056: Are You Talking About Your Subscription Box Enough?

Are you talking about your subscription box enough? The odds are you're not, but how much is enough, Sarah? In today's episode, I'm walking you through how much you should be posting about your box and giving you lots of examples to get you started. Come listen. Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams. Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. Today I've got a great episode for you, and it's an episode that I put together after one of our sessions inside the membership, uh, Launch Your Box that I have. And it was from box opening. So we do these openings once a month inside the membership that, um, where I take about a dozen member boxes and I open them and I give feedback live. And I was doing this last week and I I was really surprised by how awesome some of these boxes were that I was opening, but the fact that they had low subscriber numbers. So when I see that, when I see like a really great product and then I see like, okay, you don't have quite a bit, you don't have very many subscribers. I think two things. One, have they built their audience enough? Like they have, have they, or does their audience even know about their subscription box? And there's this TikTok. I'm kind of a TikTok junkie, but there's a TikTok where the audio says, post about your products so people know they exist, post about your products so people know they exist. And it's just this saying that people use and they're posting about their products in these TikToks and Reels. But it's true. If you don't post about your products, people don't know they exist. You could think that everybody knows you have a subscription box in your brain. You can think that, but in reality, nobody's paying attention. So we have our— we have this mindset issue where We think that everybody knows, we think we're posting about it enough, but in reality, we're just not posting it enough at all. And so here's what I want you to do today. I want you to grade yourself on how many times you are posting about your subscription box in one month. So let's look back at last month. I like to do this on Instagram because it's just easier to see than on Facebook because I post the same things on Instagram and Facebook. But look at one of your social media accounts, not both of them, just one of them, and I want you to count how many times in a 1-month period that you have posted about your subscription box. And I think it might be eye-opening to you. And, and we're going to grade ourselves. And when we say post, I'm talking about like a static post, I'm talking about a short video, I'm talking about a live— any of those times count. So I want you to grade yourself. And what I found when I asked this question, I was opening a box and I asked her, how many times do you post about your box in a month? And she told me 2 to 3 times, 2 to 3 times in a month. You should be doing that more in a week, let alone a month. And so I want you to really just evaluate and take time to grade yourself on what you're doing. So here's how I'm going to grade you. If you're posting 0 to 2 times, you get an F. We got to post more than that. If you're posting 3 to 6 times a month, you get a D. 7 to 10 times, you get a C. 11 to 15 times, you get a B. I think that's pretty good. You're posting 16 to 20 times or more, you get an A. And to get an A, that means you're posting 4 to 5 times a week about your subscription box. And you might be feeling all kinds of anxiety when I say that. You might be thinking, oh gosh, Sarah, that's a lot. What am I supposed to talk about? Like, how do you post that much? How do people not get sick of you posting that much? And then here's what I want you to get out of today's podcast. Is that we have to keep it fresh and fun. So no, we cannot use one image and post that 20 times in a month. People will get sick of that. Okay, so we have to keep it fresh and fun. We have to take lots of pictures. So anytime you're like, oh, I need a picture of this, I want you to take 4 pictures of that— different angles, different setup, different background. I want you to take multiple pictures of things, and I want you to share, share, share. So we're going to do this. Okay. Now I just got done recording a new lesson for Launch Your Box members this week. And it's about this very topic that we're talking about on the podcast. But in this lesson, it comes with a PDF printout of these ideas all on a, on the sheet. So you can print it out and you can plan out your social media for the month and use it. Like you can print one for every month and kind of check it off. It also comes with picture examples. So I'm going to tell you, I'm going to go through some of these examples with you, but I also put my own images in there to show you. So if you're a visual person, I'm a a very visual person, it's going to help you. So when I say, you know, post a picture of a stack of boxes, I'm going to show you. If I say post this or post that, I'm going to show you what I've done for my own business. So it kind of gives you an idea for some different things. So that is in— if you are a Launch Your Box member and you're listening right now, that is in your library. So you can go find that. You can get your PDF printouts. You can look at my picture examples and you can start planning out your own social media posts for the week. So the goal for the week, 4 to 5 times you're going to post about your subscription box. Okay, remember, the goal is that it becomes the main thing in your business. Okay, right now it might not be the main thing in your business, but the only way to make it the main thing is you got to treat it like the main thing in the business. Okay, so let me ease your anxiety and let's go through some of these different ways that you can post about it. The goal here is not to overcomplicate it. Like, this is not making this stressful. We're going to keep