Learn how to find your ideal customers online, drive more traffic, visibility and sales to your product or service based business.
When the founder of Kitten Co. Jewelry reached out to me about her challenges with growing her sales online beyond what they were at that time, I saw it as a great opportunity to tell her in more detail about using digital marketing strategies, especially paid ads, to increase her sales.
Kitten Co. Jewelry is a jewelry company that makes affordable jewelry from skin-friendly materials. When I began working with the founder, my first task was making sure she understood the work ahead and that the time put in now would be hard work but it would later multiply her bottom line.
Maya decided to enroll in the Power Your Launch Marketing Accelerator, that teaches entrepreneurs and business owners how to market and monetize their business online and on social. As the founder of the program, I created it to help entrepreneurs build their skills to increase their sales. We were recently featured in Forbes because we’ve helped over 10,000 entrepreneurs gain visibility and sales.
After going through the Power Your Launch Marketing Accelerator program, she was able to scale her business to over $350,000 a year. Starting from scratch with about $2,000 of her own savings, Maya has been able to have more than $30,000 in monthly revenue and taking home anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 per month in profits.
After going through the Power Your Launch Marketing Accelerator program, she was able to scale her business to over $350,000 a year. Starting from scratch with about $2,000 of her own savings, Maya has been able to have more than $30,000 in monthly revenue and taking home anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 per month in profits.
Understanding where she was to where she is now is not luck, it’s about Maya's hard work, a lot of hours behind the scenes figuring it out, and her personal investments in her own education aligned to give her an advantage.
She says:
“The last piece of the puzzle was an online class taught by internet marketing entrepreneur Abu Fofanah, Portorreal says. There, she learned about creating Facebook ad campaigns, writing captions and re-targeting potential customers to build brand awareness over time.
“That class alone scaled my company to a point that’s unimaginable. That $3,000 class probably made me $700,000,” says Portorreal. “Facebook ads has become an extensive part of my business and it can’t run without it.”
Kitten Co. Jewelry was founded by Maya Portorreal and what started out of frustration quickly grew into an online jewelry boutique. Maya spent a lot of time realizing that the “trendy, fun” jewelry that was being sold, was either unaffordable or made from cheap materials that gave her rashes. (she found an opportunity to bring her own jewelry business to the market)
A big reason why she decided to start a jewelry business is because she wanted to make more affordable and skin-friendly jewelry from better materials. She saw an opportunity to serve not only herself but she realized there were others just like her, that were having similar problems with rashes and that wanted more affordable jewelry.
Instead of leaving her full time job, working for a luxury apparel brand Pierre Hardy in New York City. She decided while working 9-5 to go into her savings and with $2,000 began reaching out to suppliers and manufactures for help. With limited experience on where to begin she began her research and asking a lot of questions along the way.
Maya’s story is so relatable because we’ve all been there, managing our full time job while trying to start our side hustles.
By the time Maya approached me about digital marketing and paid ads to increase her sales, she had already figured out a lot of her business after-hours. She found some manufactures that would sell her jewelry that she could resell, and had already begun making some sales, proving her idea was right.
Maya began her business by trying to figure out what would sell and improving the quality of her jewelry by using higher quality materials. For example, to solve the problem of her sensitive skin, she landed on using 925 sterling silver – meaning at least 92.5% pure silver – with rhodium, a hypoallergenic metal that coats the silver for “extra protection and shine.”
She then learned she was undercharging for her pieces to her customers. For example, Maya would get rings that cost about $7 to make from suppliers but then would charge $18.99 for that said ring. That’s a healthy margin, however when you begin to take in account shipping, marketing costs, and the cost of operating a business – she realized she would need to charge more to make it work.
Now her prices range from $30 rings to $250 tennis necklaces. She increased her margin, maintained her quality, better customer service and still is more affordable than her competitors.
In the beginning, she was just figuring it out. Then she started to make sales. It went from $0 to $500 a month. Then she hit her first $1,000 a month and then eventually hit her first $10,000 per month in sales.
When I began working with Maya and Kitten Co. Jewelry in the marketing accelerator, my main priority was to get her to understand the importance of digital marketing, how she could use it, how it would transform not only her business but her life moving forward if she put in the time to learn it and take feedback.
