#022 - In this episode, Julie talks about thriving in community and how you can use community to grow your subscription box business. When you build a community around your subscription box, it can do so many things for you as a business owner and provide extra value for your subscribers.
Links:
Sparkle Hustle Grow
#022 - In this episode, Julie talks about thriving in community and how you can use community to grow your subscription box business. When you build a community around your subscription box, it can do so many things for you as a business owner and provide extra value for your subscribers.
Links:
Sparkle Hustle Grow
So you want to launch a subscription box and don't know where to start? Girl, you are in the right place. I'm Julie Ball, a subscription box coach and your host here at Subscription Box Basics, a podcast for new and aspiring subscription box entrepreneurs that want to avoid overwhelm. So grab a coffee, some pen and paper and let's have some fun! Hey everybody! I'm Julie Ball, your subscription box coach and host here at subscription box basics. I've been having a blast with this podcast and I really hope you've been enjoying it. When it comes to my Sparkle Hustle Grow subscribers, I always say that they join for the stuff, but they stick around for the community. So today I'm talking about thriving in community, not only filling your own bucket personally, but also about how you can use community to grow your subscription box business. When you build a community around your subscription box, it can do so many things for you as a business owner and provide extra value for your subscribers. So we're going to talk a little bit about what's in it for you and what's in it for them. But before I dive into that, I've heard so many good things about naming your community. It gives them the feeling of being a part of something bigger. So we affectionately call our Sparkle Hustle Grow subscribers, Sparklers. We use it in our Facebook group and our marketing literally everywhere. Okay. Back to thriving in community. What can it do for your subscription box business? Some things that can do are to build loyalty. It gives you direct access to your customers in a group setting and it will actually help you make business decisions if you use it the right way. So you can have your community in a couple different places. It can be in a public or a private Facebook group. You could host in-person events or you could simply build community via social media hashtags and getting people to engage with you on social media. So first let's dive in. What's in it for them? Subscribers will get to surround themselves with like- minded people, whether that's in your Facebook group, at live events, or if they just want to participate in engaging with you and others in social media. Another bonus of community is that they get to network with new people that otherwise maybe would never meet. Again surrounding themselves with like minded people and connecting with others. I think it's so important to connect with other people that are in the same stage of life or going through some of the same challenges or just surrounding yourself with people that just get you. They get where you're at in life or in business right now it's just part of being social. Another bonus for your subscribers is where you can provide experiential opportunities. So the experience factor, a good example of this is where in Sparkle Hustle Grow we have guest experts, so we bring in people that are experts on business topics and they provide us with training, things like masterclasses, digital downloads, Facebook lives, things like that. Experiential opportunities could be things that you provide yourself or have a guest expert. So just for example, maybe you have a five day fitness challenge where you do Facebook lives and you show your customers how you use the products in that month's box to help you in the fitness challenge. And lastly, I think one of the most important things is in a community they have access to you and your customer service. At Sparkle Hustle Grow we have a dedicated person that does community building and customer service and she's very active in our private Facebook group for subscribers. So if someone has a question, they tag her in there. Sometimes she answers the question right away, but if it has something to do with their account, maybe then she'll take it over to email. But at least they have direct access and they feel like they can get to us quickly if they have a problem with their account or if they have a question, if they're missing a product, that type of thing. It's so much easier to manage your reputation and your PR when you have something like that. Otherwise, sometimes people will go straight to public social media and blast you for having an issue with their box, but they haven't even approached you to try to make it right yet. So this gives them that direct access. So what's in it for you as the business owner, and this is important because you're going to put time and effort into building your community, so why would you bother? What's in it for you? So one of the biggest things is you get direct access to your customers in case you need to do that customer service. Maybe there's a delay in shipping, maybe there's a problem with a product. You can tell everybody in your private Facebook group for subscribers about that customer service issue. Maybe you're closed for the holidays. You want to share that information both via email and in your group because maybe someone's not checking their email. So this is just another channel for you to reach them for customer service or announcements. We also do marketing within our own community. We promote subscriber upsells, like our VIP upgrade. And if we have excess inventory, we post it in our private Facebook group first as a perk. We do secret subscriber sales and they get first dibs on items. Then after they have access to the product, if there's any leftover, then we share that product link with the public. And if you need to make announcements, this is a great way to put that in there. We do renewal reminders, so on the day before renewals we announce a spoiler alert in conjunction with their renewal reminder. We say just a friendly reminder that your renewals will go through overnight if you need to update your credit card or shipping information, now is the time to do that. Plus with a spoiler alert, here's one product that everyone will be getting and it kind of gives a feeling of that fear of missing out, FOMO, if that product is something that they really wanted. So we usually use one of our hero items, our larger, more exciting items as that spoiler alert because we want them to renew right then and there. So we use the community for announcements. We also use our private Facebook group for market research. A lot of times we'll share links to surveys so we can get to know our customer base better and whether that's something we're asking them specifically like what type of product you want or we can ask them demographic information so we know who we're serving, what age group would they fall in, what household income, et cetera. We also do polls in there and we'll post a picture of two items for example, and ask them to vote which item they would prefer and that's how we make business decisions. A lot of times we use those polls to help us decide what products to include in future boxes and then we remind them when they get that product that this was a customer choice. It really makes our customers feel like they're involved in the process. You can also use community to build loyalty. So for example, when you're providing great customer service or when you're giving them those choices I just talked about when you're asking them for feedback, that's one way to build loyalty because they feel engaged, they feel heard and they feel like they're part of something bigger and it you basically are showing them that you really do care and that you value what they want. It's not just you as the business owner making all those decisions. And then finally the whole point of this is that you want to be able to reach your customers in multiple touch points. Maybe they didn't check their email this week, but they were active in Facebook. I almost guarantee that. So at least you can still communicate with them in that Facebook group. I really, really believe that building a community around Sparkle Hustle Grow has been one of the smartest business moves I've made, especially starting it early on. It's never too late to start your own community though, whether you are just launching or you're a few years in. So I hope this episode made an impact on you. And you either feel some validation for the community you've already built or that you feel motivated to go ahead and start building yours now. If you loved it, please rate and review this podcast. It allows us to reach more people just like you to help them in their subscription box business journey. Thanks for listening guys, and I'll see you in the next episode.