Viral Sales Through Better Ops: A Case Study
LA-based entertainer Alexandria Boddie had an idea for a t-shirt to sell online. Alexandria had never sold t-shirts online before in her life, but there’s at least one thing she understood at the time: the importance of high-quality creative strategy beyond how good a photo looks. This is where our services came in:
- identifying Shopify as the appropriate platform to build her site, given her long-term goals
- identifying Printful as the print-on-demand platform best for her apparel ideas
- planning editorial photos to shoot with the t-shirt
- optimizing the photos for online and social media placement
- integrating her Shopify site with Facebook and Instagram to make her posts shoppable, a brand-spanking new feature at the time
Alexandria had only modest aspirations, viewing this project as a form of content marketing. When she woke up one morning a few weeks after the product launch to find a glut of sales as a result of one of her favorite artists reposting her work on Instagram, she was elated yet cautious. Because of how drop-shipping/print-on-demand works, she was concerned about the Kate effect: a sudden surge of popularity that can break a small business. Her concerns were valid, founded, and yet she needn’t have worried. We walk into every project with respect for where my clients are in relation to their goals. This is the very reason why we insisted she go with the Shopify + Printful combo for her website: Printful will never reject a sale you make just because you don’t immediately have the funds for fulfillment. Instead, they’ll hold an order until money from your sale hits your bank account. The results:
- over $700 of t-shirt sales within 72 hours of a celebrity posting, and over 75% of them made directly through product tagging on Instagram
- a 30% increase in IG followers
- a 20% increase in email subscribers
Most importantly, Alexandria had the pleasure of feeling vindicated by the level of detail she entrusted us with to set up something so seemingly small and simple. And we have to admit, we felt vindicated too. 😊