I’ve known Julia for several years now and it’s been so much fun to watch her business grow and evolve! She designs incredibly beautiful jewelry and has always had a talent for stunning product photography and graphic design. We published her story about how she got featured in three major magazines in our January, 2018 magazine. Since then, she’s made many brand changes, including incorporating online advertisements into her strategy.
Several weeks ago Julia reached out to me and was very excited about some Facebook ad experiments she had just run for her new Shopify website. She’d used KIT, an app for Facebook ads that’s designed to work with Shopify and her results were very positive. When she offered to share how she’d increased her sales with the ads, I was all in! So, here’s Julia to tell you all about KIT, Shopify, and her newly found advertising strategy. 🙂
Hello all small creative business owners! 🙂
I’m Julia, jewelry artist and designer from Bijoux de Chagall, a small Handcrafted jewelry boutique which I started 3 years ago from complete scratch…
The road to success is an exciting journey but often difficult with lots on a plate to do and achieve in addition to just being creative and making your amazing products, which you hope will find their way into your customer’s hearts.
The marketing side of things is what I’ve found to be the hardest bit of running a business, though, especially when my Etsy shop started getting quiet due to Etsy changing its algorithm (again). When their promotion system also failed to deliver any results, I knew I needed to focus on my own website and make it look more professional and clean.
Because I make all my jewelry by hand, while also doing other daily tasks like social media marketing (Facebook and Instagram), photoshoots, photo editing, customer service, communications, accounting, etc you name it, I literally do not have any spare time available to find new ways to promote my products. I’m sure you feel the same!
So, I created a completely new website with Shopify and started using the Shopify advertising app: KIT.
KIT is a virtual marketing assistant which saves you lots of time advertising on Facebook and Instagram.
It helps you connect Facebook to your website and then allows you to create ads which you can edit afterward in the Facebook Business Manager in order to customize your audience (people you’re targeting), create other lookalike audience ads, and run retargeting ads (ads that appear to people who have previously visited your website)!
Here is what I did in the past month that brought me sales straight away:
1. First I installed the KIT App on Shopify and connected my store to it.
You need to download the app on your mobile phone.
2. After that, I went to my new KIT account and created a featured products list which KIT uses to create new FB ads.
3. I created my first FB Ad using KIT the app and specified a small ad budget.
4. Then, I went to my FB Business Ads Manager to open and edit that new ad by updating my audience interests, location, budget, etc.
This ad ran for about 2 – 3 weeks before its got a few customer engagements (and even sales), after which I had collected enough data to target again with a more specific and effective ad campaign.
5. After a few weeks, I created a retargeting campaign (targeting all the people who have visited my website, purchased, or engaged with my ads) with KIT, and this time, I used a Dynamic Ad which puts various products in a slideshow based on your customer’s interests and data that I got from the first 2 – 3 Ads.
It worked, and even more sales came in! Of course, the above strategy will work best with high quality content, great photos, engaging social posts etc. Additionally, the ads will become more targeted and effective as more and more people visit my website or engage with the ads. Facebook is always learning and adapting to who my audience is, which means that the more I use ads, the better they will become.
The goal is to keep my products in front of interested buyers as well as reach new people who are highly likely to purchase my products.
I hope this information has inspired you to try out some ads for yourself! If you need any help just give me a shout, I am always there to help!
Julia Shagal is a jewelry designer, artist, and creative thinker, with a great passion for making silver & gold jewelry with beautiful gems, living in the romantic central area of London. You can find her jewelry and follow her journey at bijouxdechagall.com.
