1. Intro
Too Faced is the first beauty product company I ever heard of, so it’s extremely important to me that this website and podcast take a positive, positive attitude towards our brand.
As you will see from the title, Too Faced is not selling expensive makeup – we are not even selling any expensive makeup products at all. We have released a range of items for less than $40 each, which makes sense as we believe you don’t need much makeup to look great (and our brand is all about making you look great).
To promote this new online store, we are using social media in a very different way than usual – which is both liberating and terrifying. It gives us more freedom to experiment and explore new ways to reach people with our brand.
In terms of design and layout, we are re-thinking how companies market themselves on the internet in a way that works with the tools available today. For example:
The page design was completely removed from the prototype with no additional code changes. The only code needed was CSS3 transitions to remove the white background & animate colour swaps (which were already built into Chrome). This allows us to create one site that works across desktop browsers (ie IE) and mobile devices (ie Safari) or tablets based on how they load content within their browser’s memory space & storage area.
The “About” page has been replaced with an explanation of why we exist as we don’t want people giving misconceptions about what Too Faced does or why it exists in the first place. It’s also shorter so if your visitor forgets who Too Faced is, they can go back and read it later in your website without having to scroll back through pages of text or watch an ad!
2. Crafting a Twitter Image Lead Generation Strategy
We launched Too Faced’s Natural Matte Eye Shadow Palette in 2015. Since then, we’ve been working on PR efforts for the product, and it’s been a real pleasure to be able to leverage those efforts for an image lead generation strategy.
The first thing to consider when building an image lead generation strategy is how big a user base you want to reach and how much time people spend on your website. We want to reach as many people as possible and build a large email list so that our images are seen by as many people as possible.
One way of doing that is through social media marketing (you can read more about this in our recent post here).
To do this in the simplest way, we have started using Instagram Stories:
We have also experimented with various platforms (e.g., Pinterest) but Instagram has proven itself a great tool for generating leads: when you upload your images directly from your website, people tend to look at them even if they don’t follow you or if they don’t like your style of design. All of these factors are important in determining which images to use — too many different ways of using the same photograph might not be very effective at all. We like that Instagram allows us to upload the full image without any loss of quality (i.e., no cropping).
3. How to Create the Perfect Lead Generation Tweet
One of the most common questions I get around here is how to create a Twitter list of active users who are likely interested in a product or service I am promoting.
The answer is simple: you need to find people who want your product and want to buy it. If this means that you need to send out a direct mail campaign, so be it. You can use an email tool (like MailChimp) to do this, or you can use an A/B testing tool like AppsFlyer (which has its own paid version). They both offer the option of sending out multiple emails on different days and targeting different demographics, etc. But either way, you need to get that list started.
When creating your list, you should pay attention to the key metrics in your niche markets: time spent on site/app; time on site/app per visitor; conversion rate; click through rate; and engagement rate (i.e., how long people stick around and what they are doing while they are there). Don’t forget that one of the most important metrics for SEO is “conversion rate” – potentially negative search results can lead to less traffic coming back after they index your site. So make sure yours is up-to-snuff when it comes to content and quality!
4. Optimizing a Twitter Post
This is the final part of this series that I did not elaborate on in detail because it was highly personal, and there’s also a lot of information in it that applies to other people’s businesses.
In the last post we explained how you can optimize your Twitter profile by setting up a better profile picture, setting up an effective plaid (or style) image, and optimizing the overall look of your profile. These are all things that make you look more professional.
The next thing to do is optimize your Twitter posts for maximum impact. Optimizing for maximum impact means allowing yourself to reply directly to people who follow you or at least follow you in the same dimension (i.e., email/website/facebook/twitter). You can do this by starting with a response like “hey, great post!” or “Hey! Great post!” — just be sure not to overdo it (you don’t want to be seen as a spammer trying to get more followers).
