S7 EP4: How She Made $500 With Just 100 Followers On Day 1! (and You Can Too)

What if the key to your next big win isn’t about more followers but about smarter strategy? In this episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of a jaw-dropping case study from our "Content to Customers" workshop. One of our clients proved that a small but mighty audience can drive big results—turning just 100 followers into $500 on day one!

Packed with actionable tips, this episode will teach you how to build a loyal community, create content that resonates, and turn even the smallest audiences into thriving customers. Don't miss out on this game-changing approach to growing your business!

RESOURCES MENTIONED

📱 The Profitable Content Blueprint: Text "blueprint" to 866(498)8020 (US ONLY)
🌎 International: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/profitable-content-blueprint/

➡️ Snag Early Bird Access + 90% to our upcoming Content To Customers Workshop (Oct. 2024 only): http://ContentToCustomers.Co

🔗 S7 EP3: Influencers vs. Entrepreneurs - How to ditch the 'post more' 'post perfect' Influencer Playbook

🔗  S7 EP2: Your Profitable Content Blueprint: A Practical Guide To Attracting More Buyers From Your Posts + Free Template!

🔗 S7 EP1: More Followers, More Dollars? Think Again!

MORE FREE RESOURCES

📅 Download The FREE Content Calendar Template:
http://thecontentcalendartemplate.com/

📔 Download The FREE Success Path: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/success-path/

📈 Sign Up for our FREE Profitable Content Class: http://profitabilityclass.com

📽️ Watch our FREE Content Creation Class: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/content-class/


WORK WITH US:

✨ Join The Business Lounge Waitlist: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/businesslounge/

📌 Work With Kim & Chris 1:1: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/tblc-waitlist/

✨ Grab The Content Calendar Playbook: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/content-calendar-playbook/

Go to ContentToCustomers.co & enter code 'Blueprint' for $90 off your 3-day workshop seat! 

Chapters

• 0:00 Content to Customers
• 16:20 Successful Product Launch Strategy
• 21:37 The Power of Email Marketing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Business Launch Podcast. I'm your host, kimberly Annie Menez, and in today's episode, I want to show you why this popular misconception that you need to have a gajillion followers in order to have a profitable business is totally false. We're going to dig deep into a case study that I recently shared with you guys in our content to customers workshop recently shared with you guys in our content to customers workshop, and I'm going to show you how this amazing gal turned 100 followers into a profitable launch with zero business experience, never having sold anything online coming up.

Speaker 2: 0:52

Welcome to the Business Lounge Podcast, where each week, we unpack the hottest online marketing and business strategies so you can grow your business, increase your bottom line and make a bigger impact. And now here's your host, kimberly Ann Jimenez. Your host, kimberly Ann Jimenez.

Speaker 1: 1:08

What is up, familia? So we are in the trenches right now. We just wrapped up our profitable content series. If you have not caught up with that, it's episode one through three of our latest season. I think we're on season seven and we'll have all of that linked below so that you can catch up. But, oh my goodness, we've had such an amazing response to this series. You guys are sending us fan mail, asking us questions and I just love to see the energy and the engagement. By the way, content to customers just opened up fall enrollment. By the way, content to Customers just opened up fall enrollment. So if you have not signed up yet, you're going to want to do that over at contenttocustomersco. That's contenttocustomersco if you are right now in this moment listening to the podcast as it airs.

