Subscription Box Answers

Leveraging Emotion and Social Proof: Transforming Your Subscription Box Business Marketing Strategy

• Liam Brennan

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🚀 Welcome to the final 2023 episode of the "Subscription Box Answers" podcast! In this not-to-be-missed episode, our host, Liam, reveals four groundbreaking marketing tips designed to skyrocket your subscription box sales in 2024.

🌟 Liam dives deep into the essence of marketing mastery, covering a range of critical topics. You'll learn how to tap into the power of emotion to create a compelling narrative for your brand, the importance of social proof in building trust and credibility, and the art of crafting an offer so irresistible that your audience can't say no.

📣 But that's not all! Liam also emphasises the significance of keeping your messaging simple and direct. By combining these four elements - emotion, social proof, an unbelievable offer, and clear messaging - you can dramatically boost your subscription box's sales across any marketing channel.

💡 This episode is packed with insights and practical advice, perfect for anyone looking to scale up their subscription box in 2024.

🎉 As we wrap up the year, remember that this is just the beginning. We'll be back in January 2024 with more tips, tricks, and expert advice. Until then, if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to tackle in future episodes, visit www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com. Join our free Facebook group to post your questions and connect with a community of over 8500 subscription box owners.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the question, you ask the questions, liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers. I hope your day has gone really well and I hope Q4 has gone really well for your business. I hope you got a lot of new subscribers signed up and hopefully increased your monthly recurring revenue. Now, if you didn't, don't worry, because we are moving into a brand new year. That means it's a brand new slate and you have another opportunity to push on in your subscription box business, and that's what I'm going to cover in this podcast. I'm going to cover some marketing tips which will help set you up for 2024. These are four quick marketing tips that everybody needs to know if they want to seriously grow their subscription box company in 2024.

Speaker 2:

So over the last few years, we have spent an enormous amount of time testing different marketing strategies and trying to figure out what is actually the cheapest and most efficient way to grow one of these businesses, and we've literally spent a ridiculous amount of money on marketing at this stage, and we've definitely learned some really valuable information along the way. So I've wanted to record this podcast for a while and share some of this information, as I really believe for a lot of people, what I'm about to cover is the missing link which is stopping you from pushing off, and the whole point of this podcast is to help you push on. I want to share things that I've learned on this podcast so you hopefully get value from it and it helps you push on in your subscription box business. Now, I've written and recorded lots of marketing guides and tips in the past, which mainly focus on Facebook ads. You can check those out in previous episodes of the podcast or you can visit my blog at leanmigobringincom and see some of the articles there. But this podcast isn't exclusively aimed at Facebook ads, even though the tips which I'm going to share will 100% work with Facebook. This podcast is more of a general marketing pod, and these tips can be applied successfully to nearly any marketing channel, as long as there is enough people there to actually advertise too. If you want to grow your box rapidly, I suggest learning this information and start applying it to your marketing campaign straight away. Trust me, if you use all of these at the same time, it's going to make a massive difference. It doesn't matter if you're running Facebook, affiliates, email, tiktok, whatever. These principles can be applied to nearly all marketing and they will make a big difference. So I'm going to share four quick marketing tips to take your subscription box business to the next level in 2024.

Speaker 2:

Tip number one always use emotion. Emotion is one of the main reasons why somebody makes a purchase. If you can create real emotion in your marketing materials, it will make it so much easier to sell your product. I'm going to give you an example. I have a dog subscription box company and we convert customers much easier when we show them the excitement our product creates. We do this by showing potential customers videos of dogs running around barking with pure joy when our box arrives. This is extremely powerful, as everybody loves their dog and they want their dog to experience the same joy as the dogs shown in the videos. This makes the selling process straightforward. As they know, our box will bring that happiness to their dog.

Speaker 2:

You should be looking to do something similar with your subscription box business. You need to identify the emotions that your box could bring. You should then lie into them heavily when it comes to your marketing materials. Here's an example If it's a kid's subscription box, the happiness the box brings to the kid should be a big part of your advertising strategy. This should also come across as genuine in your marketing materials. If it comes across as fake, it will sink your campaign and customers won't take you seriously. Trust me, though, it's really effective when you get this right, if you can find a way to do it correctly, you're going to sign up. A lot of people, and anybody who is good at marketing whatsoever will realize this, and they'll look to do it with all of their campaigns. If you take a while to study all of the ads you consume on a daily basis, you're going to notice emotion-based campaigns everywhere.

Speaker 2:

Okay, the next tip, number two social proof. If you aren't including any kind of social proof in your ads or on your website, then you're leaving a serious amount of money on the table. Social proof is one of the most powerful ways to increase your conversion rate. If a potential customer is signing up to your subscription box and they see loads of positive reviews, that is going to push them over the line and make them take out their credit card and make that purchase. If there's another potential customer who's on defense, but comes across some social proof from real customers saying how great your box is and how good the service is, there's a very good chance that is going to sway that customer into buying your box.

