Episode 70 | How to Reach More Customers

Sophia Noreen: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and today we are going to be listening to an excerpt from a live session that we had with Tahira from the Nur Shop, where we spoke about influencer marketing and how she was able to execute a successful influencer campaign after she took one of our programs, Influencer Marketing Made Easy. So we're going to be speaking with her about how she felt about the program, and what she learned from the program. And guys, I was super excited to hear all the positive feedback she had. Of course, when we do develop programs, we develop it for you to ensure that you're getting the most out of your journey as an entrepreneur. And we grew our product-based business, Also Sophia on the back of influencer marketing. That was the marketing strategy we started with in 2020. 2018, we were testing the waters. 2019, we were going to live markets. And by 2020, we decided to bring our strategy online and use influencer marketing, and it worked. It really helped put our business on the map in front of many customers, and we really scaled. I think we did 10 acts. And we do have a live training for you where we walk you through how we were able to accomplish that. It's a free live training. And right now, what we're doing is we are adding people to the waitlist. And of course, if you're catching this episode a little bit later on, enrollment could be open. So the pre-roll, we'll let you know if we have open enrollment, otherwise you can add yourself to the waitlist and be the first to know when we enroll our students.

Again, this program has been extremely successful for online business owners like the Tahira. So I'm hoping you will see similar success if you apply these strategies. Okay, so let's get into it and learn about how influencer marketing worked for her and what she got out of the program. Hello, everyone. How are you everyone? 

So we have a good topic, how to reach more people when trying to sell our products? Do you want to go really quickly into your story just so people know where you're coming from as a store owner and a seasoned entrepreneur. You've been in business for about five years and perhaps, how you used influencer marketing to your benefit. 

Tahira Munir: Okay. Yes, I would love to do that. Some of you who already know me know that I used to own a brick-and-mortar store, which I opened up about four and a half or five years ago. But I was in business before that. I used to run a business from home. I opened up the brick-and-mortar store. It was the first ever Islamic store in our entire region, like all of Durham region. There's never been an Islamic store here. So it was a big achievement. It'd be Alhamdulillah. I was very happy, and Alhamdulillah, like it was going great except in the end of 2019, we decided to close the store because we wanted to relocate to a bigger location. We had planned that we would expand. We would try to get bigger vendors into our store. But then 2020, we got our lease. We even posted videos and pictures of stuff on our Instagram, so we're starting to open. And then we were literally in the process of setting up our store like March. I teach full-time so as a teacher, I'm like, okay, I'll get the March break and I'll work on, the last minute touches. 

Sophia Noreen: Oh yes, right before the launch.

Tahira Munir: But I was like, I'll do the last minute set up during March break and then everything gets shut down in March break. So it was at that time that I had to decide to switch a little bit more to online because everything's shifted to online. So I decided to go online and see how it goes for the first year. And then since then my intention was to reopen the store. But with the constant opening and closing, I think today they were saying in Ontario, they've had another all-time high number of cases with COVID.

Sophia Noreen: Yes, we're on that very steep climb trajectory, it was in April. So for anybody who is not in Canada, but I think the globe is feeling the Omicron. Not to go too much into that, but we're reliving that same potential pandemic. I know our stores are going to 50% capacity.

Tahira Munir: Yes, they were just saying larger gatherings which are a thousand and more have to be 50% as of Saturday. So they're like, there's more restrictions. So because of that, I've decided I'm going to rethink about the brick-and-mortar store, because there's a lot of cost that come with it. So we went online and I noticed that even though we had the brick-and-mortar store, we were doing online. But our main stream of income was not the online because we have a lot of walk-in traffic, we had our local community supporting us. So when I went online, I was like, well, the sales have dropped tremendously from when we were in store. So I did that in 2020, and then come 2021 I'm like, no, I got to figure out a way to get more sales, to reach out to more customers. And that's when I came across your Influencer Marketing Program. And I absolutely was amazed, even though I came in really late. I don't know if you remember, but I can. You had already started the course, and I just said, I don't care. I need a spot in the course. Can you make space for me? And I remember you said, okay, that's fine. So I had to do a little bit of a catch up. But I think it was an amazing experience, and I would definitely continue with Influencer Marketing because it made a huge difference with the number of sales that we had the first year versus the second year of being online. 

