In the summer of 2012 it was clear that Beliya was able to launch the online sale of bags and accessories in September 2012. The primary goal was to generate so much attention for our new pocket and online store by Christmas 2012 that we would have sold the first collection of bags and accessories to 50 percent in December.
Focused start
In the first months, we also wanted to build a fan base, win important multipliers for us, and generate feedback on our models. And all this without putting too much strain on our capital base. For social media, there is and there is no budget at Beliya save a few euros for sponsored posts on Facebook, but more on that later.
The target group determines strategy and channels
Due to the lack of marketing budgets, we decided to use social media. In contrast to classical media, these channels offer us the possibility to attract attention for our business idea. We also receive direct feedback from customers. By "likes" or comments on Facebook, friends of our fans learn about Beliya.
Focus on Facebook
Because a Facebook page or a blog are relatively fast, we could set up these measures at short notice without the help of an agency or a programmer. Because we wanted a few weeks before the start of sales, as many fans would be looking forward to the start of Beliya.
Six months on Facebook
It was very important for us from the outset to involve friends, acquaintances, family, colleagues and all other companions as ambassadors. These people in their own environment are very important for Beliya and presumably for each new establishment. They are often the first buyers, and their recommendation is authentic - online as in real life.
Our team consisted of my co-founder Andrea Noelle and myself. After four months, we set up our first intern. Therefore, as with most start-ups, not only financial resources were scarce, but also our time. All tasks - package packs, webshop maintenance, collection planning, but also accounting - had to be done by ourselves.
Prioritizing and focusing were crucial right from the start. Because: Social media is cheap or even partly free, but you need time for the professional care of the channels. So we asked critically what social media channels would be of great benefit to Beliya.
Our target group are fashionaffine women aged 20 to 60 who shop online. You should wear your handbag every day. Each year they buy one or more handbags and accessories. Furthermore, our female target group has a reference to charity products and donations. In the run-up to our foundation, we had already conducted two market researches.
For one thing, we used Surveymonkey for an online survey with about 100 women. Surveymonkey is a free Internet service, with which you can create an online survey in a few steps. We asked about the online buying behavior, the buying habits and criteria for handbags, the use of social media, and opinions on our specific idea.
In this way, we were able to find out where our customers are on the social web and what content and topics they are interested in, such as information about their childhood childhood. On the other hand, we conducted a discussion with 10 women of our core target group to find out which aspects of a handbag are crucial to the purchase and what influence our donation per product would have on the purchasing behavior.
Last but not least, we also used this survey to deepen our knowledge of bags and online buying behavior. To identify which social media channels we wanted to use in the first step and what our social media strategy should look like, we asked ourselves the following questions:
Facebook has 25 million users in the United States and is by far the largest social network worldwide. Here, the users are equally men and women. Women worldwide use Facebook more intensively: According to a study by Mashable, they update their status more frequently and share or comment on more than men
Since our market research also showed that 60 percent of the women of our target group used Facebook intensively, we already built our Beliya Facebook page 6 weeks before the start of sales. We followed the following rules and tips: One to three posts per week according to the motto KISS - keep it short and simple - and in the Facebook style, that is: easy and more easy to use.
Winner
In selected, important posts, we made explicit calls to the fans' actions, such as: "Click, Like" to interact with our site and posts. In addition, we tried to choose the subjects as varied as possible: bags, school children, press impressions, blog recommendations, styling, check delivery, background to "Beliya & Team", photos
Other Facebook pages in our posts and people in our photos were tagged to increase our reach. Within 24 hours, we wanted to answer honestly and transparently on all posts and messages from fans and other interested parties.
After the start, invite your own friends via "Extend Audience / Build Audience" and also invite them by e-mail or personally. Every new contact on Facebook befriend and then invite to the Facebook page. With this method, we initially got most fans. It is often recommended to ask fans questions. This does not work so well with Beliya and with our not so high number.
In our experience, it is much more difficult to get comments from fans than "likes" klicks. The best times for Facebook posts are in the morning, from 7 am to 9:30 am, on the way to work, at noon from 12 to 2 pm and in the evenings to 6 pm on the evening (on Friday, a little earlier)
To late posts (around 9:30 pm or 10 pm). On the weekend we usually post in the morning, so the visibility on the respective day is longer. The themes that work best with Beliya come from the background stories such as "Our new intern Marie," "schoolchildren" or "actress Nina Bott, new Beliya pocket messenger."
Social Media Buzz by fashionblogger
Youtube channel with Christmas greeting
Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, and more.
Local themes such as "Sale in Hamburg", theme repeat "ROCKY Star wearing Clutch" and pure product information like "New colors Handytasche" do not work as well. Posts with photos and / or videos work better than without.
At Christmas, we participated in an Advent calendaring competition. There were about 90 Facebook-sites together and made each other for each other advertising. We won 40 new fans and reached 1,000 fans of the action. Profit games work well on Facebook and are generally very popular. However, one must pay attention to the Facebook competition rules. For example, the contest may not be performed on the Facebook site.
