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Watch out for 33-year-old Olga Kay — she’s the latest social-media celebrity, and her popularity is growing quickly.
You may have seen her clever YouTube videos featuring impressive juggling performances and comedy routines. The Russian-American, Olga, is more than a performer, though — she’s also a self-made entrepreneur.
In 2014, Olga launched her own business called “MooshWalks” (stemming from “Moosh,” the name of her cat). MooshWalks makes the big bucks by selling “socks with ears” — her website’s slogan reads, a way to “give your feet personality.”
Her creativity in all of her endeavors — from comedy and juggling to business brainstorms — has molded her into an Internet success. However, as she explains in a 2015 video recorded at the Small Business Expo in Los Angeles, she didn’t market her new product all by herself. As the Beatles would say, she gets by with a little help from her friends — on social media, that is.
Olga credits her high-profile social-media presence largely from MooshWalk’s sales. She says her fans on websites like Instagram — where her shares often gain more than 100 “likes” a piece — are her pioneers and advocates for her product. Specifically, her thousands of followers help market her socks-with-ears by reposting to their friends the frequent messages she writes promoting her interesting spin on clothing.
Olga isn’t the only one to successfully get her customers to market her product. In fact, with just a little bit of time investment, you can make this strategy work for your business, too. And the best part? If you utilize social media to your advantage, you don’t have to spend a cent.
How to Get Free Marketing From Your Customers:
Here are a few tips on how you can be like Olga — and let your client base do most of your marketing for you (for free).
1. Know Your Market
Identifying your market is one of the most important things you can do if you want your business to thrive.
Olga did her research and reached out to a specific demographic — specifically 13-to-25-year-old millennials.
The takeaway? When you’re researching your market, ask yourself:
- What group of people will benefit most from the product or service you’re trying to sell?
- How will reaching out to this group help your company meet its goals?
Once you’ve figured out your target market, research how to best communicate with the people in it. For example, studies show that Instagram is one of the top social-media platforms millennials use. In Olga’s case, by establishing her presence on this site, she got her market to know her and to spread the word about her socks.
As amazing as you think your product may be, it’ll never be for everyone. For best results, narrow down your most likely consumers and reach out to them, in the place where you know they hang out the most. When you reach out to the right demographic, chances are they’ll market your product via word-of-mouth to friends and followers in the same age group.
2. Get More People to Follow You
Olga uses more than just Instagram. She also has a presence on Facebook, Twitter and basically every other social-media platform you can think of — and when she writes her bio, she does it well.
You can effectively use one social-media site to advertise your other ones. For example, Olga’s bio on Twitter links to her business website, her YouTube page and her Vine account.
You, too, can encourage more people to follow you on all of your social-media pages by always including links to your other sites in your bio or profile. After all, you may have “lurkers” who visit your Instagram page occasionally but don’t have accounts of their own — however, they just might be on Facebook.
Ensuring these Instagram lurkers can access your business in other ways increases your chances of having them repost — or “retweet,” if they’re on Twitter — your advertisements. Also, as much as online marketing is the “in thing” these days, don’t underestimate the value of including your social-media profiles, as long as they are professional, on your business cards.
Posting flyers at your local store may help, too. Ask if you can put a printout on the bulletin board.
[Tweet “There’s nothing better than free #marketing from your #customers. @OlgaKay shows us how it’s done:”]3. Consider Outsourcing
You may be wondering exactly how you can devote all this time to social media when you have a large business to run.
It sounds like an impossible dream, but you can alleviate some of the pressure with a little help from some outsourcing. For example, fulfillment services can take some of the pressure off of you while you spend your time communicating with your customers.
Especially when your business has to handle big orders, you can outsource some of your tasks by hiring a third party to organize your inventory, receive shipments and package your products for your customers. It sounds like a costly financial investment, but in the long term, outsourcing your administrative tasks can help you focus more on your marketing goals.
After all, if you follow the advice of Olga, focusing on your social-media presence is the new biggest thing when it comes to marketing your business.
You don’t have time to be your own every-day administrator when you have clients to please. Outsource the tasks you can and let your fans — or followers and friends — help you out with your marketing by liking and reposting your promotional messages.
Social Media Wins
If you’re not on social-media platforms, now is the time to get with the program. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the wave of the future, and you don’t have to post pictures of your food every day to be successful. You can use these venues — free of cost — to help you build your new business.
It might take a bit of juggling at first — but if you’ve checked out her YouTube channel, Olga Kay has some videos to help you learn how.
After all, if she can juggle six balls, you can probably juggle a few profiles.
The post Simple Ways to Get Your Customers to Do Your Marketing for You appeared first on SmartHustle.com.