Sophia Noreen: Right. A hundred percent. Because people probably didn't even know you hadn't set your store down, and two, they probably didn't know you had an online presence. With social media, we level the playing field and we don't need to pay for ads and pay for TV or radio. That's all old school marketing tactics. And the influencers being people like us who have captured the audience's attention, who have built real relationships with real customers. And if they liked your product and they like your store, then you're giving them also the opportunity to basically fulfill their business because influencers and social creators or content creators, that's their business, is to basically promote. So that's really, yes, I'm happy to hear that it was helpful. 

Tahira Munir: I've found a huge gain in one, the audience and two, gaining the right kind of customers. And I know that people don't think of influencer marketing as a way of gaining and getting to know your target audience. And I felt that when we were in the physical store, we had everybody walking in. But when you have an online presence, and now that we've had to reduce the amount of products that we are selling. In the store, we had everything. It was an Islamic lifestyle boutique so we had clothing, we had hijabs, we had books, we had kids' toys, we had everything. But we've had to over time reduce that because it's not feasible to have so many products when you're running an online business, or I found it overwhelming. I had to go back and re-figure out who my target audience is. Who is it that I need to reach out to? Who are the people who are going to buy the products that I am selling? And I found that doing the whole campaign really help to bring clarity to that as well for my situation, at least. And I also learned to figure out like, I over the campaign learned who it is that I'm going to, like this year, what kind of influencers am I looking for? So personally, I think it was a great experience. 

Sophia Noreen: Perfect. I noticed the benefit of the program because every worksheet, every use Google Sheet so people may copy, and then they can plug and play their own numbers. We, in Also Sophia, use those. The reason why now we're launching again is because we want to work with small businesses, other small businesses in tandem And we have started using a revenue predictor worksheet. I guess it's a Google Sheet right? where you plug and play all of the numbers that we suggest you observe. Not just follower account, but other strategic numbers that you need to know. And then you can predict which influencers will give you the ROI because everybody is going to ask for a fee either in the form of a PR package or in the form of commissions or in the form of a payment for their content creation. And if somebody is asking you, for example, a thousand dollars for a post and you go and you plug and play and you realize, well, the mass of return based on this calculation, based on my cart size, based on my conversion rate, based on their conversion rate, like all those numbers, they won't give me my return on investment so I will not be able to offer them, That's one of the key things. And then the other thing that you had said, which is perfect, is people know who they're selling to. And if you pick an influencer that is not in your audience, or they don't have your audience then you're just, forget it. It's done. 

Tahira Munir: So I was thinking like if you, Sophia, can highlight what this program is for the people who've joined us, because I've had a lot of people ask me about the program as well. And I thought that perhaps, the reason we're doing the live today is so that we can give them a little bit of about what this program is because in case, if they're thinking that perhaps this is something that I'm interested in doing for my business like other businesses have done, we gave examples in our last like nominal, it was all about influencer marketing and they became this big because they did it right. And if our audience is interested in joining or being part of this course, perhaps they want to know what this course is about. And I thought the thing to do is ask you about it rather than me tell them about it 

