EP394: What's Working Now: SMS Marketing For The Jewelry Industry with Taylor Frame

6:16AM Mar 7, 2023

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

sms

jewelry

people

brand

buy

sales

funnel

super

sms marketing

taylor

business

spend

customer journey

adding

couple

brooch

educating

create

flourish

website

We feel like that's one of the biggest things lacking is the soul behind brands, and the ability to actually reach out with whether it's paid marketing or content creation or SMS, to create an emotional connection with that customer. Because that's at the end what drives sales.

Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this. Welcome to the thrive by design podcast episode 394. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, chief visionary officer of Flourish & Thrive Academy, and the host of the show today. And I'm excited to be here to talk about something that I think is super fun. You're gonna love my guest today, too. He's got the best personality. And the thing that I loved on the most is that he loves making people money, including people like you. So if you're someone who has been thinking about getting into SMS, you're not sure where to start, or how to do it or what the right strategy is to get it to work, or you've tried SMS before and it hasn't worked in your business. Then listen up because Taylor is the bomb. I'm going to introduce him in just a moment. But before I do, I want to talk a little bit about what we have coming up for the next couple of months. So we are doing a another fun challenge. It is called the supercharge your online sales challenge. During this five day challenge, we're going to help you harness the power of online sales with our proven system to three acts. Your high converting website traffic, hate your online sales goals and create an unforgettable brand experience. So if you'd like to join me for that five day challenge we're getting started on March 20. Plus, we're going to be hosting a bonus masterclass on March 27. The five mistakes jewelry business owners make when it comes to selling online that is killing their sales and how to fix them. This is going to be a great brand new brand new spankin masterclass, it's going to be awesome. So if you want to get in on that head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash supercharge and save your seat today. So I want to give you a little backstory on my guest today. But before I do, the reason why I wanted to have him on and in the reason why I'm going to have him become an ongoing trainer over here at Flourish & Thrive Academy is that we're in a business group together. And we were talking one day and he's like, Tracy, I work with so many jewelry companies, let me come in and help your people. I just love to help people make money. And so we started got to talking he's like, I'm like, Yeah, well, what kind of jewelry companies have you helped he's he was telling me this case study of a jewelry company that came in and through SMS marketing. And using some of the strategic things that we talked about today, they started growing their business, they were doing about $3,000 a month online. Now a year later, they're doing about 100,000. And so while there was a lot of things that need to happen in order for a company to scale that quickly, that is a massive, huge growth and not for everyone. You really need the back end infrastructure to grow a business like that. But I found it found it fascinating because what if through SMS marketing, you could just double, triple or quadruple your current online monthly sales and get it to a very manageable level where you're super excited and stoked about what happened. And Taylor told me that that company is getting about a 14 times return on their investment, which is super cool. So I asked Hillary to come in he is the co founder of focus funnels and ecommerce growth shop and he's consulted and worked with over 400 plus e comm companies inside focus funnels. The agency has launched and scaled over 100 brands to consistent six figures a month finding creative solutions for bootstrapped founders. In addition to the overall success, Taylor's team has managed over 45 million in performance adspend across a variety of niches. So I'm super pumped about this. And I'm even more excited to have tailor training on SMS marketing in our train your customers to buy from you online program which is coming up this spring. So let's dive in to this episode with Taylor frame. I am so excited to have my friend Taylor frame on the show today. Welcome Taylor.

Super excited to be here. Thank you so much Tracy.

So Taylor and I know each other through a business group and we both won this is I just have to give like a little background. We won a prize together but also we were sitting on a bus and we're talking about ads. And he had his human design read by one of the new people who was attend In this event, and what she said about Taylor was that he loves to make people money. And I loved hearing that. And so I had to have Taylor on the show today, because he is an E commerce expert. And the CEO of focus funnels. And Taylor and I are in a business group together. We also like to hang out on the dance floor all night at these events. And so we both won the good times award base, which is basically the fun award.

Right? Out of the event, we were the most fun,

we were the most fun. It was so fun. And they gave us

certificates they did to show us that we were super fun.

They did you know, I'm really devastated because I accidentally, I'm blaming it on someone else. Someone sat at my desk at home, and they put a highlighter on it. So now there's highlighter on my certificate, which means I'm going to have to win another one of the fun awards.

We got that in the bag. No problem.

Did you went out the last event that I wasn't at?

I did not? Ah, if they choose me every single time I think they'd see like, there might be some issues with that.

There might be

you have a favorite. Exactly. So I got a sparse it out. But like, I was definitely in the running.

