How 1,000 followers on Instagram changed our life
Many startups underestimate the potential of B2B commerce on social media. But with a relatively small Instagram account (~1000 followers), we’re now negotiating $50,000 deals for our new product called Boite Cocotte. And every single lead we got here came not from Twitter, not from Facebook, but from Instagram.
Let me explain.
What is the Boite Cocotte?
My dad has been working in the packaging industry for bakery for more than 20 years. He won an award for the best inventor at the Europain 2014 Innovation Trophies. You might have seen this packaging before:
He’s been working on a brand new box which will change the current market. After showing us different names on Telegram, he chose to call it: Boite Cocotte. My dad loves Telegram. “Cocotte” is a term that dates back to the XIX century in France to describe elegant
courtesan (I know, what are you thinking). Are you ready to see the results of 8 months of hard work?
How and why did we start our Instagram account?
We’ve been running out of money for the last 2 years, so we started this project without money. What does it means when it comes to physical product? You are being slow to start, because you have to pay the patent, the tools to cut the box and find a producer. It also means no money to spend on Facebook Ads (only $4 on boosted posts) or any sort of advertising.
First, I’m adding context on what we want to achieve. There are a lot of concerns in the packaging industry when you are a small inventor without money. The bakeries are working directly with the big guys (wholesalers, factories), and the big guys are hard to convince.
If they are willing to develop your concept, they will produce it in a big quantity. But a big quantity means a low price, losing control on any sort of branding and it’s not fun. My dad is tired of this and wants to sell our products directly to our final customers.
So to resume, we have a great product according to our local bakeries. We want to use the power of social media and e-commerce to get started. Chicken-and-egg situation, no big deal. Let’s solve it.
Nothing will move until we show traction. No one in this industry is using Instagram to grow their followers and reach potential customers. No noise like the tech industry. It’s perfect for us.
Imagine being Christopher Colombus when he discovered for the first time the Americas.
We decided to go all in on building this Instagram account, but without real tactics.
The beginning = no results
I was pretty confident about building this account, because I’ve been spending a lot of times on Instagram nowadays, they reach 600 millions users, they are having a lot of traction, cake is always a trendy subject on Instagram and the Boite Cocotte is a wonderful product.
We start by posting pictures of the box and start following/liking couple of bakery accounts. We were thinking of mixing beautiful cakes and Boite Cocotte pictures.
After a month we’ve seen a small growth but no big deal. Actually we were receiving more likes on the cake pictures than our package. What’s going on?
The package wasn’t that beautiful on Instagram (plain colors and weird shape) and was the first version of it. Actually something was missing to trigger interest.
My dad was still improving the Boite Cocotte to be able to produce at a lower cost. He removed the handle and slowly find the perfect shape and colors.
Isn’t that beautiful? Come on :)
I added my mom to the project and showed her how to manage the Instagram account. She is really good at finding nice captions and taking care of making each posts perfect.
Things start changing
Step by step we were seeing more engagements on our posts and more followers.
We focus on keep uploading quality content, testing different content, reach out to potential customers one by one, start following small blogs, keep trying some tactics that I saw online. I love when my mom go after each followers and make sure to welcome them. Yes every single of the 1000 followers.
Our tone and voice was getting better and better. We found out our audience love considering our Boite Cocotte like a human. I know by fact with my previous startup, that we love seeing behind the scenes of a small company.
This is funny how my parents react when I said you have to show your faces to our audience. They look at me and say: no way Arthur. So we put pictures of the manufacturing process and behind-the-scenes.
Our audience starts reacting to all of our efforts.
It’s becoming easier and easier
Imagine my parent’s face when we were receiving those engagements after 2 years of struggling to make things happen.
Our audience start asking us where they can buy our products. People from anywhere in the world. Can you imagine how rewarding it is? Even if they end up not buying.
So we kept doing what was working for our audience. We slowly became a master on Instagram by reading and testing new tactics. But wait, we got even a bigger deal that it’s actually right now going on.
One brand with 110 bakeries asked us more information about our product. They seem to want to use it for 2017. I usually don’t sell the skin of the bear without having him killed, but it means that we are on the right track.
One producer is willing to help us going after the gift packaging industry. They have one the biggest brands in France and they are the leader in France.
Trust, we never expect this. We are not even believing what’s going on.
Right now, we launched our first batch and we are distributing samples over the world.
WE ARE SO EXCITED ABOUT THE FUTURE.
Conclusion
Let me tell you, what I’ve learned.
- We are always wondering how to solve this chicken-and-egg situation. The people on social media are humans and all of them might have a job that could be in the same industry as you. Actually the people who send us requests were really small accounts. You don’t need to go after the brand in order to find a deal but go after the humans who are running them. Why? It’s easier to speak to Josh (project manager at Ladurée) than Ladurée. Just because you can find common interests and start a relationship with him.
- It’s not about the quantity of followers but the quality of them. Don’t buy followers. We learnt so much by being close to our audience.
- Find your voice and tone by posting 2 posts per day and try new things over and over. Who cares if you make a mistake? Trust me nobody, until you are Justin Bieber.
- If in your industry nobody is having an Instagram account. Setup one. As Justin Jackson said in his Jolt book. By going in the opposite way of where the market is going, you can have a huge impact. We are the only one having an active Instagram account and it seems to have an impact.
- Don’t try to get shortcut. Building traction on social media is painful and hard. Keep following and interacting with your potential customers.
- Build a great product. Marketing won’t make a bad product going viral. Keep improving it while you are running your marketing. I would say it’s 20% developing, 40% marketing, 40% telling the story.
Nobody get the power of social media. New startups or independents only create accounts on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter because they’ve been told so. But they don’t actively use them to their advantage. If you are using it carefully, you will make mountains moving! And, well…sell your product!
If you want to know more about me, you can reach me on twitter @atudotio or follow my blog http://arthuryeti.com (it’s in french/english)