it simple. We're going to keep it fun. You don't need a fancy camera, just some great lighting and, and different shots. Like, I do it all with my phone. Every picture on my site and my social media pretty much is done with my phone. So you don't need anything fancy to do this. Okay. So let's start talking about different ways that you could post about your subscription box. You probably maybe post a sneak peek because I tell you to do that inside the membership. So hopefully you're at least posting a sneak peek. Hopefully you're doing like a box reveal, either photo or live, and then maybe we're sharing something else through the month. That's probably your 2 or 3, so you're probably doing the bare minimum. So sneak peek is one of them. We always want to do a sneak peek, whether you have like a mystery box or you actually show them. Let's give them something to excite them. I do my sneak peeks really close in of all the items in the box. You can't exactly tell what's in it, but you get an idea of color and it gets them excited. So we always want to have a sneak peek every month. That's a, that's So that's one we have to have. The other thing that I do all the time is I take a picture of the physical box with everything loaded in. And sometimes I have to put like tissue paper, or sometimes I'll roll like a white sweatshirt up and put it in the bottom just to lift the product out of the box so I can get a good picture of all the items stuffed in the box. But I want to be able to see everything. So that's post number 2. That's another one we can do. The other thing that I like to do is I like to take every item out of the box and do an individual picture with it. So if my box comes with a purse, I've got a purse. If the box comes with a cup, I've got a picture of the cup. All of it separate. These are all individual images. Okay, so that's going to give you 3 to 5 pictures depending on how many items are in your box. Now I just do those like a flat lay, so I'll put them on a, on a nice background. Just, just the, the products, nothing fancy with them. But I'm also in that same setting, in the same setting where I'm taking an individual picture of the item, I'm going to do a lifestyle image of each one of those products. That's another 3 to 5 pictures. And you're like, what do you mean by lifestyle image? So here's an example. If I have a purse in my box, my item on a flat lay might have a phone, maybe some cash, maybe a lip gloss sticking out of the purse, because that shows size, it gives the picture more interesting look than just the purse on a backdrop. But when I'm talking about a lifestyle image, that could be the purse on my desk with all my stuff in it. That could be the purse on my shoulder. That could be the purse in the seat in my car. Like, those are where you would actually use it. Okay, so it's not a flat lay image, it's a lifestyle image. So that could be somebody with the purse on their shoulder. It could be the purse in the passenger seat of your car with your stuff there. Like, in its element, wherever it may be. It could be at Starbucks sitting on the counter with your latte next to it. So those are called lifestyle images. If you sell shoes, it could be pictures of people's, you know, shoes on their feet but not the whole body. If you have decor, a lifestyle image is going to be where would you place that in your house. So a tier tray, it's not just the tray itself, but it's in the kitchen, it's in the living room, it's wherever you would keep it That's called a lifestyle image. One of those for each one of your products. So the other thing I like to do with these pictures is tell the benefits of your product. So we have the images, we can just pop them up on our web, on our Facebook page or Instagram page, and use them and talk about them there. But you can also do like a benefits image, and I would make this in Canva. But I would take one of those either flat lay pictures of each item or a lifestyle picture of the item, and I would overlay like a benefit? What problem does this solve? So an example of a benefit for your product could be like a sweatshirt. So if I put a sweatshirt in my last box, what's the benefit of having that sweatshirt? I'm not cold anymore. I always have an extra layer. So you could add a little overlay of text onto your image that describes the benefit of the product. Maybe you have, you know, something that's health and wellness. Maybe you have a pet subscription. What's the benefit of those items in the box? There's another 3 to 5 posts. So just these top basic 5 examples that I've given you— a sneak peek, a picture of the box full of your items, the individual items on a flat lay, the lifestyle images, and the benefits— like, you could have a whole month worth of posts just in these 5 instances. And if you're a member, you can go over to the library and I've got different images that I can show you in these 5 categories. But these are just basic things. When you're taking pictures of something, I want you to take multiple pictures of the same thing. Okay, so what problem does it solve? That's going to be a benefit image. Okay, so now let's move down and get a little bit more in depth with our images. I create what's called a style guide for my t-shirts, for the sweatshirts, for anything that's really clothing, accessory, even if you have home decor, anything like that, you can create a style guide. So think about your products. What different ways could someone use one of those products in your box? For me, it's a t-shirt. And so what I do every month is I create 4 to 5 images with that one t-shirt and I call it a style guide. So I'm putting this t-shirt with a sweater and some shoes and some jeans, and then I'm changing the look to more of like a date night, and then I'm changing the look to more of like grocery shopping or like errands or things like that. So I'm giving you 5 different looks with the same t-shirt so