I like shiny things, so I found myself on a budding startup journey in the jewelry industry. On Jan 1, 2018 I started Amara Jewelers, The African Fashion Jewelry Source while pursuing my chemical engineering degree. After many months of less-than consistent activity, not-fully-polished brand message, and a customer acquisition strategy with much room for improvement to remain viable, along with the fact that I was spending the Fall of 2019 in South Korea away from my base in Atlanta, Georgia, I decided to put Amara on what I call strategic hiatus to fall back on operations, focus on studies, and learn more about jewelry theory, and the supply chain needed to create the original, unique products I want to deliver to the world. That decision drove me to travel around Asia, leading me to a Hong Kong jewelry show where I met my jewelry design mentor Lee (who turned out to be based in South Korea) who struggled in digital marketing strategy herself. When we both returned to South Korea, Lee brought me to her office space and showed me her wonderful products that draw from traditional Korean and European style textures, and presented me with plaques of jewelry design awards and pictures of a plethora of dignitaries, celebrities, and influencers who have been her consistent clientele for years. Yet she expressed how she struggled to catch traction with new, younger customers in the digital age. That is where I came in to help my mentor as she is helping me grow my business knowledge. Since recently returning back to the US from Korea, my thoughts on how to help Lee out have grown even more abundant.
To make a change that really improves her business, what Lee can do is adopt digital marketing strategies, which especially encompasses boosted social media posts on Instagram and Facebook, paid video advertisements on YouTube, and SEO development strategies. From a younger entrepreneur who is more in tune with modern trends and techniques to a more seasoned one with a larger base of resources and experience, this is my advice to Lee on how taking advantage of these strategies can help her, backed by good reason.
To achieve her goal for younger audience reach, I recommend for Lee to try taking her social media page for her business and begin to create then post well-lit, immersive images of her jewelry collections, and have them edited/touched up to ensure the whole image is clear, in-focus and uses only white light with appropriate colored backdrops for the respective jewelry style (and for the particular gemstones featured in the piece, if any) to pop out of the page. She can test her audience's reception by trying out different post creative like rotating jewelry display videos, lifestyle shots with jewelry models, and close-up still shots of her pieces. The nature of her jewelry business requires beautiful, ebullient images and videos that catch people’s attention and stop her prospects in mid-scroll on Instagram or other platforms. People simply pass by great businesses and products simply because the product image didn’t stand out to them, so they keep scrolling; it is that straightforward in this age of highly edited, high-quality product shots and pictures of IG models shooting at incredible angles with phenomenal use of sunlight.
I would recommend that this strategy is applied to Facebook as well, since it is unclear where her audience may exist in Korean markets. According to market research performed across social network platforms in South Korea, although users under 24 spend 29-34% of social media time on Facebook, an even number of users between their 20s and 30s evenly use other networks, including Instagram. With this in mind, Lee can model her targeting after an Instagram Business case study that recently highlighted a jewelry company looking to improve their online presence that reaches women above age 18. Personally with Amara Jewelers, I have tested Facebook ads to reach women of African descent above age 18. It turned out that the images and videos I promoted that led to purchase conversions and Add to Cart actions that resonated with women ages 50+; my Instagram ads resonated more with women between ages 18 and 30. Lee may discover that the audience she is targeting may reach out better to another audience completely different from her original expectations. She can then adjust to where her customer base demographic is located and see what insights come next.
Some experimental territory for Lee’s business to take advantage of digital marketing would be in YouTube videos. She can find a way to produce engaging videos that tell a story around her jewelry, or simply feature gorgeous video angles of her pieces glistening in a bright light setting within a 10-second video advertisement. There are resources like Billy Gene Is Marketing, a digital marketing training platform and service provider that primarily specializes in YouTube and Facebook video ad strategies to grab attention and acquire customers in unique, creative ways. Lee can train her team or purchase this firm’s services to develop a YouTube ad strategy that will not only stops prospects momentarily from skipping the ad, but also leads them to her opportunity of elegant jewelry pieces. This strategy can overlap with the Facebook boosted ad strategy mentioned earlier, since firms like Billy Gene Is Marketing know both platforms well. Lee, who is not very tech savvy, will also benefit from the hands-on involvement they claim to provide their clients to deliver them the customer acquisition help they need.
One key thing to mention for Lee to make these strategies work is to have an online store website, or improve what she currently uses! I can definitely help her with this because of my experience with ecommerce store building sites like Shopify and the latest guides. With a site, she can use SEO in her digital marketing strategy portfolio, not only on her website, but on that of the influencers (which include news personalities, reporters and likely bloggers today) who have supported her business over the years, who can create backlinks to her site in their articles and improve the relevance of her business on search engine results pages. Similar to the client-centered experience from BillyGeneIsMarketing.com, the best part about utilizing this strategy is that there are managed SEO services that prioritize being user friendly with excellent customer support, like those offered by HOTH X (for fully managed, custom-made SEO oversight) and each of the support-based tools from The HOTH. They can guide Lee through areas of improvement on her website, evaluate what blogs and article platforms she can reach out to position backlinks to her site, and walk her through their various keyword trend search tools.
To get even more background on SEO and support, there are digital marketing experts like Neil Patel, who posts free content on his website and on YouTube for entrepreneurs like Lee to get more familiar with SEO and how she can improve her relevance in her niche of jewelry through relevant, keyword-rich blogs. To help better identify who her target market is in the digital marketing space, Neil Patel also heavily pushes the use of surveys to define who her customers are and on what platforms they reside, and shares resources on how to build these surveys. A combination of this hands-on support and education tools to optimize her site would make it easier for people who are looking for Lee’s products to find them, while her other digital marketing strategies will allow new prospects to discover her jewelry pieces and open up a wider market potential for her business.
In small ways, I have applied a few of these strategies in my business Amara Jewelers. And as I sat with Lee listening to her desires to enter the digital marketing arena, I was thinking of how to do the same for her. After reflecting on that time with Lee, I know that a multi-faceted digital marketing mix of boosted social media posts on Instagram (and Facebook), paid video advertisements on YouTube (again on Facebook too), and SEO development strategies will take Lee’s jewelry company closer to where she wishes to be in search for an online customer base in the digital age. As she pours wisdom of the jewelry business into me and I pour knowledge of new social trends into her, we are on an ongoing, unfolding journey to take advantage of digital marketing strategies to improve our businesses as a team. And I definitely look forward to how these strategies play out!
With Passion,
Amamihe Nnodum
Founder, Amara Jewelers.