Sophia Noreen: Of course, of course. So we've mentioned a few things already, but very high level, we start with your customer or who your ideal customer is. And then the messaging that you need to give them for them to feel comfortable from you your product. I give this example a lot. But Clutcheeet is one of our sister brands and basically, the clutches are very beautiful clutches. So beautiful and so delicate, in fact that I may not want to take it to a party because I think it belongs on my showcase. So what our influencers will do then is they'll help break down that potential barrier to purchase. So they'll take the clutch to a party and show how it's being used, they'll model with it, they'll show the cellphone going in and out. And so, we talk about how you need to be able to know what your customer is potentially thinking about why they shouldn't buy your product. It could be the cost, for example. And how do you say, this is a value that you're going to get from this product. It's well-made. Anything that needs to be such to convince. And I don't want to say convince, but basicallyif you want your customer to love your product and love your brand. So you're just helping them understand that part. So we do talk a lot about that. It's the psychographics of your customer, what their thoughts about the purchase. And then we talk about how to align your customer and to see if they fall into your influencers' communities, so you're not taking the incorrect influencers for your brand and product. And from a very superficial perspective, people may look at Tahira's Nur Shop and Also Sophia's My Eid brand and may think that they're the same customer but in fact, they're not. We cater to very different customers. And if we go into a little bit of a psychographics around that, we also go into the ROI. Calculating, one, do you have enough margin in your product right now to offer an affiliate commission plus a discount? So you go through that. You also go through ROI, what you can potentially predict as a minimum and a maximum return on investment when you hire on an influencer and then we also speak about how to close out your campaign and what you should include in your contracts. That's very important. 

Tahira Munir: Yes, art. When I took it last year, when I was doing the business the brick-and-mortar, we had a lot of influencers who had contacted us and they would take products from us. But to be honest, I would just give out the products. I'd be like, here you go. Or give them at a discounted rate and say, here you go. And I think it was only when I came and I took the course and I'm like, well. So if he goes to me, she's like, you have to put in a contract what you're expecting. Even though everything else was useful, but I really found that you giving us like, I didn't have to create my own Google Sheet. You gave me the Google Sheet and all you said is, here. How you take your numbers and punch it in. I found that very helpful. For anything, for that ROI, for figuring out if worth it for us or figuring out if we have that room in our product to be able to hire. If we have the profit margin or not. 

So I personally really loved the fact that you gave us all of those, all I have to do is punch it in. You gave a sample contract and you told us how do you word your contracts. To make it easily understandable by the influencers. So I really found that helpful because up until then I had influencers that I'd worked with, but there was no legal obligation for me to go back and say, hey, I gave you the products. This is what I was expecting from you, and this is not what I got from you. So I feel like it was really great. Then I could go back and say, hey, according to the contract, this is what we should have done. So I found that part of the course very helpful because you give everything to us and then we just have to take it. I just had to take that contract, make my own contract out of it, reword it or put it out how I wanted it, and I found that that was really, really helpful for me. 

Sophia Noreen: Okay, good. Yes, exactly. Having something in writing, we don't get it notarized, but it is a legal form that we use and that's what we do suggest. We give a template copy and then participants, students, learners can decide at that point if they want to get on the same form. So we talk about that, and it's very easy in business to have miscommunication, so I feel that everything needs to be written down. I think in business, if you can write it down have clarity, it also allows your content creators and influencers to decide if they can actually participate because sometimes we have visions and asks and they may say, well, we don't agree, or we don't want to do it that way. So it gives them the opportunity to go back and negotiate. That's one of the learnings. I think for all of us, is if somebody is already having in high and at the time of contract, you have to be really upfront and say, listen, it needs to be followed. And if it's not followed, then we may not be fulfill the terms for the payments done.

For PR packages and our nano influencers, we go through that too. I'm going to say these things and people are like, what does that mean? Social media is like an ever-changing world. So right now, understand that we've categorized different influencers in different categories based on the number of followers they have. But at the same time, followers is not the only metric we look at. But we use a lot of lingo and one of them is "nano influencers." A little tidbit there, nanos are anybody under 10K followers. So anyway, I won't get too much into it. I don't want to confuse anyone. 

Tahira Munir: Yes. No, I mean the only reason I said is because if there's people who are interested, they want to know what they're getting out of the course. So I think, like Sophie said, you will gap like step-to-step guidance if you're interested in running an influencer campaign, how do you go about it? And you're provided with those worksheets, you're provided with support. We also have the weekly lives where if you have questions about it, if you're doing your work and you're like, I don't understand this. There is that weekly live every Wednesday that we doing in our Facebook community group. And over there, either Sophia or myself now, as being one of the mentees, we would be available to ask and answer questions in regards to how do you now use this to, what can you do if you're stuck on something, we can help you with that.