Speaker 2:

One of the biggest mistakes a new subscription box company can make and everybody does it is not taking the time to add any social proof. They don't bother to include any in their ads and their website lacks reviews. This can make consumers really suspicious, especially when you're expecting them to commit to a six or a 12 month subscription. You need to spend some time getting reviews from real customers and also including social proof in your ads. You could do this by putting together a simple retargeting sequence and include some customer testimonials in that Example. If somebody goes to your website and doesn't buy your box, they're going to be retargeted over the next few days with quotes or videos from real customers saying how great the box is. This is one of the most powerful retargeting sequences that you can set up. It's really straightforward to do and it will make a massive difference. It will convert a lot of people and it will drive down your customer acquisition cost. Trust me, social proof is really that important. You have to put time into collecting it and presenting it in the right way. You're not going to be able to scale any kind of subscription box business in 2024 without doing this correctly.

Speaker 2:

Tip 3. The offer. I'm always talking about this and I wasn't going to include it, but I have to because, honestly, it's the most important part of any marketing campaign. Let me explain to you why A good offer can save a bad ad, but a good ad can't save a bad offer. If you've been advertising for a while and can't seem to crack it and your campaigns keep flopping, there's a very good chance it's because your offer is not appealing enough. If you want to scale your box up and have a decent customer acquisition cost, you need to have a very appealing offer. If your offer is like 5% off a 12 month subscription paid upfront, well then you can expect a really high customer acquisition cost and the fact it's probably going to be extremely difficult to drive enough volume to actually scale up your business significantly. Now, if your offer is an unbelievable limited edition gift worth $50 for every person that signs up for 12 months, you have a much better chance at getting that to convert. The magic really happens when you manage to come up with an unbelievable offer that will get customers excited to sign up on the spot and you mix that with the points I discussed above. So if the offer is right and your campaign is emotion based and you have a lot of culture proof mixed in, then your subscriber count is going to go through the roof once you start advertising correctly.

Speaker 2:

If you're struggling to understand how much you can afford to discount or spend on an offer, you need to look into your metrics. Once you understand your lifetime value, then you'll understand how much you can spend to acquire a customer. The goal is always, at a minimum, to earn back three times in gross profit what you spent to acquire a customer on average throughout the lifetime of the subscription. If you can do that, then you're on the path of building a very sustainable and successful subscription box business. Point four keep your messaging simple and direct.

Speaker 2:

When you're communicating with your customers via ads, your website or email marketing, you need to keep things simple and direct at all times. If you overcomplicate things, you're going to confuse your customers and they won't buy from you as they won't have time to understand what is going on. This is a big mistake new advertisers make time and time again. They don't take the time to understand how to write simple and direct copy. I'll give you a couple of examples. Weak marketing messages contain irrelevant information and jargon the customer does not care about. Example the hamster subscription box was launched in 2019. It's designed to help you and your hamster have more fun and try cool products. I'm excited to share my passion with the world. Head over to our website to learn more Absolute rubbish.

Speaker 2:

Powerful marketing messages cut through the noise and address what is important to the customer as soon as possible. Example all hamsters deserve to be loved. That's why we're including a free bag of hamster food with all subscriptions. Show your hamster how much you love them with a monthly delivery of wacky toys and healthy treats. So showing up now and see why ten thousand hamster owners choose us each month.

Speaker 2:

The point is you need to keep things simple and direct. The first example would not sell anything. It's a particularly bad example, but it's similar to so-mads that we keep seeing in this space time and time again. The second example is structured in a way that is easy to read. It's emulsion based and it cuts through the noise with a good offer and some culture proof. This is what you need to be doing when you're advertising. I hope you found this podcast helpful. Over the last few years, we have sold millions of dollars of subscription boxes through all different kinds of advertising and over time, you definitely learn a few things that can make a big difference Next time you launch a new campaign. Listen back to this podcast and apply these tips. If you follow it correctly, you're going to see a big improvement.

Speaker 2:

Now, next Monday is Christmas Day, so we're actually going to take a break and there's not going to be any new episodes during the holidays, but we will be back in early January. I just want to take this opportunity to thank everybody who said they had questions or listened to the podcast in the last 12 months. We're around 50 episodes into this podcast now and I hope I've brought you some kind of value over the last 12 months. If I have, before we finish up for the year, would you mind doing me a big favour and writing this podcast on Spotify or Apple or whatever you listen to it on? It just really helps me get it out to more people. So thanks very much. I hope you have a really great Christmas and I look forward to coming back in the new year with lots of new content and guests to help you grow your subscription box business. And, as always, if you have any questions, head over to SubscriptionBoxResourcescom, join the free Facebook group and post them there. Thanks very much and chat to you when I come back. Bye, bye.