Speaker 1: 1:59

So make sure to not miss out on that three-day workshop. It's freaking incredible. I'm going to show you the exact blueprint that I use my entire sales system for going from, you know, not having great content ideas to planning 30 days of strategic content inside the content map, to cutting down massively on the time you're spending with content creation. You know, on average, when we pull our audience and our clients and customers, they report back to us that they're spending less than or I would say they're cutting back 10 plus hours a month in their content creation. Some people are even cutting like 10 plus hours a week, which is awesome. I'm going to show you and walk you through the three R method and we're going to also talk about how do you actually create a marketing content marketing success path. So how do you go from actually, you know, just having followers and just putting out posts for the sake of doing it, to having a strategy, to having a plan, to actually turning more of your content into customers, into profit? So you're not going to want to miss that. It's amazing and actually today's episode is coming at you. It's just a little bit of a glimpse of what we're going to unpack in that three-day workshop. I'm going to walk you through a really cool case study because I just it's so interesting to me People often, you know I just will hear people regurgitate other people's advice on the internet and often one of the biggest objections that I get around, you know, selling with content and having profitable content is just like Kim, I don't have an audience, or I have an audience that's too small. Am I not supposed to grow that audience much bigger before I can start to sell. And this is where I think my methodology and my philosophy around content creation is really different, because I'm coming at you from a business perspective, so just kind of like quick zoom out right.

Speaker 1: 3:51

We, chris and I, started our first business in a local kind of industry blue collar industry moving company had nothing to do with marketing I had never studied marketing I was in school for nutrition and dietetics at the time and so we started this company. I quickly delved into the world of marketing, fell in love with it and realized, oh my gosh, I could use content to actually grow this business. And we did. We grew that business from zero, with no outside investment dollars, completely from scratch, totally bootstrapped, literally on top of our college debt, and grew that business to multiple seven figures in 36 months. And we use content as a vehicle to do that.

Speaker 1: 4:33

So at the same time I decided like with Chris's insane encouragement nonstop he was just pushing me all the time to like you are really good at marketing, you're really good at content. Like you need to start your own business. And so I pivoted into, as we were growing that business side by side, I launched my social media agency and that turned into just an awesome six figure company, and then I pivoted into consulting for corporate clients and now we run a multiple seven figure education, marketing, education and coaching business. And so I'm coming from the perspective of this is not the only business I have ever run OK, I am not coming at you with like, my only business background as a marketer is just running an online business that teaches people how to market. That's 90 percent of the experts out there. It's like you've never ran a business outside of the online business that you're running right now, teaching people how to do online business stuff. Does that make sense? And so I think this is a big reason.

Speaker 1: 5:37

And there's only one person that I would say he and he's kind of pivoted his stance on this a little bit. That's Gary Vee. Love Gary, respect Gary a lot, and he used to tell people, like listen, you need to grow a huge audience and like figure it out. Afterwards. I think he's since realized that there's just a lot that changes and there's a lot of, you know, kind of variables in the market, and so he's shifted, I think, his strategy quite a bit, as most people should kind of variables in the market, and so he's shifted, I think, his strategy quite a bit, as most people should. I think that as things change and the market changes, you share new and different strategies, but I personally disagree with that. I think that there is nothing wrong at all with actually selling through your content on day one. However, that's not to say that you're only going to be selling or that you're not going to add value to people.

Speaker 1: 6:26

I believe massively in value creation. In fact, 12 plus years ago, when I got started in the online space, the problem we were having with small business owners and I think this is where Gary's philosophy started coming in was they weren't sharing value. It was all they were using social media like a billboard right. It was just like ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, and that's not what people were on social media for. That's not how people enjoyed content consumption. Now the pendulum has swung so far the other way, where 99% of the clients that we see in our agency and 99% of the people that we work with inside of the business lounge especially because we serve a female audience we tend to be, you know, more nurturers and we have, like these, motherly instincts that are amazing, like taking care of our people, and I love all of that. However, I'm seeing that most people are never actually asking for the sale, and so they're building all this value, they're building all of these relationships, they're building all these connections, but they're not ever intentionally turning their followers into buyers and using their content as a vehicle to actually attract customers. And that's what content to customers is all about. That's why I'm so passionate about that message and why you need to get in there.