You were okay. So tell us tell us a little bit about focus funnels, and your history and all the things.

So I'm one of the co founders here at Focus funnels. Focus Funnels is a digital marketing agency. What makes us super unique is that we look at the whole customer journey. Okay, so we're talking about, what type of creative are you running? How are your ads structured? What type of product or landing page are you sending them to? And then how are you nurturing that client after they come to your site. So where a lot of agencies fall off, and where a lot of marketing falls apart is they only look at like one piece of that? Yeah, they'll be like, Oh, we just do copy, or we just do creative or we just buy ads. But they don't actually look at like the whole customer journey, like the arc of the customer. And that's where we specialize, is we help people understand how do you actually connect human to human, with these buyers? And we feel like that's one of the biggest things lacking is the soul behind brands, and the ability to actually reach out with whether it's paid marketing or content creation or SMS, to create an emotional connection with that customer. Because that's at the end, what drives sales?

You're speaking my language, right? Oh, yeah. Yes. So today, we're gonna be talking about SMS because Taylor and I were having a conversation, he's like, Yeah, we run ads, and we're awesome at it. I love making people money, we do all this stuff. But what we really crush it, especially for jewelry companies, is SMS marketing. So why is SMS marketing super important and powerful these days.

So if you think about a traditional sales funnel, okay, and for anybody that doesn't know, a sales funnel is just a fancy word for a customer journey. Right? So at the very top of a sales funnel, you have somebody that's never heard of your brand before. In the middle, maybe they've been exposed to you once or twice, maybe they've been to their website. And then at the very bottom, they are purchasing from you. And they're a loyal customer. So you think three stages in the customer journey. So top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, okay. What a lot of brands are pretty good at is helping people understand middle of the funnel. The content that a create, the post that they're doing organically is middle the funnel. But where brands struggle is I need to get new people into my brand every single day. And then at the very bottom, I need those people to spend some money. Yeah, right, because we're all in this because we're passionate, but it has to pay some money. Otherwise, it doesn't work. Right. Exactly. So SMS is phenomenal at middle and bottom of the funnel, getting these people that have shown interest to take that extra step and buy from you. Right. So one of the reason that we're super passionate about this is because a lot of people, you know, have a little bit traffic to their site. They're starting to get some momentum and engagement with the brand, but there's no revenue. Yeah. How do we fix that? Well, that's through better engagement with clients. That is an email that isn't social, but a little bit more personable direct to them. That's where text message or SMS marketing comes in.

Okay, awesome. So people come to you it's not like you could just like start an SMS campaign and have it start working like you need to get people opted into that SMS campaign. And the whole thing kind of like set up in a way that's going to create this, you know, customer journey, as you said. So what are some of the biggest challenges that people have before starting SM? US.

So a couple of challenges that most brands come into is one, they need some traffic. Right? If there's nobody going to your website, well, we have nobody to opt into your SMS. So gonna be really tough to scale that. So we need some traffic and traffic can be coming from anywhere. It can be come from ads, it can come from affiliate partners, it can come from your organic content. Right. So the first challenge is we've got to have have some traffic to the site. The second challenge is most SMS stuff is very spammy and salesy. And so for our brands, we have to teach them, how do you engage authentically. And we guide them on that because we're so used to getting bad SMS campaigns. Nobody really knows what a good one looks like. Exactly. So the second challenge is after we solve the traffic problem, is we summon and we teach brands, how do you be authentic in the SMS journey? And how do you add value to somebody's lives, because that's going to keep them coming back every time and not unsubscribing? Right off the bat.

That's good feedback. So what are some of the ways that you added value.

So this is this is a little bit of a strategy that we apply for all of our clients. So just for anyone listening, we do fully managed services on SMS, but it's about giving value and value can be a couple of different ways it can be, hey, let me show you three tips on how to layer your jewelry. Or let me show you why this metal is, is better than this metal. Or, Hey, let me show you the back end of how we custom design our jewelry and why it's unique. Right? So it's about adding value can be solving a problem. value can be adding in a smile to somebody's day, it can be something funny. Value can also be educating the client on why your product is superior to the others on the market. So we typically have a little formula, we do value value at SC value value ask. So we want to offer a couple pieces of value. And then after they've leaned into it and be like, Oh my gosh, I didn't actually know that I can layer my earrings this way on my ear. That's really cool. Yeah. Then we say, Hey, if you think this is cool, we actually sell these, these earrings. Would you want to buy

as the earrings on my ears right? Now?