What I found in those groups was a lot of the time we had discussions that wasn't even influencer marketing related. There were so many other discussions that you could get help with like business wise, as well. But apart from that, you're given all of the templates, you are through everything to figure out if this is the right time for you to do. And if it is, what level of campaigning should you do? We help you set your budget. And then apart from that, you're given, like you said, the contracts. You're given everything, and then we teach you, how do you negotiate with contractors? How do you talk to contractors? 

Like for me, when I approached last year, I was like, usually I go up to the contractors or influencers and be like, oh, blah, blah, blah. This is who I am. But I learned the importance of asking them for their media kits, and we teach you that. If an influencer doesn't have a media kit, then that tells you a bit about themselves as well. And that tells you how much money you could potentially should be spending on. 

Sophia Noreen: Starting with themselves. So at that point, they may be okay with getting a PR kit from you and an affiliate link, and we talked about that before. 

Tahira Munir: And then also, what's really important is we walk you through figuring out like we literally even walk you through what kind of programs and apps you can add to your shops in the backend. You're not sitting there because if you're doing, let's say, for example, if you have an influencer and you've promised them that all of their followers would get a 10% discount and they would get a commission, a certain percent commission, it's really tiresome and, it's a lot of work if you have to go through your sale report and figure out how. So there are apps out there, and we introduce you to those apps and we teach how to link those apps to your store. And we walk you through how to close the campaign towards the end of the season or whenever you're planning.

For us, for our seasonal business, it's usually after Eid. We've done the campaign, we talk about what went successful, what didn't go so well, where we can improve, and then you become part of the community group. Ongoing, it's not like we kick you out afterwards. And you have that course for life. It's not like you have it, and then you're taking it away. You have that product with you for life. You can re-use those templates for your next campaign. 

Sophia Noreen: Hundred percent, and you basically gave a great overview of things that I forgotten about that we do. Probably, because I take it for granted because I've been doing it for so long. And you, this is your second year, so I thank you for that. I forgot about the apps. 

Tahira Munir: Like for me, the reason is because a lot of those were learning points for me. When I thought of influencer marketing before I had done that with an influencer while we were in store, I had given her a code and then I have to go back literally and say, like Shopify, lets you do that at the end. Lets you use how many times the code is given. But let's say if you have 20 influencers, that's a lot of tracking that you have to do. But with these apps, it's so quick. And then with these apps, they let you create the swipe up links, the affiliate links. 

Sophia Noreen: Sometimes, run real problem that does occur is if your influencer even yourself, if you don't use your affiliate link and they come through another way, so obviously, we try to retarget customers all the time. If they leave something in their cart to blah, blah, blah, you'll notice you'll get an abandoned cart email. And now, they use another discount code,because it's a greater value. You've lost commission on that sale. So we do encourage our influencers to use affiliate links and that way, it's always cookie to their browser. 

Tahira Munir: So putting all of these was brand new. Like I, coming from a brick-and-mortar and switching it to online, it was a lot of learning. That's the reason why I remembered all of these little things because I remember that and I remember that, and I had learned that as well. So yes, definitely, I would recommend anybody who's interested in taking that course with us this year.  Well, I'll do a post for the program, but I just want to let the people who are here know that between now and the weekend, we will also be posting free workshop or a free little thing where it's basically like you get to learn, you get a glimpse, a taste of what the program is, which you've done now as well. You'll get to see the actual sheet.

Sophia Noreen: We have training. It's a free training.