Speaker 1: 7:46

But all that to say, there's so much that has shifted in the past 10 years and I think that that advice is honestly just outdated. You should be able to promote your business on day one. You should add an incredible amount of value 80% of the time, but there should be a call to action for people to join you in the next thing. How can they continue that journey, that transformation, with you in a paid setting? That's why you're creating content to begin with.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Otherwise, we get stuck in this just sick, toxic cycle of creating content for no reason and the word marketing is part of content, marketing for a purpose. We're just doing the content part and we forget about the marketing part and it's like no, this is a vehicle, right? Your content should be the bridge that connects the actual relationships that you're building through your audience and through your tribe, through your website visitors, the people that consume your content. That content is a bridge to your offers, right? That's why you're creating it to begin with. You're not just putting it out to be famous, to get likes, to get engagement. All those things are awesome if you can achieve them, but we're really focused on creating content with a purpose and content that is profitable. So how do you actually do that? I want to walk you through this awesome case study.

Speaker 1: 9:06

So this is a case study and, by the way, before I jump into that, I've proven this to be wrong time and time again. You know, when I started my first social media agency or my first like solo business apart from Chris, you know, we were kind of running in tandem and he was still very involved in my business, but this was like my first experience in the business world and I was I don't know what compelled me other than just having the experience of working, you know, in the moving company to say I'm going to have a call to action, I'm going to tag all of my YouTube videos in my physical location so that when people are searching for information, they immediately think of me, go to my website and actually, you know, book a call or reach out because they're interested in becoming a client, and lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. I was fully focused on adding value on YouTube and through my blog and in my newsletter, because that's all I had at the beginning, but really, um, it just organically happened where I was just telling people about my business and people wanted to hire me, and that's what should happen. I think, you know, there doesn't have to be this like you have to pushy, sell and all this stuff no, it's not pressure to actually, you know, be in front of people's faces, but you got to talk about your offers, you got to talk about what you do, you got to have a call to action. There's no reason to not do that. And so every single iteration of my business and the moving company you know we've sold from day one and grew that company pretty large and there was never this like oh, there's rules and like we have to get to like X amount of followers before we can promote.

Speaker 1: 13:24

I think I see that a lot with content creators and you know, if you don't have a business that's powering what you're doing with content, then that's understandable, because you're really just using sponsorships, but that's that's that's selling, like, if you're doing product reviews and you're doing sponsorships, that's still selling. You're just selling someone else's stuff and so, for whatever reason, it's OK to do that, but if you sell your own stuff, you're a sell it. It's just weird, you know and I just want to normalize the fact that you're a business and creating content costs money and time and energy and resources, and so we've created this whole like environment in the online space where people are starting to get used to having free content pumped out every week, like you're some kind of machine and service and they'll get upset if you don't. And it's just so weird to me that we've created this extreme opposite culture that needs some balance, and so I think it's important that we bring balance to that. So proven it with my first business, proven it with my second business, proven it with my third business.

Speaker 1: 14:23

And now I want to prove it with someone who just got started, because I wanted to share the story with you. This is my sister-in-law. Started because I wanted to share the story with you. This is my sister-in-law, tanya, my Brian, who you've seen on the podcast and on the channel before. That's his wife, and she was just coming in and I was like, listen, I have no experience with building a business.

Speaker 1: 14:45

You know, she'd spent you know her the previous decade going through school. She just finished her master's degree in a totally different space she's in the psychology space and wanted to start like a side hustle, wanted to start a business, and so she decided she was going to launch a boutique. She had, you know, her brand name, she had her logo, but she had nothing in terms of marketing and she wanted to launch and have it be really profitable. So one of the things that we started working on together was like, okay, how do we actually map out this strategy? And we told her listen, you are going to launch this thing from the get-go and we don't want you to feel like you have to like pull back or, you know, be hush hush about your products and about your offers. We want you to go all out. And so this is essentially a jewelry boutique that she launches, called Colux, and um, it's been amazing to kind of unpack her results.

Speaker 1: 15:40

So Tanya actually went from having like no direction. You know, she only had about a hundred followers on Instagram to launching her business and the first three days making $500. And I know that's not a lot right, that's, you're not going to get rich off $500. But I wanted you to see what is possible and what is actually real and happening in our community all the time. We see this constantly. So there's no excuse that you don't have enough followers and there's no excuse that you haven't actually, you know, built up a big following or a big relationships or put a ton of value out into the world. You can absolutely still do that.

