Beauty Goes High Tech: How the Beauty Biz Is Getting Interactive

February 20, 2013 by June Brockmeyer Leave a Comment

The BIG Idea of the Week: Social Media Month- Pinterest & Instagram for Small Businesses

“The BIG Idea of the Week” video series continues. We’re chatting with entrepreneurs and personalities whose areas of expertise can help small businesses succeed. From helping you generate leads, to growing your online presence and becoming the go-to person in your industry, these experts will share their insights in our video interviews.

This week we had Heather Dopson, Social Media Expert at Infusionsoft, talk to us about best practices when using Pinterest and Instagram. These separate platforms offer a multitude of benefits to small business owners.

Let’s start with Pinterest. This very powerful tool can help you increase traffic to your blog or website because it reaches a lot of people. Dopson mentions the importance of having an account to fit your needs and explains the differences when it comes to Pinterest.

“There are two different kinds of accounts; a business account and a personal account and for your brand, you want to make sure you’re using a business account and you want to make sure you’re creating brand consistency. So your profile image, your Bio; all of those things need to match what’s on your website and on your blog,” says Dopson.

Dopson also mentions the importance in verifying your website on Pinterest so you have more credibility when people visit your page. And, if you’re like me, you may have used Pinterest to help when planning your wedding (guilty) but the truth is, you don’t have to be a wedding planner to benefit from using the site.

gyms on pinterest The BIG Idea of the Week: Social Media Month Pinterest & Instagram for Small Businesses

Engaging in social media conversations can help generate leads.

“Now we’re really seeing it branch out for a lot of different small businesses, for example; a Gym or a personal trainer can use Pinterest to pin exercise ideas, before and after photos, nutritional ideas like a diet for the week or a diet for the month, so there are a lot of different ways you can use these pins and create more visibility for your brand,” says Dopson.

But what about Instagram? Well, this social media platform has about 90 million active users each month so it’s an amazing tool for small businesses.

“If you have a hard product it’s a fantastic tool for you! I know several jewelry makers that are using it to showcase their products and it’s a great tool for that but if you’re a business, like Infusionsoft, we really use it to show what’s going on inside of Infusionsoft. It’s like a sneak peek into our culture and we use it at events as well. It creates more buzz about your brand,” says Dopson.

You can also use Instagram to run contests and keep in touch with people. As far as Dopson can see, the site has a lot of potential.

instaface The BIG Idea of the Week: Social Media Month Pinterest & Instagram for Small Businesses

Generating leads by promoting your brand on platforms like Instagram.

“Since Facebook bought Instagram last year, I can really see Instagram going the direction of having paid ads and sponsor photos much like you see promoted posts and sponsored stories on Facebook,” says Dopson.

And we’ll have to check back with her in a few months to see if her prediction came true.

Remember to follow & tweet at us @BigIdeasBlog or @HeatherDopson We’re excited to start the conversation with you!

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Heather Dopson, Instagram, june brockmeyer, Pinterest, small business marketing tips

January 2, 2013 by Infusionsoft Contributor 1 Comment

Creative Ways to Attract New Dental Patients Using Social Media

By Jennifer Gregory

With the new year looming, many resolutions arise related to health. “I’m going to go to the gym every day!” I’m going to eat better.” “I’m finally going to go to ___ appointment that I’ve been putting off for months.” Why not take advantage of those promises by promoting your dental or orthodontic practice and encouraging good dental habits in 2013? Follow these four small business tips to fulfill your own business related resolutions:

Get Chatty

While dentists and orthodontists often use social media to connect with existing patients, it can also be a great tool to bring new people through your doors. You can use social media to get your name in front of new people, create relationships with potential patients considering your practice and even encourage current patients to tell their friends about you.

“Word of mouth and referrals are still the most powerful marketing tools, but the way we obtain them has changed. We now seek information from our friends and strangers in social media,” says Lisa McTigue, digital marketing consultant.

Also, make sure to respond to comments through your social media outlets; it lets people know you’re paying attention and that you care about them.

Help People Get to Know You

One of the challenges of social media is getting your current followers to share your content with their friends on Facebook, or to retweet your messages to their Twitter followers. “In social media, people respond to the ‘heart’ of a company. Give us something to care about, something to laugh about, and we’ll share it with our friends,” says McTique. “People are more likely to share a simple, fun video or picture.”

McTigue suggests using social media to help patients get to know the dentists and staff on a personal level. For example, if all of your patients love Betty, the hygienist, and are always mentioning her by name, create a small social media campaign around the beloved staff member. “Start the I <3 Betty Fan Club, or Betty could even give tips of the week on video,” says McTique.

Host a Contest

Holding a contest through social media can be a great way to increase your exposure on social media, create excitement about your practice and increase your number of patients. Steve Carstensen DDS, of Bellevue, WA, recently held a four-week contest where everyone who became a Facebook friend during the contest was entered into a drawing to win an iPad.

During the contest, Carstensen added 139 “friends,” 18% of whom were non-patients. Since the contest ended, at least nine new people became patients because of exposure from the contest.

The contest also gave the staff something to talk with patients about. “It certainly energized our team – everyone was involved. It was an easy way to build value for keeping up with our Web 2.0 strategy,” says Carstensen. Other contest ideas include entering everyone who refers a friend into a contest, or even having a drawing of all new patients who schedule an appointment during the contest.