Yes, and we will also be sharing our waitlist links. So I'll have a waitlist link, and you can put yourself on the waitlist if you're interested in joining us for the program this year. And the advantage of putting yourself on the waitlist is if you join using that link that I'll be posting, you do get a discount. If will be getting a $50 discount off of the price of the course, which anybody who signs out after the waitlist. So only those were going to be on the waitlist are going to get that code. And if you're not on the waitlist, come next Sunday if the course opens up. Anybody who signs up for it will not be getting that code. It's only those who sign up for the waitlist. So between this week and next week, before it's launched, we will be launching that one hour free training. We will also be sharing our waitlist links so you can go ahead and put yourself onto the waitlist, so you can get that discount code for when you're ready to sign up.  So the way it will work is once you sign up, within a day, you'll have access to the orientation module. So there's a total of five modules. Module zero is orientation. And module zero will be available within 24 hours. I think it's pretty much immediately, and then it drips to you so that way you don't feel overwhelmed. It's quite a bit information. And so module one is very large and it will be available for two weeks before module two drops into your student portal. Now, even if you're not like, life happens in the next two weeks, it's going to be busy with holiday season and kids likely will be at home. So don't feel overwhelmed. If you join now, it's fine because that's not disappearing. Your student portal will continue to drip in the modules. The reason why we start now, because we want to make sure that you're not stressing out right before selling season starts. It takes a while to negotiate with influencers. You will have to take some time to vet who's appropriate, who's not appropriate? And so you can start that work now during the holiday season, because naturally you're likely will be on social media in some respects. So, I do suggest people join immediately and get started even though the holidays are starting. Because again, I know how it is, and Tahira had joined a little bit later last year, and I know she was rushing at the end there. I don't want you to be rushing it. 

Tahira Munir: And Ramadan is first week of April, so it's not very far. Those of us who are doing seasonal business or for us, as Muslim business owners, for us, our main time for selling and believe it or not is Ramadan and Eid. So you don't want to miss that. You want to make sure that everything is well-planned. And I, personally, a big supporter of the fact that I want to have all of my planning done so I can actually enjoy my Ramadan like I'm not struggling and doing all of this during Ramadan because I want to make the best of Ramadan. So hence it's good to start early, get all of your planing, get everything in place early so when Ramadan comes, everything falls into place and you're not struggling and dealing with all of this at the last minute. if there's anybody who has questions about the program or if you have any questions or concerns, reach out to Sophia or myself and we will be more than happy to answer them.

Sophia Noreen: Yes, I'm actually so excited for the new cohort because like hearing you talk and how you've grown and learned, I just love it. So yes, very excited. 

And again, we have a separate platform called Boss It Club, and I might do a couple more sessions on there talking about some of the topics. I try to keep our product-based and service-based separate to respect the customers. But for the sake of knowing that you guys are seeing influencer marketing happening live with Also Sophia products, obviously, many of you may have come to us through somebody who you met online so you know the value of it firsthand. And if you are a business owner and want to try that strategy, this is your chance to really do it. I want to say right, but do it well. think a lot of people, they start doing influencer marketing and it doesn't go well. They pay a couple hundred dollars to somebody and no ROI, no return on investment, and they get turned off. So this program has been created for you because people are asking me for help  

Sophia Noreen: Go get ready, and stay safe and talk to you soon. 

Tahira Munir: Take care, everyone. 

Sophia Noreen: Wasn't that such a great episode? I really got a lot of information out from what Tahira was saying. And of course, as a teacher, as a mentor to students like Tahira, to learners and proteges or mentees like Tahira, it warms my heart to know that she was able to take all the instruction, all the knowledge and all of the tricks and tips that we offered her during Influencer Marketing Made Easy, and she saw success in her own business.

We truly want to give back to other small businesses. Of course, we are still growing and learning and scaling our product-based business, Also Sophia. But we love to share our tricks and our tips because we want to see everyone grow as well. So again, guys, as Tahira mentioned we do have a waitlist option. Now, again, the pre-roll, we'll let you know if enrollment is open. And if it is, you can go right ahead to the live training. If enrollment is not open, you will head to the waitlist and join the waitlist. And anybody on the waitlist will receive a coupon discount, because we know that you are one of the eager ones who cannot wait to join.

Okay, guys, I hope you, again, enjoyed the episode. If you have any questions, you can always catch us over on instagram @bossitclub, or head over to the webpage, bossitclub.com. And we will see you guys in a few weeks because we're going to take a little bit of a holiday and we will catch you again in 2022, New Year. Until then, remember, make a plan and take action. And yes, you can have it all. I'll talk to you guys soon. Bye.