Subscription Marketing on Social for Amateurs
Whether you’re looking to promote your subscription service or are just beginning to dip your toes into the subscription marketing landscape, we’ve gathered some incredible insight into subscription marketing from our experience with clients AND research to give you the best start possible.
What is Subscription Marketing?
Okay, so you’re probably more than familiar with the term subscription service, but maybe not so much about subscription marketing specifically.
Over the last decade, subscription services have become increasingly more popular for online brands.
Makeup, razors, laundry detergent, diapers, hair care, household cleaning products...you name it, there’s probably a subscription service available somewhere on the web.
Subscription service promotion is the art and act of positioning your own brand as a leader in your particular industry and presenting your subscription as the “answer” to your customers' worries and needs.
It involves lots of analysis, strategy, time and effort as you create content, distribute the content, measure results and make adjustments. However, the results are incredibly rewarding as it’s not likely you’ll make much progress without online promotion. (Sorry, but it’s true.)
Why are Subscription Services Such a Powerful Business Model?
Subscriptions are convenient because a customer doesn’t have to worry about ordering your product again and it gives your brand a certain bit of “confidence” and security in that customers will often leave subscriptions running for a number of months before ending them, even if they’re not particularly thrilled with the service.
Why Should I Utilize Social Media for Subscription Marketing?
With subscription services popping up all over the place month after month, it’s more important than ever to stand out from the crowd.
Social media gives you the platform to speak directly with your target audience. All you have to do is find them, create content that speaks to them and create a community around your products and services that will help them feel more connected, inspired and understood.
Finding new customers, connecting with them and retaining them to make a profit and develop brand ambassadors who can promote your subscription services are all common struggles that subscription brands face when they’re on the verge of beginning their subscription service promotion. We’re here to help you solve problems by finding a solution that works for you.
How to Utilize Social for Subscription Service Promotion and Revenue Generation
Social media has become an increasingly popular and powerful tool for marketing professionals in a variety of different industries, so it’s no wonder it’s a popular and powerful tool for marketing your subscription service.
Getting serious about your subscription marketing means getting serious about targeting the right crowds and demographics.
You can break your targeting down easily by considering who your target customer would be.
Let’s look at one of the most popular subscription brands right now, Billie.
Their subscription is aimed towards women over the age of 12 who are body and hair positive. (That’s right! A subscription service for RAZORS is hair-positive and we have to say, it’s an excellent marketing tactic.)
In addition, they’re looking for hair/beauty and makeup enthusiasts who might be interested in subscribing to their other products as well.
So, they’re most likely targeting a specific age bracket. Possibly 15-50, or even a little older.
They don’t just set their targeting options and call it a day, though. Just selecting who you want to see your ad isn’t enough. Instead, you have to completely shape your content marketing game around your target audience.
For instance: Billie is particularly popular for showing women in their ads removing hair rather than shaving hairless skin, which is a method typically adopted by bigger razor brands.
This makes their content and their products appeal more easily to the crowd they’re targeting. A.k.a, young women who are body and hair positive.
There are a variety of ways you can target for subscription service promotion, these being:
It might seem like information that everyone should know, but the truth is that not everyone takes advantage of the incredible opportunity that social media metrics provide when it comes to subscription marketing on social media.
By paying close attention and monitoring the real-time metrics like clicks, comments, downloads, shares and views, subscription brand’s have a better chance of knowing exactly what’s resonating and what isn’t as far as content and their products go.
Harnessing this valuable data will also help subscription brands develop a sufficient picture of the demographics of their social audience to allow for a more customized, creative subscription marketing approach and overall strategy.
Positioning Your Brand as the leader in Your Industry
Social media is where every individual spends the majority of their time, right? Right. So positioning your brand as a leader in your industry is vital to the success of your subscription marketing strategy.
When marketing a subscription service organically, a strategy is just as vital as the evaluation of metrics for improvement.
But your strategy won’t be very effective unless you’re implementing opportunities for your audience to see you as an industry leader.
Doing this requires high-quality content and staying on top of industry trends to put your brand at the top. Your feed should flow, but always be on point when it comes to colors, tone and the overall appearance of your images, videos, graphics and more.
Start by implementing a similar style across your content. Whether this means you take a more cartoon-y approach or a next-generation, technical approach, your content should have a similar look and *feel* and flow well together. The key is making sure someone can identify the content is from your brand long before they spot a profile name or logo.
Use a similar voice and tone when addressing your audience. If you’re a professional brand, keep your audience in mind when addressing serious problems and concerns. If you’re a B2C brand that focuses on light and fun topics, keep it that way. But don’t be afraid to address serious issues when the need arises.
Keep your communication, whether public or private message, consistent with your brand. Mixed messages are never cool.
Address questions and concerns and provide solutions. If you’re going to be a leader, be a good one. Your audience looks up to you. Prove your worth!
Listen! Good industry leaders listen and take notes from the way their customers respond to certain content, messages and products. Use it as an opportunity to improve!
Positioning your brand as an industry leader is a sure-fire way to expand your audience, get more subscriptions and open the lines of communication between you and your audience to help them feel heard.
Subscription Marketing: Content Matters
Creating engaging, on-brand content is a vital part of the subscription promotion plan.
Your content needs to be:
Eye-Catching (if it doesn't capture you within 1-3 seconds, it's not content you're going to see much of a return on.)
On brand, (both in color and style)
Socially in-tune, (A celebration-type post during a natural disaster is never a good idea. Social listening can help with this!)