Speaker 1: 16:21

So we put together a prelaunch strategy and we told her okay, you have about 28 days to actually start growing your email list, to start teasing that something cool is coming to the shop. And so she started using stories. She started posting some teasers of her products on her feed, and then we told her okay, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to start an email list. Like day one email list is going to be so important. And so she was very skeptical about the whole email list thing. She thought, no, sell it. You know all on Instagram and we're like just trust us. She's like okay, I'm gonna do it. So Brian got her set up on ConvertKit and which is now Kit, and she started just telling people hey, if you sign up for my email list, I'm going to give you 10% off. And she just kept know, promoting that. Every day She'd go on stories, she'd post a reel or she posted a photo, kind of teasing behind the scenes and just sharing hey, it's coming. This is the countdown we're going to be opening on this day. Make sure that you're subscribed to the email list. And so she got half of her followers. She got 48 of her followers almost 50, to join the email list before the launch.

Speaker 1: 17:35

And after that, when launch day came, we were like okay, you're going to be sending emails. Here is a couple ideas for the kind of emails you can send. We should tell our um, you know members in TBL plus like guys, you have four emails that you have to hit. Number one you need to hit the like surprise email. Like hey, this thing is happening, there's an announcement, it's awesome. Email number two needs to be all about like Q and A's people have questions, you have answers. Email number three is social proof Like how do you have a testimonial? Do you have you know results, or can you just showcase someone who said something nice about your product and then the final emails are all about hey, cart is closing, this thing is a wrap, your discount is expiring, make sure that you use it.

Speaker 1: 18:21

And so it was so cool to see her go from literally having no experience in business, not having any experience in marketing, to launching this thing and making money, and she was freaking out. She was like I, we have so many orders, oh my gosh. And this is a low ticket product. So it wasn't like she was. You know, got two sales and made $500. She got quite a few sales and and her entire launch just exceeded our expectations. So I want to run you through a couple numbers. Um, maybe we'll, if she's given us permission, to share this publicly, but maybe I'll have Belle share it with you guys here on, you know, in the screen, if you're watching on YouTube or if you're just listening on the podcast. I'll just run you through this, but this is so cool. So after let's see here, I have her statistics up from her Shopify page and so after seven days, she was actually at $557 in orders. She had driven 704 sessions to her shop and the average order was $36. So not a ton again lower ticket but really awesome conversion rates in terms of having a very small audience, but like immediately, from the get go, being profitable. And now she can take that strategy and just scale it out, start adding more things into the mix, like SEO and creating long form content on her blog, or even going the ad route as well and just starting to run ads to her shop. It'll make a massive difference. So we're super excited, um, for her and I just wanted to share that story because I think it's so empowering and exciting to see how other people are using it.

Speaker 1: 20:01

So we asked her a couple of questions that I think would be helpful for you guys. We said hey, like in your words, what were the results that you achieved? And she said we had a super successful launch, far exceeding our expectations. Number two we're building a community instead of just followers. Number three we're building a brand instead of a shop. So that was really important. We talked about that in the beginning with her, like listen, we're going to give you our content to customer strategy. We're going to show you this is how you actually build a community. This is how you attract buyers and not just randos on the internet who are never going to buy what you're selling. And then she said we're nurturing diehard fans and speaking to them. And I was like yes, because messaging is really important, guys, you can't just go out here in the streets and just like put something out. You want to actually talk to your people. And she was trying to figure out who her people were. So we had her do surveys and run polls before she actually ran her launch. And then she said we had 128% increase in reach, 168% increase in sorry, 128% increase in reach, 168% increase in engagement and 76% increase in followers. So I said well, part of the strategy gave you the best results. And she said the lead magnet strategy to subscribe to our email list. So we said listen, you're going to have put out a coupon code. That's going to be your lead magnet. That's what made sense for her business. I'm not saying that's what you should. Your lead magnet, that's what made sense for her business. I'm not saying that's what you should do, but that's what made sense in terms of her specific business and that worked really well.