Share Your Message with Images

While many oral specialists use the power of Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn to connect with potential customers, social media networks that use images, such as Instagram and Pinterest, can also be a good tool to bring new people into your office.

“Using Pinterest, [dentists] can make a pinboard called dental health where they can share images and information about anything from how to brush, to what a gum disease looks like, flossing tips and more,” says Brad Hines, social media & internet analyst. “This will in turn drive traffic to the website and create new customers.”

Use these great social media tips for dental and orthodontic promotion to get you on people’s radar, especially at a strategic time of year. For a more thorough tutorial on making the ask, download Infusionsoft’s “Calls to Action” mini e-book.

Filed Under: Dental, Industry Best Practices, Lead Generation, Sales and Marketing Trends Tagged With: capture leads, Instagram, Lead Generation, Lifecycle Marketing, Pinterest, sales leads, small business promotions, social media, strategic marketing

December 28, 2012 by Infusionsoft Contributor 2 Comments

Beauty Goes High Tech: How the Beauty Biz Is Getting Interactive

By Natalie Burg

A maze of cosmetics counters still stands just inside the entrance of most department stores, harkening back to makeup sales of another era. Though droves of housewives may no longer line up at those counters to await their turn with a beauty consultant, that doesn’t mean the cosmetics market is shrinking; it’s just happening somewhere else. Somewhere else using a little bit more interactive marketing int he non-face-to-face sense…

According to Mediabistro, women looking for beauty advice constitute the top five searches on Google and YouTube. And the big names in beauty are waiting online to meet them.

“The beauty industry has embraced social media wholeheartedly and as well as any other,” Mediabistro says, “with the bright, striking visuals and product showcasing of cosmetic and skincare brands a natural fit for the strong 18-35 female demographic, particularly on Facebook.”

Between MAC Cosmetics‘ four million likes on Facebook and Sephora‘s more than 780,000 Twitter followers, it’s clear that the makeup market is booming in social media. But the real innovators in online cosmetics are gaining attention in the more visual networks and communication tools.

YouTube Tips Go Global

British makeup artist Tanya Burr has literally built a career with YouTube tutorials. The key? Offering something truly original.

“While Burr does offer some videos with daily beauty tips and product reviews just as thousands of other aspiring makeup artists do on YouTube,” writes Joanna Douglas for Shine, ”the videos that really resonate are her step-by-step celebrity makeup tutorials. Somehow Burr transforms herself into Brigitte Bardot, Heidi Klum, Beyoncé, and ‘Twilight’ character Bella Swan right before your eyes.”

With more than 26 million video views, Burr’s hook is certainly doing the trick.

“Burr used to post makeup tutorials on YouTube for fun after her shifts at a Jarrold’s department store beauty counter,” says Douglas. “But what started as a creative hobby has spawned a lucrative career that sends her to lavish parties around the globe.”

Getting Personal with Skype

Video also opens the door to even more personalized treatment than tutorials. Missing those personal interactions from the cosmetics counters, Caroline Dahllof cofounded P.S. Beauty, formerly 105 Looks, a company that connects shoppers and beauty stylists via Skype.

“While numerous individual makeup artists have already used Skype to offer tutorials,” says Lorraine Sanders for Fast Company, ”and companies such as Beautylish and Coterie have recently begun pushing the boundaries of beauty e-commerce by selling curated selections of beauty products and exclusives from a limited number of brands, [P.S. Beauty] stands out for pairing personalized advice meted out via a live beauty stylist with the ability for customers to buy from a wide range of popular department store brands.”

Pairing the convenience of the Internet with the personal touch of the cosmetics counter turns out to be win-win for makeup lovers and sellers.

Promotions on Pinterest

No social network is more visual than Pinterest, and few industries are more visually striking than the cosmetics industry. Elizabeth Arden has identified that perfect pairing and has found success with its “Pin It to Win It” Pinterest contests. These have been so well received, says Zoe Fox for Mashable, that the concept is spreading beyond sales promotion.

“Elizabeth Arden will donate one eyeliner for every repin from their Pin It to Give It board to longtime philanthropic partner Look Good Feel Better, a group focused on helping female cancer patients feel beautiful during their treatment,” writes Fox. “The brand is committed to donating up to 10,000 products, one for every repin using the hashtag #PinItToGiveIt in the caption.”

While getting a shopper excited about a new shade of eyeshadow on Twitter in 140 characters might be a challenge, Pinterest, by contrast, allows beauty products to look their best, giving patrons the chance to interact with latest in pretty.

Whether it’s through social media, video tutorial or live consultations online, beauty is going big online. Though there may always be some room in the department stores for cosmetics counters, the new place to go for the latest makeup advice is quickly becoming shoppers’ own living rooms.

If you’re looking for a quick promo or to plan out your entire marketing plan, reference “The Infusionsoft Guide to Sales and Marketing.”

Filed Under: Health and Fitness, Lead Generation, Lifecycle Marketing, Retail, Sales and Marketing Trends Tagged With: creative marketing, Lifecycle Marketing, Pinterest, skype, YouTube