by If you want to take your Subscription Box Business to the next level in 2021 and sign up thousands of subscribers this post will help you.
There is a massive opportunity in 2021 to really push things forward in your Subscription Box business. There has never been a better time to be in the direct to consumer space. I recently read a report which stated the global pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce by 5 years.
I would completely agree with this report. Physical locations are closing all over the world as more and more consumers switch to online shopping. Some consumers who would have never shopped online were forced to during the pandemic. A lot of those people will now never go back to shopping exclusively in physical locations.
This presents a massive opportunity for any Subscription Box owner to take advantage of in 2021.
The only problem is great opportunities also bring much more competition.
· Physical businesses are moving things online at a rapid rate over fears of more lockdowns.
· New entrepreneurs are setting up online stores to help supplement their income.
· The big Ecommerce brands are ramping up their advertising budgets to aggressively eat up market share.
Competition is great because it pushes everybody forward and forces you to innovate. The only problem is if you don’t know what you’re doing your business can end up in trouble and you will be left behind.
If you want to take advantage of 2021 and make it the best year ever in your Subscription Box business you must do one thing….
You must become a marketing expert.
If you don’t know how to get your message out to the right people on a big enough scale you will never get anywhere in your Subscription Box Business. In my opinion the quickest and most cost-effective way to do this is via Facebook ads. For the majority of subscription box owners this is going to be the best way to market your box.
Let me quickly explain to you why this is the case.
The Subscription Box industry is still very new and not a lot of consumers are actively searching for our boxes. This means we have to generate demand otherwise nobody is going to sign up.
Let’s take a Basketball Subscription Box as an example.
There’s probably not a lot of people searching on google for this as it’s not something you would think actually exists. On the other hand, if we use Facebook we can target people interested in Basketball with compelling copy, engaging creative and an unbelievable offer and get them to sign up on the spot.
Using Facebook ads and direct response marketing we can get people to buy something they never even knew existed the day before. That is extremely powerful when you think about it.
As the industry shifts and more consumers become familiar with subscription boxes the strategy will change in the future. As of now, though we must accept for the majority of Subscription Box owners, we have to generate our own demand.
There are other channels and platforms which will hopefully become more viable for creating demand in the future, but in my opinion, Facebook is still the best by far in 2021. This means this is where you should be putting the majority of your advertising budget.
Now the biggest problem with Facebook ads is if you don’t understand what you’re doing you will burn money at a rapid rate. I have written a lot of articles about Facebook ads already which will help you with this. You can check them out on my blog or just search this group.
I decided to write this article to give you 5 things you must do with your FB ads in 2021 to ensure your success on the platform.
1. Selecting the correct objective.
When you are trying to sell something via Facebook ads 90% of the time you are going to pick the conversion objective. You are also going to set it to purchases. Most of the time picking any of the other objectives is similar to flushing your money down the toilet.
Here’s the reason behind this.
When you select purchases, your ad gets shown to the people who have sent a signal to Facebook to say they might be a good fit to buy your product. E.G they may regularly buy products in a similar niche, they may have had a competitor’s product in their cart or they might have sent Facebook a number of other signals (Facebook don’t publicly reveal exactly what all the signals are)
The point is these are the people who are most likely to convert. What I have found in the past is if you set the objective to anything else you end up getting a lot of poor-quality traffic and window shoppers. Yes, the traffic might end up being cheaper, but what difference does that make if its junk quality and you don’t get any sales. If there is a much bigger strategy at play, you may use different objectives but for the majority of Subscription Box owners they will select the purchase option each time.
2.Campaign Structure.
This is extremely important when it comes to Facebook ads. You need to understand that to be successful you need to give the algorithm as much data as possible to process. This is especially true when you are only starting out and you don’t have a clue what will work and what won’t. This means if your Facebook ad strategy involves sending out one ad at a time and praying you get some sales you’re in for a shock. You need to have at least 4 ads per ad set running. This will allow the algorithm to work its magic and find the winning combination.
This won’t’ always be the case, but taking Facebooks new power 5 at face value we should look to simplify our campaign structure where possible. Ideally you should look to have two campaigns running at once. One for cold traffic and then another one for retargeting. This isn’t always possible, but I have been taking their advice and testing this on a bigger scale and have seen some great results.
3. Daily Budget.
The minimum daily budget, you need to set is at least $20 – $25 per ad set. If you are running an ABO campaign you will set this at the ad set level. If you are running a CBO campaign, it is set at the campaign level. Here’s an example if you want to run 3 ad sets in a CBO campaign the minimum daily campaign budget would be $60.
I am afraid the days of spending $5 per day and getting results are pretty much finished. You need to be realistic when you start marketing. The algorithm works best when you feed it data and the more money you can spend the more data you feed it. If you’re only spending a few dollars a day, nothing is going to happen and you’re wasting valuable time. The platform has more advertisers than ever and to get any movement you need to give it a decent budget.
4. Testing Creatives.
As Facebook takes over more of the heavy lifting with Power 5 having engaging creatives are going to become more and more important in 2021. You should have a way of producing as many high-quality creatives as possible. This means if you aren’t skilled with photoshop you should look to hire a graphic designer to your team. This can be a freelancer if you want, but trust me this can make the world of difference. I have said it before and I will say it again simple box opening videos can perform fantastic as well. Send out boxes to friends, family members, influencers, whoever you can it doesn’t really matter. Get as many 40 – 60 second videos done as possible.
If you do both of these things you will put yourself in a position to produce lots of high-quality images and videos you can consistently test. This will give you a great chance of succeeding. I believe in 2021 this is going to become more important than ever and the companies who consistently produce the best creatives mixed with the best offers will win.
5. Writing Compelling Sales Copy.
This is one of the most important parts of the equation when it comes to succeeding with any kind of advertising. You have to have the skills to write powerful copy that makes your prospects want to respond and sign up to your box. If you don’t have those skills you should go all out to learn them or hire somebody to do it for you. Writing good copy takes time and it isn’t something you pick up overnight with no training or practice. The best advice I can give you is to keep things simple and write to your audience using lingo that they actually understand. If you try and complicate things and use big blocks of confusing text you won’t sell a single thing.
If you want to learn some copy writing skills you should spend time studying books. A great book you can start with is Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whiteman. This will you improve your skills and you can start writing ads that make people want to buy your subscription box.
I could write a lot more things here which would help you improve your ads and scale your subscription box business in 2021 but these are great points to start with. The same stuff applies from previous articles though. If you don’t have an offer that coverts all this stuff is a waste of time and it will be like banging your head off a wall trying to grow.
I hope you found this article helpful and if you have any questions about your Subscription Box Business please let me know. Have a great day.