Good content doesn't have to be complicated in nature, it just needs to follow these basic principles. Check out this video by one of our incredible content producers on how to utilize Canva for EASY content creation:
Why You Should Embrace Social Paid Advertising for Subscription Marketing
When it comes to subscription marketing, executing a social paid advertising campaign is vital to the success of your brand awareness, follower growth, drumming up sales and downloads, and also driving engagement with your brand.
Sure, you’ll spend more money than you would doing everything organically, but what’s more important? Spending more money upfront for an improved ROi, or waiting endlessly for your audience to just “show up”?
Check out this guide on everything you need to set up a social paid advertising campaign and get your products and services into customers hands!
7 Social Subscription Marketing Tricks for Amateurs
So now we’ve knocked out all of the important first steps, from setting up your profile to establishing yourself as an industry leader. But what’s next?
Sometimes getting creative is the best method for marketing a subscription service, so here’s 15 ideas to take your subscription marketing efforts to the next level.
Consider a Subscription Affiliate Program
By paying bloggers, websites, influencers and current customers for every new customer you acquire, you’re building brand loyalty, creating excitement around your own brand growth and making your customers feel as if they *belong* in your “brand family”.
If you need some ideas or inspiration for what affiliate companies to use for your own subscription service, here’s a good list to get you started:
Get Interested Bloggers/Review Sites Involved
There’s nothing more enticing to a Youtuber or a blogger than the pledge of free stuff for a quick review on their website.
Much like influencer marketing or an affiliate program, getting a review from a trusted blogger or YouTuber will allow you to leverage their viewers and get sales for the cost of just one person.
Host Contests and Giveaways!
Drumming up excitement around your subscription and giving the world a chance to learn about all of the awesome perks of your subscription could be as easy as hosting a quick content or giveaway.
Whether you giveaway an entire month of goodies or a percentage off of an order, you’ll be sure to get your audience excited, possibly grow your audience and showcase all of the wonderful things about your subscription that others might find irresistible.
AND you can do this without actually having to offer free shipping. Just go ahead and add the cost to the subscription so everyone knows exactly what they’ll be paying with “no added costs.”
Believe me. It works and it’s BRILLIANT.
Offer Discounts for Longer Commitments
Because hey, if they’re signing up for six months right now, it’s WORTH IT.
You’re basically paying for brand loyalty. :)
Connect Your Subscription to a Cause
Research has shown that 94% of shoppers will automatically choose a subscription that is connected to a social cause they care about.
So get connected to a cause! Both for your monetary benefit and because it’s an awesome and epic way to get your name out there, make the world a better place and provide your customers with a way to quickly and easily “give back” to their communities in a positive way.
Customer Service is Everything
Remember when we talked about staying on brand in public AND private settings? This means staying professional even when a customer is chewing you out in your DMs, leaving rude messages and generally making life difficult.
Exercise care, concern and when possible, make your mistakes and customer disappointments right. It pays off in the end, we promise.
Subscription Marketing: What NOT to Do
Please. If you do anything for FAST subscription marketing growth, don’t make it ANY of these things. We beg of you.
Contrary to popular belief, buying followers is the absolute worst way to grow your brand, increase brand loyalty and boost your brand engagement.
Instead it just makes your business profiles look spammy, empty, unengaged and did we mention spammy? DO NOT DO IT. No matter how much you are tempted. You will 100% wish you hadn’t later.
This has to be a reminder because some people don’t understand why being rude/not answering phone calls or generally not responding to customers can be detrimental long-term.
Being reliable is also just as important as being kind, concerned and sympathetic. Remember, the customer might not ALWAYS be right, but they are the future of your business and thus require special care and attention.
Subscription Marketing FAQ
Turns out, even when you’re doing your best to answer all the questions, there’s inevitably going to be more.
“How Do I Market a Subscription Service?”
Like we explained above, you’ll need a strategy first and foremost, with a focus on content that is educational and informative about why YOUR subscription is the one people need.
You can use free tools like Canva or a Canva Alternative and stock photo sites like Pexels to create content for your profiles to help drive sales and increase brand awareness.
In addition, running particular ad campaigns can be helpful for increasing your reach.
How Big is The Subscription Box Market?
It’s been estimated that the market for subscription box services is upwards to $15 billion and continually growing.
Does this mean you shouldn’t launch your subscription box? No! It’s never too late to get in on the action if you have an idea that you believe can take off. And we can make it happen.
How to Market Subscription Boxes
The concept is similar to any subscription service, so the process will also be very similar, with the only difference being whether people KNOW what exactly they’re getting and what they’re not.
If your subscription box focuses on the “surprise” element, marketing it can be a little more difficult, but only because you can’t focus on specific products.
Instead, focus on the perks of the items your last box included, OR what typically comes in your boxes.
How Long Will it Take to Market My Subscription Service Effectively?
If marketing were a one and done solution, I wouldn’t have a business!
Okay, but all joking aside, it’s important to remember that marketing is an ongoing process that you have to continually keep up with and improve over time.
Yes, there will be a day when you have a big following and don’t have to worry about drumming up enough sales to make quota, but you’ll always want to be reaching for the next big goal, right? Right!
But, to answer your question: with a good strategy, you’ll most likely see results in the first month or less!
Sociallyin is the Subscription Marketing Solution You Need
As experts in the social media space, we know what works and what doesn’t.
We’ve worked with countless businesses, services and influencers to provide incredible results and gradually improve the ROi for all of them.
Our content is second to none and we’re always learning and improving to keep it that way in a constantly changing space.
Are you ready to take your subscription marketing to the next level of incredible? Our team has the solution you need. Let’s get in touch TODAY!
This post has originally appeared at https://blog.sociallyin.com/subscription-marketing