that you can find ways to wear it. We want them to consume the contents of our boxes. So if we can show them different ways to use our products, style our products in the style guide, they're more likely to wear it more, which means they're consuming it more. Okay, so if you have the opportunity to create a style guide with your products, that's a great way to get another 5 different posts. That you can post throughout the month. Behind the scenes is a huge category for what we do. People love to see what we do behind the scenes, and I know sometimes that it's weird, but like, why does anybody care that I'm folding boxes? People care. People want to see that. So let's talk about some different behind the scenes. You could really post two different behind the scenes images every single week of the month and schedule them out. People are going to comment on them. Which increases engagement, which increases your reach. So don't skimp on the behind-the-scenes pictures. So let's talk about those. One picture that always gets them is my big stack of turquoise boxes. So a stack of boxes, empty boxes. You could literally post this a couple of times a month and have a different, you know, update. Subscriptions are going out today, or update, we just started prepping our February subscriptions. So you just create a little bit of copy and you have an image of a big, you know, stack of your subscriptions. And take it from different angles, put a stack near something else, put them in different areas of your home, on your porch, if you have a warehouse, in your retail store, wherever you can. Put the, put the stacks of boxes all over the place so that you have lots of different images of boxes. And once you take these You can just reuse them every single month. Okay, you don't have to take the same picture over and over every month. You just take a series of box pictures and then you can plug them in a couple times a month, every single month. Okay, empty boxes, great behind the scenes. Just put a little copy with it. Next, I love the pictures of stacks of stuff. So this would be the stuff that's going to go in your subscription box. I usually have pictures of stacks of shirts that we folded and organized by size. That's a great one. I've seen pictures, Sarah, with her, the redheaded camel, and she has a stack of like door hangers she's about to paint for the month. And what's cool is you can't quite tell what the shape is because they're all stacked up, you know, on the floor. So if you don't want to share exactly what it is, you can, you can take a picture of stack of stuff at an angle that it doesn't show what it is. So whether that's dog treats, guinea pig stuff, t-shirts, door hangers, home decor, take pictures of the stacks of stuff. Okay, people are interested. It gets people's attention. That is a scroll stopper. So it's going to stop people in their scroll. You're going to look and see what it is. They're going to become interested, and you'll probably get some engagement on that as well. More behind the scenes would be if you're prepping or packaging different items in the box. You don't have to show the items. You can show your packaging materials, you could blur out the images, you could get different angles so that you don't show everything. But all that's— all these steps that we do, that's content, that's sharing about our subscription. And all we have to do is say, I'm prepping all the earrings going in this month's subscription, I can't wait for you to see them. And all you have to see is a big stack of bags that I'm putting them in, or whatever I'm doing. I don't have to show them, maybe they're inside the bags and all you could see is the color of them. It gets people excited. Excited. It also helps people connect with you, like knowing that you put your finishing touches on something. That's really important. So prepping or packaging anything is another behind the scenes. If you design your things or if you're a maker of your things, so maybe you cut things out of wood, maybe you make your own earrings, maybe you design the graphics for something, all of those designing and making of things are great images and great videos. So you can show how you design something. You can show behind the scenes of how you make something times however many that you make. And so all of those items are great behind the scenes too. One behind the scenes that I love to do almost every month is I love to show the boxes being picked up by the shipper. So I have a couple of different posts here. One, a stack of the boxes sitting by my back door, ready to go. So that's it. That's one post. And then the boxes inside the back of the truck. So whether that's in the FedEx truck or in the UPS truck or the post office truck, take a picture of them. And then you've got a post, hey, your subscription box is on its way. It's just another post. You don't have to overcomplicate it. So there's another series I call all of these behind the scenes. There's probably a lot more behind the scenes that you could do. Think about the time it takes you to from start to finish to prepping your subscription box, to getting it out the door, you probably have, I don't know, 5 to 10 photos that you could take, maybe more of all of that prep work and share those throughout the month. People want to be connected to what you do. And the more connected they are to what you do, the more you're going to retain them. The more they're deeply invested in what you do and what's coming in that box. Box, even if you're not showing them the product, the process connects them to the product. Okay, so we talked about the sneak peek, we talked about the individual items, we talked about a style guide, and we talked lots of behind the scenes. Now let's talk about reviews and testimonials. I love to do these, and especially when I feel like I don't have anything to post about the box again, this is something that I can always