Lessons Learned Through Advertising
I have to say, I thought advertising was going to be really easy going into my a/b testing ads project. But oh was I wrong! It’s more than just creating a visually appealing ad and having a marketable product. Advertising is properly targeting the right audience so you can capture and keep the right engagement.
Compiled is a list of valuable lessons learned from the beginning and through the end of my advertisement project.
Always Include Actual Images Of A Product You Intend To Sell
I cannot stress this enough. Going into this project I was worried about image quality using my Samsung S10 to take pictures of my product. So I decided to skip the photos and just give a detailed description of the product. Then I changed my mind and ended up posting a picture of one of my lip gloss colors on Instagram. The picture did not turn out as horribly as I thought it would but had I taken pictures of my advertised glosses in the tubes, I believe my advertisements would have done a lot better and received more clicks.
Do Market Research
This is very important. First and foremost, before anything else, you want to be able to see who you are competing with, what’s already out on the market, etc. I did some pre-research about the cosmetic industry and watched Youtube videos of girl bosses/professionals that started their own cosmetics brands. I immediately knew that I was not going to be able to compete with huge brand names like Sephora, Fenty Beauty, NYX, and so many more of the caliber. So my competition was every other young professional starting their own brand.
As I researched I found many young women starting their own cosmetics brands over Instagram. I needed to be able to stand out and offer something that no one else was offering. Since this was a hard task to figure out how I stood out, I decided to be as unique as I could and let my creativity guide how my business turned out. I wrote out a little plan for making my glosses unique and will be following that guide as I grow my business. The plan includes things as simple as using plant-based biodegradable glitter in my glosses. As I continue to build my business, I plan to continue researching and brainstorming ways that I can make my cosmetic business even more unique.
Know Where You Want To Market
Know where you want to market your product! Because I was not active on Facebook in the making of my business, I would not have chosen Facebook Ads Manager to advertise my campaigns. Facebook Manager advertises both on Facebook and Instagram. I was mainly active solely on Instagram and think that my money would have been best used had I only advertised where I was active. Choose where you are going to be most active in the beginning of starting your business and choose an advertising platform accordingly. This is super important, and in my case, losing money made it even more vital.
Be Active On The Platforms Where You Advertise
Because I did not plan ahead of time what I was going to post on my Instagram business page each day- (HUGE mistake on my part)- I found it hard to stay on top of producing some form of content every day. On the days that I’d make glosses, I would post a story to gain excitement, but I soon learned that my stories were not gaining as much engagement as my actual posts were. When I learned this, I switched it up and I started doing more Instagram posts instead. I also am in the works to make a social media content calendar so I can stay ahead!
These things that I learned are very important and substantial and I believe will help me with future campaigns that I decide to. Everything comes with a learning process and I am so glad that I learned this while the stakes are small and the lessons are light! Happy advertising!