You look amazing. Right? So it's value value, ask. And that's how you create authenticity, because you're leading with something that they actually want to hear. Instead of being like, hey, buy my jewelry. Nobody likes that.

There's a balance, I think sometimes too, and adding too much value where people are like afraid to go for the ask. So how do you kind of counter that and like deliver value, but also maybe get some sales from the value while you're doing the value value? Ask?

Yes, yes. That's a very good question. So this is where a lot of our strategy and expertise comes in. Because it is a little bit of a fine line to walk. But the biggest piece here is that when you're sending somebody because an SMS comes through as a text message, right? Yeah. And there's two types of messages, you can send an SMS or an MMS. MMS stands for multimedia message, which usually has like a video or a picture or something like that. Okay. Yeah, and just for everyone listening, SMS is about, you know, one to five cents to send an MMS or multimedia message is usually two or three times the cost to sell. So like it's 15 cents, it's way more expensive, right? But what we found is that SMS converts way better.

Oh, really, without the videos and the

how, when you get the picture, or the video, you feel like you have the whole story. Oh, you want people clicking through you want people clicking through? Right yet? So. So not only can we reduce the cost by just sending SMS and not multimedia messages, not MLMs. Okay. But we're good. We're bringing them where we have them click to is super important. So if I say hey, here's three tips on how to style your jewelry. Then that page you You take me to needs to outlay the three tips, but there needs to be subtle asks in there to buy the jewelry.

Yeah, so it'd be like a blog post or just a landing page or what what would you send them to like if you can structure the filing video?

Totally, you can structure in 1000 different ways, right? This is where it gets really fun and creative. It can be the founder walking them through, hey, here's how I layer my jewelry on like a video that's embedded on a page and below you have clicks like here's the jewelry that I'm selling. Right? It can be as simple as that. If you want to be a little more We're advanced, it can be a blog with calls to action to purchase the jewelry that you're calling out. Right? So that's how we go that value value, ask type methodology. Those are a couple ways to execute on that.

So what are some of the favorite asks that you have? That I think a favorite

one in the jewelry space is either educate me on why your stuff is different or unique? Show me how I need to be styling it and wearing it. Okay. And then I think the last one is helping you understand like, what am I going to get when I when I wear your jewelry? Describe to me because everything that we make is for the most part an emotional decision. Yes. So when I put on your jewelry, how am I gonna feel? Yeah. Right. Like, talk to me about that. And so that's value, because a lot of people buy things, because they're looking for an ideal outcome, whether they want to feel better or look better. Or they want their girlfriends or their significant others to say I love that on you. Right? Or maybe even on the male side, like they're getting into jewelry, they want to accessorize, like, teach me how to do that. Yep, like, what kind of what kind of rings could a man pull off? Or bracelets? Or whatever the case may be? Right. So think about a jewelry where where I have I have some bracelets on but like I wouldn't call jewelry.

In the middle of that, what were your thought complete your thought? Yeah.

So when you think about the value, it's how can I help you in your day? Okay, have you ever been to dinner? And some of the person you're with just talks about themselves the whole time? Oh, it's annoying. Like, how fast do you tune out? Yeah, like, instantly? Yeah, brands do the same thing. They're like, me, me, me, me, me. And like, after five minutes, like I'm sick of this brand. Yeah. When we actually talk to the consumer being like, hey, here's what you're gonna get. Here's why you should care why I'm building this jewelry. Here's why this is unique, or lasts longer or is really price value, right? When we talk about what the consumer is going to get, then we get much more interaction. And those are good examples of value.

So if someone wants to like to try and replicate this value, value ask thing in the ask such section, what are some of the things that you've seen really work well, for getting people to click and buy?

Yeah, yeah. So if you're going with just an SMS, like you want to do like one or two SMS that are pure value, taking them to a value page, and on that value page, you want to have some sort of upsell, or opportunity for them to buy something. Right. That's, that's the first thing that's super good. But you can do like to SMS is that our value add? And then the third one, you can say, hey, here's a direct link to purchase this stuff that I've been teaching you about. Right? Yeah. So so you can give them a little bit of value and then take them right to a place where they can purchase. And if you do that, right, that usually works pretty well. Like people said, you

rotated like, if you did, like, Okay, here's like, how to layer necklaces. And then you had another post, like, the best necklace length for your neck size, or something like that. And then you're like, here, are the chains available for sale? And the next one?

