags. It takes 3 seconds.
  • Not adding price or description to photos
    • Another easy one. When you upload a picture (or even several), you should include the price and info about the same product in other colors, sizes, etc. This helps the shopper shop right then and there. How many times have you posted an item photo, created some catchy verbiage to go with it then had to respond to comments about price, sizes, color options, etc.? Make it as easy as possible for your customers to shop from you. Think about how you thoughtfully display merchandise in your store. You likely have price tags on all items and group similar or complementary items together. Offer that same experience to the digital shopper.
  • Linking to other businesses, vendors, or brands
    • If you link or @ tag a business/vendor/brand on Facebook or Instagram, and that business/vendor/brand sells online, you are literally helping your fan/follower/customer shop from your competition. Don’t do it. If you want to use the brand as a keyword include it, but don’t link it. Sure the customer can go search and find it on their own. But don’t make it so easy for them. Instead, follow the best practices I listed above and make it easy for them to shop from you.

There you have it. Three easy practices to fix or stop doing today on your social media that will help you stand out. If you’re brave enough to admit it, leave a 🙋🏻‍♀️ in the comments below if you’ve made one of these common mistakes. I know you’re not alone!