Speaker 1: 21:37

We asked what was the hardest part of launching and she said getting all the assets ready before the launch date. We asked did you have any surprising moments during or off after the launch? And she said all the orders we received and kept getting after the launch was over, which was so awesome because this was just a glimpse into the first couple of days of her launch. She has now, you know, made multiple four figures in that business and she's she's doing awesome. But it's one of those things where I wanted to show you the before and after and like all the emotions that come up. I asked hey, what are some of the emotions you feel or felt before the launch? And she said I was super stressed, I was super anxious, I didn't know what was going to happen, if we were going to be successful or not. And then I said what were some of the emotions you felt after? And she was like happy and relieved that we have a strategy that works and we can replicate.

Speaker 1: 22:30

So, just to recap, I said what were some of the important lessons that you'd like to share with other people? And she said that email is king. You have to build an email list. And I was like, exactly, absolutely, it's so important. Number two she says you don't need to have everything ready, you just need to start, even if you don't feel prepared. And I was like, oh, that's so good. And number three she said absolutely follow everything that Kim and Chris tells tell you to do to get results, because content to customers works. And I was like, oh, you're amazing, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 23:03

And so just to see, like even just her open rates I have some of her stats for her kit account and so she had an average open rate in her emails of 56%, which means she's targeting people who are interested in what she has to offer. She had a 5 point sorry, 4.5% click through rate, which was fantastic. That's actually really good for just getting started. And she was averaging about three subscribers every single day, so three new subscribers every day. And so, guys, I hope that this is inspiring you. I hope that it's giving you ideas for, like, just knowing that you don't need to have all the pieces together.

Speaker 1: 23:44

If Tanya got such an incredible ROI like, think about that. She was basically making five dollars per every new follower on her Instagram account. That's insane, and that was just a start. That like that doesn't count the thousands of dollars she's generated since um, and how she just continues to grow her business as a side hustle. This is not her. She has a full-time job, you know, in her industry and she works nine to five and this is just her side hustle. So it's one of those things like imagine if you're full-time in your business, imagine if you have way more followers than she does. You can follow the same simple strategy and get amazing results. So you can take everything we've talked about today and just go and implement yourself, or you can have a step-by-step guide.

Speaker 1: 24:32

So come over to Content to Customers at contenttocustomersco that's the sponsor of today's episode, because naturally, we're going to talk about what we have going on, because it's really that transformational and sign up. We have a 90% off amazing promotion going on right now just for our podcast listeners. So make sure to check that out. All the links will be in the description below and I hope to see you inside because, listen, it's your responsibility as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, just like Tanya, to step out in faith, to like go out and actually do the thing before you think that you're ready.

Speaker 1: 25:07

It's your responsibility, if you have tried everything in the past and maybe you've been burned a couple of times or you feel exhausted with content creation, or you're just like I just nothing has worked. You still have the responsibility of figuring out what does work, and I'm showing you proof today. I'm bringing the receipts that this can work for you. Even if you haven't even started yet, even if you don't have like all the bells and whistles and a ton of audience and a ton of reach and a ton of traffic or even advertiser dollars, you can still grow a business organically and do it in a way that is strategic and that is smart, so that you're not necessarily working harder, but you're working smarter and attracting more followers who are turning into buyers, instead of wasting your time and spinning our wheels on social media. So I hope that you joined us for content to customers.

Speaker 1: 25:56

I will come at you with a new episode next week. I hope that you enjoyed this one and I will see you very, very soon. Until then, don't forget, this is your God given calling to actually prosper on purpose. God given calling to actually prosper on purpose, and we're going to continue spreading this message and talking about the importance of actually creating content with mission in mind, with profit in mind, content that serves people, but also that sells All right, and we're going to do that unapologetically. I love you. Send this episode to someone who might need it, might need encouragement, who's starting a business or may have been running a business for a while. Maybe it's hitting a wall and they need some encouragement, some inspiration, and let's just all grow and prosper together. Guys, we're excited and we'll see you in the next one Un beso. Bye for now.