do. And I like to post these kind of in between where the boxes go out, but I haven't shown up to do the box reveal yet. So I'm kind of in between where I've shown the sneak peek, I've shown some behind the scenes, but I can't really show you the items yet. So it's kind of that middle of the month for me while I'm waiting for the items to be delivered, maybe like the second week of the month, because we start shipping then. But I like to do the reviews and testimonials because what happens as soon as the boxes are shipped I will start getting texts the next day. I'll get texts about they received their box, we'll get DMs, we'll do all kinds of stuff. So maybe I've posted the picture of them in the FedEx truck on my site, and I'll say, don't spoil it, but let me know when you receive your box. So that's a post I like to do every month, and then they'll have comments, OMG, I just, I just received my box, this is my favorite month ever or something like that. I'll grab their comment because it's posted on a public page. And now I'll take this sneak peek picture and I'll lay an overlay on top of it in Canva with their review that they just put on the post that I posted 2 days ago. And I'll have an example of this in the, in the training that I recorded for you. But now I have a testimonial and it's says, oh my gosh, I love this box, it's my favorite box ever. In the background is the sneak peek. So now it's getting people excited. I'm talking about the box again. Now people are stalking their mailman. So use those. You can pull several from just one post. Normally, sometimes people text me through my texting app. They'll text me pictures, they'll text me messages, they'll send me DMs. If it's sent to me in a private setting like through the text or through a DM, I'll always reply and say, can I post this? If it's commented on a public post, I just use it because it's public. But if it's in a private setting, you want to ask them. So that's a way that you can use those reviews and testimonies. I would definitely use 3 or 4 a month. So if you think about a review and a testimonial, you could post one a week every single week, and there's one of your posts every single week. And ask yourself right now, how many times have you posted a review for last month? None? Did you post one and think that was enough? You could make them and then schedule them out once a week for the whole month. Now, if you've already revealed your box, what you could do is you could do the review and maybe the subscriber's holding their box. Maybe they sent you a picture, maybe they laid it out on their bed and they took a picture and they sent you a message. Oh my gosh, this is my favorite box. Whatever it is. You could put their picture if it's a good image. If it's not a good image, pull that image that we did in the beginning where it's a picture of all of your items inside a box. Put your image and their review on the picture, and then you're just showing off the box again. And every time we're posting about our box, we have a link to join or we have a link to add to our waitlist. We're going to capture them all through the month. One thing that I like to do a lot every single month is I do 2 to 3 posts a month where I have a past item that I'm using. And so it could be from a previous box. If you've had a subscription box for 3 months or more, this is really great to do. But I could be writing with a pen that came from the November box and just be at my desk and I'll be writing something, take a picture of me writing with the pen. I would say, oh my gosh, still love this pen. It came in the November monogram box. Who else uses this pin every day? One, you're creating engagement. Two, your subscribers love it when you talk to them specifically. They feel special, they feel seen. And three, you're just reminding people that they keep missing out on all these good items. So it doesn't matter what month it's from. It could be from a year ago. I like to do some of those like throwback posts, like throwback to our monogram box in 2019 when we had this. Comfy hoodie. Who else is still rocking this, our 2019 hoodie? And then, and then they're engaging in the comments too. So these bring a lot of loyalty and retention and engagement and just a lot of fun. It doesn't always have to be about that month's box, but you could use this 2 or 3 times a month to post about items in the past box. The other day I grabbed one of the bags that we had in our April subscription and I was loading it up with stuff to go on a trip. And I just posted this in the back of my trunk and I said, gosh, I love this box from the April, you know, I love this bag from the April monogram box. I use it all the time. What do you put in your bag? And then they're like, I use it for soccer, I use it for, you know, yoga, I use it, you know, for school or whatever they use it for. Those are all great things and you're just tying it back to your subscription. It— you don't overcomplicate it. Just tie it all back to the subscription. If you are only talking about your subscription 2 or 3 times a month, you're not talking about it enough. People want to see, people want to have a sense of belonging. People want to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. And you can do that with your subscription box. And then they're going to share it. And then when they comment on it, people that are their friends with are going to see it on their page. So it just builds an audience. So if you don't have a large audience, anytime someone's commenting on something that you're posting, people that they're friends with can see it too. So you're going to be put in their feed as well. So Passboxes, that's what we were talking about. So let's go through the second half of this. So we talked sneak peeks and all the items, the flat lays, the lifestyle images, the picture with everything in them. We talked about doing some benefit posts. We talked