Totally, that's like a perfect example. Okay, cool. And yeah, send that campaign over, like, a day and a half. So you'd sent one in the morning, maybe one in the evening, then the next day, you hit them with, Hey, here's the change that you can buy. Okay, direct link. Cool. And you should probably still have those chains, in the blog posts or in the videos that you're sending them to. But yes, that's a perfect example of a really solid campaign.

So how have you seen this work for like more expensive jewelry or like fine jewelry or custom jewelry? Like what would be a way to weave that in?

Yeah, that's a really good one. So the minute we start getting into higher price points, most people want to have some sort of connection or relationship with the jeweler. So now your SMS probably needs to be pushing towards a consultation, or a sales call. Or hey, design your dream piece of jewelry with us, right? Yeah, needs to be pushing towards some sort of person to person engagement, where I can meet you learn about what you do, and then design my perfect whatever ring brooch, you know, necklace, and then yeah, I'm laughing

brooches. Well, everyone.

Yeah, I'm surprised it's a huge brooch market. We're going really bullish on brooches. I don't know why that came up.

So if you're going above it at that higher price point, you're going to need to have that person to person connection, especially if you're a small brand. And there's not a lot of social proof behind what you're doing.

Yeah, that's great feedback. No, I actually reached out to you because we had someone reach out to us. They're a really challenging market for us. I'll just keep this anonymous, but the guy had had had a really successful like eBay business for a long time. And they position themselves as like, basically the lowest end of the barrel for discount engagement rings with I can't remember that what do they call it, but it's basically like they take the diamonds on like, Phil, like, take really poor quality diamonds and like fill them with stuff. So that improves it, something enhance like clarity, enhanced diamonds. And he was really having a hard time with online shopping. You gave me some really good advice about that, like, what would you recommend to people who are trying to like position themselves as like the lower end of a high end market? Where the people who are buying that product? Actually don't have a lot of money to spend? Yeah,

yes. So with that type of thing, you have to have them understand the core problem you're fixing. Right? So for for that specific example, the core problem he's solving is he's allowing someone with a smaller budget to get a much value, like a much higher priced ring that's going to appear more expensive for a lower cost. That's great. Right? So we need to lean into that messaging. So for an individual like that, he needs a couple things. The first thing he needs is a decent amount of videos, and testimonials showing people that this is not a scam. Okay, yeah, you have to show that this is a real thing. So you need video testimonials. You need lots of content on your website and on your socials showing the product. And helping people understand that this is not a scam, because when something sounds too good to be true, most of the times it is yeah, right. So that's the first thing he's got to get over this hump that people are gonna get scammed. The second thing is that if they're spending over two grand, I would be pushing for some sort of consultation call. Yeah. And and here's why. At the beginning, we have to do things that do not scale. I know right? And we that's just how it works. Like at the beginning, when I started focus funnels, I would go meet every single client. Even if I had to drive a day and a half, I will go do it. Because I needed the money and I needed to grow the business. And that person, a person would make sure that I close that deal. Yeah. So at the beginning, as business owners, a lot of times we have to do stuff that does not scale until we get to the point that we can build systems and processes to scale. Exactly. Yeah. So at the start, look, if you have to book sales calls and talk to 10 people a day, but you close five of those sales calls. Heck, you've got an amazing opportunity there. Exactly. So that's what I would do if I was in his shoes is content, sales.

The other thing that you I think was really I thought was really important from that conversation too, is that understanding your customers like for someone who this is why I always say like, never compete for the lowest price point. Because for someone who has very little to spend, that might be their only $5,000 that they have. And they want to make that $5,000 Go as far as they can. So you said like for someone who is super wealthy, like spending $5,000 is like spending $1. And they're not even gonna think about it. And if you're if you're marketing to people who so on like a really, you know, this, like the cheesiest word, but a highfalutin website or highfalutin brand, like $5,000 piece of jewelry isn't going to really be a drop in the bucket for someone who's super wealthy. But for someone who doesn't have the money, and they're like living paycheck to paycheck, and they barely have cash to spend, like, every single dollar that they spend, they want to make sure that they're getting the best value for that. And so, this is really important to all of you who are trying to understand how you market to people, if you're trying to create st things that are affordable luxury, you're always going to run into that problem.

Yep. Right. 100% a little bit off

the SMS conversation, but also important marketing lesson, but it's

totally tied in. Yeah, because if you're in front of me consistently, like let's say we're talking about this discount engagement ring company. If you're sending me SMS is, you know, once a week for two or three weeks and I Adding value to me and educating me, you're creating a gap between your competitors, you're staying top of mind with me. And if I'm a super busy person, and I got to spend five grand and the only five grand I have, and you've spent the time to engage with me, nine times out of 10, I'm going to spend my money with you. Yeah. Right. So that's where the SMS comes in, is adding the value educating, helping create distance between you and your competitors. So they're like, oh, my gosh, I do only have five grand, I really want a really impressive ring for my significant other. Yes, I'm gonna make that investment with you. Because you actually took the time to care about me. I love it. I so that's SMS.