We got some 100 new fans by linking the Facebook pages of ROCKY Musical (around 6,000 fans) and Greenpeace Deutschland (about 75,000 fans). Before "cracking" certain fan brands like 100 or 500 fans you can call your own community to mobilize your own friends, become a fan and share the mail. So we won more than 20 new fans from one day to the next.
In October, we talked to fashion bloggers all over the United States for the first time to introduce Beliya to these opinion leaders and their readers. At the same time, it was our goal to generate backlinks to our site to improve our search engine ranking and search results to Beliya.
We wrote about 50 blogs partly personally and partly not personalized. Very personally and individually we wrote the relevant blogs, for example, with the most Facebook fans or Twitter followers. Furthermore, we took care that Beliya fits into the blog's environment and that blogs introduce bags and accessories from time to time. In total 10 blogs were reported about Beliya.
We can recommend the individual cover letter, because it emphasizes one of the mass of mails that bloggers now get. But there is also no guarantee for a report. The first fashion blogger event took place in November 2012. In the run-up, we regularly looked at the fashion blogs of the mostly young women and men between the ages of 16 and 30 to get suggestions on how to make our event interesting.
Today, fashion bloggers get many invitations and gifts. To get out of the crowd, we took a lot of trouble with this event. We invited all fashion bloggers in Hamburg and the surrounding area with a very personal cover letter. The event took place in a nice shop, Porzellanfräulein, in Hamburg-Winterhude.
We arranged a small buffet and provided with our bags and accessories for a nice decoration. Of the 30 invited guests came 13 - a good rate. We designed a personalized mug for each blogger and blogger in the shop where you can usually paint porcelain.
On every mug we stamped the first name, a heart and our Beliya logo. We do not usually give Beliya bags and accessories because we want to promote the children with their sales. Furthermore, it is important to us that our customers buy the product out of conviction by themselves to support a child.
Therefore, instead of a Beliya- product, the cup should serve as a nice reminder of the evening. Interestingly, the mug turned out to be one of the favorite photographers of the bloggers in the evening. To start the evening, we told the guests what Beliya is all about.
Afterwards, Marcus Luft, fashion director of the magazine Gala, reported why blogs are a source of inspiration for him. We then asked the bloggers to have their favorite bag of Beliya photographed by our photographer. So we secured photos with the bloggers and our bags. We also sent them to the guests after the event.
The photos were used for the reports about our event on many blogs. Overall, 7 of the 13 guests reported about Beliya or the evening. In total, since the start of Beliya, we have registered about 700 visitors from fashionblogs on our website. For comparison
In the same period, Facebook reached about 1,400. This means that 20 per cent of all visitors come from blogs. At the moment, we are specifically targeting bloggers to take pictures of these bags for us. That is, we ask the bloggers to design their perfect outfit into a Beliya bag and take a picture of themselves.
We use this in our media, for example in the blog and in Facebook, for a new section: "The Pocket Styling of the Month". Since we will also advertise the bloggers in these publications, all parties involved have added value. We also plan other fashion blogger events and broadcasts.
Since December 2012, there is a Beliya Youtube channel. We started it ad hoc for our Christmas greeting with the ROCKY Musicalstars and for a charity event. The occasion was a bag with the ROCKY-Musicalstars, which are great fans of our bags and accessories for children in Africa.
The actresses sang for us and our children "Jingle Bells". By clicking on the video in the period from 14 to 31 December 2012 we donated 10 cents for a new orphanage of our school children in Namibia. We noticed the action by Facebook and newsletter.
In addition, the world reported Hamburg, but without link to the Youtube channel. Over these activities, we reached about 200 video calls. After 5 days, the ROCKY-Musical-Facebook-page shared the link to the action with 6,000 fans, and the video came to more than 1,200 views
However, the video was also quite simple. We've learned that the video should be more interesting or fun to get a better range. We currently have no more videos. A Beliya image film is under construction. At the moment the channel has no priority with us. We would have to provide videos on a regular basis, and we would need to focus on the channel.
What about other social media? We built a Google + brand presence in November 2012 to improve the search results by entering "beliya". Since December we post the most important Facebook posts mostly one-on-one on Google+. The frequency is lower than on Facebook.
So far we have very few followers (under 100). Our experience shows that you have to take time for each channel to build a community there. This time is currently missing. For this reason, we follow successful Google + sites, such as H & M, Glamor or Cadbury, to find out which content, photos, and topics work well.
In the next step, we plan to have a presence on Pinterest and Instagram because mainly female users are active there. Twitter as well as social business networks such as Xing or Linkedin, we will not use for the time being.
(Extract from the book "We make this social media" by Malina Kruse-Wiegand and Dr. Annika Busse, publisher O'Reilly, August 2013)
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