about creating a style guide for some of the items in your box. Then we went in depth with behind the scenes, from packaging to products to prepping, all of those things. Reviews and testimonials, super important. If you're not doing those, those are so easy to do. And then we're going to continue to share past boxes. Now, the other thing that I want you to think about is video. So we're talking mostly about posts right now, but But almost all of these could be videos. When we talk about live videos, there's a couple videos I like you to do every month. I would love for you to do a live unboxing, and we have training for that inside Launch Your Box as well. But doing a live unboxing every single month, showing up, talking about your inspiration for the box, unboxing it, talking about each item individually, talking to your subscribers on camera. Such a powerful way to engage with your subscribers if you can do a live unboxing. And another fun live you could do during the month would be like a behind-the-scenes live. And you could do this like early in the month when you're kind of prepping and packing the boxes, but you could talk about the inspiration for the box. You could talk about the items you're— you've chosen for the box without revealing them if you don't want to. But you could also just talk to your subscribers, get them excited, like, hey, these are shipping out tomorrow. I'm putting the final touches on all the boxes tonight. You could even be like just folding boxes as you're talking on camera. So you could just talk through, you know, some different talking points about your subscription box as you're doing something. Maybe you're prepping or something like that. But I think if you did two lives about your box every single month, you would bring a lot of attention to it. And then we've got short videos so we can talk about Reels and TikToks, and we can repurpose these on both platforms. But we want to do short videos and these count as one of your posts. Okay. The live counts as one of your posts. So count these in the number of times you're talking about your subscription box. But let's talk about like doing a time-lapse. So if you've got 20, 30, 50, hundreds of subscribers, put your camera on, your video on time-lapse and just start packing them. And then you've got a quick video of you packing all the boxes really quickly. That would make a great short video. It's going to grab people's attention. They're going to wonder what's in the box. You could do a video, a short, maybe 15, 20-second video of you packing one box, one thing at a time. You could do a box reveal, you could reverse pack it. So you could do both of these in one setting. So you could do a video packing the box, putting the things in it, and then you could do a reverse one, like opening it and unpacking it. So that would be two different videos you could post throughout the month. And then all those behind the scenes things that we talked about in our post, a little bit ago, folding boxes, prepping, packing. Gosh, what else did we talk about? Designing the items. You could do like stop motion of folding and stacking your boxes and it just slowly grows with every image there. You could do lots of different behind the scenes short videos, 15, 30-second, 60-second videos of you working on your subscription box and you've got a ton of content. I don't know how many things we talked about today, and if you're not writing them down, you might feel a little overwhelmed, but come back and listen to this when you, if you're out for a walk or you're in the car driving, come back and listen to this again and just make some notes. Or if you're inside our membership, you can just go to the training library, print out this PDF download that I created for you. You can go through the training lesson and see all of my examples, and that's going to really feed your social media. Like, I think so many times we get tripped up on what we should be doing. And we sometimes think that we have to like jump through hoops, stand on one leg to get seen. But all we really need to do is to keep talking about it. If we want it to be the main thing in our business, we got to make it the main thing in our business. It can't be the thing that we talk about 2 or 3 times a month. It has to be the thing that we talk about out all the time. And it wasn't until I realized that, that my subscription became the main thing in the business. I kept treating it as something else that I did. Yeah, I have a brick and mortar and I have a subscription box. Now it's, I have a subscription box and I have an online shop. So you've got to just shift your focus. And maybe right now your brick and mortar is making the most of the money and your subscription is not. Maybe right now something else in your business is making more money than your subscription box. But until you treat it like the main thing, it's always going to be the side thing. And if you want the recurring revenue to be the main thing, let's start presenting it as the main thing, and that's going to help it grow. And then you're going to get to the point where your subscription box is 75% of your total revenue, like me versus what I do in my online shop. And that's predictable. I can count on that. I can sleep at night. I can hire people without being stressed. Like, it just It makes everything easier when 75% of your business is recurring revenue. And so if we're treating it as a side thing right now, let's start treating it as the main thing. I want you posting 16 to 20 times about your subscription box a month. That's 4 to 5 times a month. That's not hard. It's not hard to do. I've given you lots of different examples. So if we're, if we're posting about it 2 or 3 times a month, Let's ramp it up. Let's make it the main thing of our business. And let's see how that changes the outcome of our subscription box success. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.