I love it. Okay, so for someone who's just getting started out on SMS, what is what are the three, like three most important SMS flows are sequences that they need to have setup? From the

gap? Yeah, so there's a couple things. Number one, you need an opt in flow. This is called a welcome series. an opt in flow or a welcome series is a chance just like if you're going to get coffee for someone, what are you about? What do you do? What are you build, right? It's kind of like a get to know me type thing. And on your welcome series, you want to have a couple things that maybe take you to the about us page, maybe educate people about the type of jewelry you're building, why you're unique while you're cool. And then maybe one or two opportunities to sell them on something. Okay, so that's the number one flow you have to have is your welcome sequence or your opening sequence. And that's based on an opt in off of your website somewhere. Okay, that's the first one. The second one you need to have is an abandoned cart. Yep. Okay, this is somebody that comes in, add something to the shopping cart doesn't actually buy? Well, that person was like, right, when you think about that funnel, we have top of funnel, middle and bottom, they were right at the edge at bottom of funnel, we just need something to push them over. So sometimes that's as easy as a 10% discount code. Yeah, right. Sometimes it's easy just saying, Hey, I know you're considering this purchase, it's a big purchase, here's why you should make this purchase. You know, maybe it's custom, or we use much finer metals, or whatever your differentiation is right? Send that to them. And be like, Oh, actually, I didn't know that about your brand. Purchase. Right? So the second one you have to have in place is abandoned cart. Okay. The third one that you have to have in place is a Winback sequence. Okay. And this means somebody that hasn't bought from your store in 30 to 60 days. Okay, so they've, they've been a customer. They haven't bought anything in one to two months, send them something of value, start to engage with them again. And that's, that's an automated one. Right? So once you set up all these things, these just run in the background.

Yeah. And so So Can these mirror, like what you're doing in your email sequence just being shorter? Or like, how would you do that?

You really want to? Kind of, there are two pretty different strategies, because think about how people so email is like a social feed. People flow through it. Yep. Right. Even if they don't open it, they're like, oh, yeah, that's cool that their brand is doing that. And then they delete it. You know, SMS, it has like a 90%, open rate. And it has like a 60%. Click through rate. So everyone sees these messages. So you want to keep that in mind when you're crafting the messages and making the hooks to bring people into your site. It's it's way more engaging than email. So the strategy has to be a little bit different. Yep. But similar. Okay, cool. Yeah. So those are the three strategies you have to have in place. I love that.

Okay. So as we're wrapping this app, this has been awesome, awesome. Taylor is going to be a trainer in our trainer customers to buy from you online program. I'm super excited about it. You can be teaching all that SMS and we might be having to teach more stuff out that more will be revealed. So I hope that I mean, he to me is like such a clear, the way that you communicate is so clear that I think this is going to be an awesome opportunity for people to learn more about how they can uplevel their SMS marketing. So we're excited to have you. But beyond that, where can everyone find you?

Yeah, so we'll link a landing page on our website that talks all about our SMS program. And one of the cool things about SMS you guys should consider is it's a really low cost way to get into nurture marketing, and to get more sales out of your brand. One of the things that we do is we offer a fully set up and customized service for you. So you don't have to lift a finger we come in and do all the work for you. And then it's an an ongoing thing where we continue to help you monetize your store So yeah, well, we'll put a link in the description, you can jump. You can also check out focus funnels.com. So focus funnels.com. And you'll find us there and we'd be happy to connect with anyone. So thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for being here today. Thanks so much for listening to the show today. This is Tracy Matthews signing off. If you haven't done so yet. Make sure that you pause this video and either click the show notes or head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash supercharge. And make sure that you join us for our five day free challenge that's happening March 20. Through the 27th we're gonna wrap it up with a bonus masterclass, we're keeping this one tighten right. And if you participated in our boot camp in January, this is going to be just as good, if not better, really focused and we're going to be focused primarily on online sales strategies. And hopefully you're gonna get some quick wins during the week where you start making some money. So it's gonna be fun, I promise to make it worth your while. Head on over to flourish. & thrive academy.com forward slash supercharge to sign up for free today. Ciao for now. See you next time.