You can also optimize your tweets by asking questions around specific topics and giving advice; these are all things that will help you stick out from the crowd. Ask what they use, ask why they think X is better than Y; try and come up with something of interest which will help them get more value out of their time on Twitter: maybe they should have something else in mind when they tweet at night or during lunchtime? They could give you some background information about where they went for their holiday last year, or maybe even about their plans for next year? Surrounding yourself with people who know what they’re talking about will help too.
If you are interested in marketing on Instagram then here’s my guide for optimizing your Instagram photos: http://thedailywombatblog.com/2015/05/21/better-looking-instagram-photos-epub-pdf/.
5. Measuring Your Strategy’s Success
Let’s say you want to launch a mobile app, you want it to be successful, and you want to know how well it is doing. How do you go about accomplishing this?
The answer is through two different metrics: 1) performance, and 2) success. Performance measures the number of downloads; success measures how many people actually use your app (and return). These are two completely different things, and measuring both at once gives a more holistic picture of the app’s overall health.
Performance metrics can help answer questions like:
• Is my product getting traction in the market? (Will I make any money from it?)
• How long does my app stay in the top 100 apps in the App Store? (Can I afford to keep improving it?)
• What is my average time on the App Store? (Can I afford not to update it every week?)
Imagine if Apple had said that all independent software developers needed to do was measure their performance by stock market indices or trading volumes — as if only one metric could be correct. That would mean that only one metric could be correct for all software developers, who would have no incentive to innovate on their own because they couldn’t test themselves. This would lead us into an endless cycle of making unproven claims based on bad metrics that were widely believed anyway, because all metrics were equally valid at best and equally wrong at worst. This is why it’s so important for developers, particularly small ones like us who don’t have as much funding as larger companies or venture firms looking for a quick fix to an impending crisis (we’re not talking about startup funding here). By measuring your success with both types of metrics in mind you will: 1) be better positioned to pick and choose which metrics are most valuable to measure; 2) build a stronger foundation from which to take action when you have gathered sufficient information; 3) avoid making unproven claims that aren’t supported by evidence (which makes us look bad); 4) avoid falling into a trap where we try too hard for improvement when there is nothing actually wrong with our product; 5) avoid being distracted by simple vanity metrics like traffic & installs instead of more meaningful ones like retention & engagement; 6) avoid setting up unnecessary barriers between what we know doesn’t matter & what matters most; 7) avoid inadvertently reinforcing ourselves as a company who thinks they are smart enough or just lucky enough or whatever else they think
6. Conclusion
When I was working on the original Too Faced Natural Matte Eyeshadow Palette , I had some expectations about what I wanted it to do. It was supposed to be for people who love high quality colors in a very affordable palette. I hoped it might bring some attention to natural makeup, whether it was from the earth or from nature. But that doesn’t seem to have happened. Whatever, I’ll still be using the palette; but now I’m wondering if it would have made more sense to focus on this niche market when the product was brand new?
To answer that question, let me turn back to my first instincts: “Do more with less.” For too many companies, “less is more” is just a marketing slogan, but not necessarily a path towards greatness. In fact, too many products seem designed around maximizing profits at any cost and therefore are not as great as they could be because they don’t go far enough in one direction or another.
When you start looking at your own company, you can probably tell if your product isn’t nearly as good as you envision it to be (or at least not as good as you want it to be). Your customers may work hard at telling you why: they either don’t like it or think it is overpriced or something else. When we look back over our lifetime of work and see how long we have been making products for ourselves and our customers, we inevitably see that there are fewer products than we would like out there; and most of those products are nowhere near what we had in mind when we started making them in the first place…
The things that matter most for us are not about marketing — no matter who does them — but about improving a people-centered business culture around customer satisfaction through continuous learning and continuous deployment . The things that matter most for us ultimately aren’t anything other than what we, individually and collectively, want our customers (and potential customers) to say: “This is how amazing I think you should make my life better .”
When an app feels right for me and my life better because of an app-based solution (for example: an app-based speed camera), then I feel right about using that app — even if the solution itself costs more than my current car insurance (which costs $500 a year) or taxes ($200)…even though I don’t need insurance (which costs