I explained to her the power of paid ads and why most people do not have success in this area when it’s time to grow their business.
The first thing most people do when it comes to digital marketing, or running paid ads, is that they hire out.
What most people don’t realize is that hiring out before you understand something might possibly be one of the worst things you can do, especially when it comes to paid ads. I see it over and over again. They usually hire someone who knows a little bit more then them, that charges a whole lot of money, but doesn’t actually know what they’re doing. They take advantage of the business owner and now the business owner is back where they started but without the money the used to hire the ads person or agency. The agency is incentivized to keep you on as a client so sometimes they’ll tell you anything, especially If they know you don’t know anything about ads, just to keep you on as a client. However, if you knew what you were doing, then no one can get over on you – that’s why it’s important to learn about paid ads before hiring as a business owner.
The next thing most people do is that they try it themselves, without any knowledge or training on how to run ads and they feel flustered.
Imagine for a second you were thrown into a new industry overnight and you had to perform at the top of that level immediately. This is the same when people try something they’ve never done before expecting to get results they never got before doing it. This is why learning from others who’ve done it is so important. This is why I spent the last 10 years training business owners exactly what to do so that they stop guessing and start seeing results.
After not getting the ads to work, they blame their frustrations on the algorithm or better yet the new iOS updates as to why they’re not getting results.
Social media platforms will always continue to change. In 2008, when I first began running ads and doing digital marketing to now – it’s a completely different platform. With that said, that doesn’t just because things change that they no longer work. If I had that mindset, I would avoid change in my personal life or I would’ve stopped running ads back in 2008. With change, comes brief challenge, but it’s all easy to figure with some time. Yes, there’s new iOS updates but myself and my students I teach are still seeing massive success. They are still making 5, 6, and 7 figures per year and some per month. There’s a strong focus on staying on top of the changes in the Power Your Launch Marketing Intensive.
Another reason why most people don’t get results when it comes to running ads is that they give up too easily.
When you decide you want to learn paid ads for your business, it’s a commitment. It should become part of your business strategy and NOT something you’re looking to do for overnight success. Growing your business or making sales with paid ads is not an overnight thing. It will take time to test, test, test and also test some more. The business owners who have the most amount of success are the ones that stay with it long enough to test to find something good enough to scale. There’s a reason why food in the oven tastes better than food coming out the microwave. It takes time.
Lastly, most people believe you need a lot of money to get started learning or see any type of significant results and that’s not the case.
This is one of the biggest myths I see when it comes to paid ads is that you need a lot of money. This is a tactic usually used by others to keep entrepreneurs and business owners like yourself from having success. Let’s be clear, you do not need a lot of money to have massive success running paid ads. You just need to start and be consistent in your learning. In the Power Your Launch program, we focus on teaching entrepreneurs how to get tests and get results spending just $5/day. That’s our strategy. We can teach people how to spend less and be effective based on how we teach students to interpret the data. You can be effective, you just have to be willing to learn how to be.
The biggest mistake most business owners make is spending a high level of effort and months into creating the product or service — but then that same level of effort it takes to create the products does not go into marketing the products. And if you know business, you know that sales need to be made to stay in business. Why then do so many founders make the mistake of not focusing on their marketing and sales strategy?
If you’re a business owner whose made this mistake then you’re probably shaking your head in agreement right about now. I also don’t want you to think that you should stop spending time on your product or service to solely focus on marketing. The biggest take-away is to spend the same amount of effort in both. Marketing activities such as website conversions, campaign development, traffic, etc are all critical components into your marketing strategy to make sales.
The Power Your Launch Marketing Accelerator, we developed what the sales and marketing strategy should look like if they want to experience consistent sales — keyword: consistent.
Our secret sauce for consistent sales was attributed to Facebook & Instagram ads. Through the program, we train the business owners on how to use Facebook and Instagram ads to drive sales and begin putting part of their process in auto-pilot.
I know many have tried Facebook and Instagram ads — and it may not have worked for them right away. I also know many have not tried running ads before to their business. The biggest thing I’ve learned when you want to have success is about learning from others who have been there and know how to get you to your ultimate destination.
We make acquiring your customers simple with effective marketing and paid ads.
