Identifying Your Customer Journey to Make More Money with Mia Graves of Honey Bee Clay
Episode 493: Show Notes
Today we are talking to Emylee’s good friend, Mia Graves. She is another maker from a tiny town in Northern Alabama but she is now a Louisville transplant. She has a background in politics, philosophy, and economics but she has a maker-based business where she makes jewelry called Honey Bee Clay. She specializes in handmade and 3D printed clay cutters and, as a total side note, she also has a talking dog named Gus! But we are not talking about Gus today, we are talking about marketing strategies, and while Mia isn’t formally trained in marketing, she is really smart when it comes to this side of business. We are talking about how she uses the magic of call to actions anywhere and everywhere she can to direct her clients, customers, fans, and followers to go from one platform to another with the end goal of making her money.
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She shares all of her customers’ journeys and the different things she uses like Instagram, DMs, comments, TikTok, and email to get people to follow her and buy from her on a continued basis. We also talk about an exclusive Facebook group that she just recently started and her opinions on sellout launches and everything in between. Regardless of whether you have a physical, product-based business or not, the marketing strategies taught here today are going to help your business and give it a new life if you have hit a wall in your growth or engagement, so be sure to take notes during this one!
Mia’s Strategic Approach to Driving Engagement and Sales Using a Pipeline
We often hear about people doing well in their businesses who seem to have risen to that level of success instantly, but the truth is a lot of work goes in behind the scenes and Mia is a case in point! She has an extremely strategic approach and we ask her what it is that she does differently that has helped her grow so fast. For her, everything she posts is part of a sales pipeline with the end goal of getting her paid, as well as getting people to know her and her brand. She is a visual person and plans out her sales pipelines or ‘streams’ as she calls them using maps. These pipelines involve customer journeys across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Email, all leading to her website which is where she makes her sales. She uses a strategy where often she will post purposefully made clickbait that only shares part of the information about how she created a product, which drives people to ask questions. At this point she leads them to a different platform that then directs them further down the pipeline. For example, she will post part of a technique she used on an Instagram story, whereupon her followers will ask for the rest of the tutorial, but to access this they have to join her Facebook group, and joining the Facebook group requires buying a product from her. If she gets many DMs with the same question, she won't answer them but will make a post that answers the question and then link the people who messaged her to that post which often leads to more engagement and sales.
Leveraging FOMO, Running Two Accounts, and Selling Repeatedly to Members
The way you interact in your comments can have a big effect on engagement levels, and we ask Mia to go deeper into how she handles this side of the business. Previously, Mia didn’t reply to any comments because she didn’t want to create a sense of favoritism but since then she has realized that FOMO is a crucial building block of marketing and sales. When people comment now, she replies and asks them to message her, which drives more people to comment because they also want to message her directly. Her Facebook group is also built around exclusivity – you have to buy something from her to get in! On the topic of separating a business into different offerings, we talk to Mia about how her business is twofold. She sells the tools to create her products to other makers, as well as sells the products themselves directly to customers. We ask her how she has handled serving two audiences and she talks about splitting her one account into two separate ones and the benefits this has had. She now has two separate marketing calls to action pipelines with their own unique strategies and explains how helpful it was to map these out. Mia’s model of making money from her group does not follow the paid subscription model and we chat with her about how she has got around the possibility of only making money once from her members. She recently used a strategy where she set up a 30-minute VIP access period to her shop where members got to see products before anybody else as well as got access to discount rates. This type of technique can help to make repeat sales to members. She also often releases tutorials that use the clay cutters she sells so if members want to follow along they need to buy the product from her.
How Mia Thinks About Handling the Parts of Her Business She Does Not Love
We know that Mia has two parts to her business, and we also have a sneaky suspicion of which side is her favorite, so the question is, will she do both forever? Mia answers that it all boils down to how much money she can make. She plans to make as much money as possible and if this means doing things she doesn’t love, that is OK. She started her business only selling her jewelry, but when she introduced the maker-driven products like clay cutters, she made as much money in a month as she had during the whole of 2019. She talks about how she doesn’t like making the cutters, but loves vacations, buying food, and having a huge bank account, so the tradeoff is worth it. Emylee and Abagail highlight the fact that doing what you don’t enjoy just for money becomes harder as you get into your 30s, which Mia agrees with. To sidestep the reality of having to do too much of what she does not enjoy, Mia has invented ways to streamline her process, such as hiring an assistant.
The Reliability of Email, and Blowing up on TikTok: Other Platforms Mia Uses
We have spoken a lot about how Mia uses Instagram and Facebook and so we ask her about her use of the other platforms in her stream. She tells us a harrowing story about her Instagram account locking her out one day and what it made her realize about the need to have backup plans. She gets 90% of her referrals from Instagram so the thought of that account getting frozen got her to start experimenting with other channels. One of them was email, and Mia actually hadn't experimented at all with it until she was encouraged to do so by Abagail and Emylee. Now she is building her list and offers exclusive promo codes via email and encourages people to sign up for her email list through her other channels. The great thing about email for Mia who is a numbers person is that it allows her to track data easily. Social media platforms are also less steadfast in their ability to consistently generate income due to hacks, algorithm changes, and more. Mia talks about how a recent change to Instagram dropped her engagement levels by 500%, and there was the recent scare about TikTok getting deleted too. These are problems that email as a channel does not suffer from. For Mia, the best approach is to have as many streams leading to her website as possible, email being one of them. We talk about using video platforms next, also touching on the subject of tracking how success on one channel increases one’s following on another. Mia talks about how a recent video of hers blew up on TikTok and she got 1500 new followers on Instagram after. She shares two approaches to getting videos on TikTok or Instagram Reels to blow up, one of which involves staying on-trend. The other is a list of personal tricks Mia came up with, which you’ll have to join her Facebook group to learn!
Quote This
Everything I do is strategic to get me paid and to get people to know me and my brand.
—Mia Graves
Highlights
Mia’s Strategic Approach to Driving Engagement and Sales Using a Pipeline. [0:05:55.1]
Leveraging FOMO, Running Two Accounts, and Selling Repeatedly to Members. [0:17:26.2]
How Mia Thinks About Handling the Parts of Her Business She Does Not Love. [0:29:45.2]
The Reliability of Email, and Blowing up on TikTok: Other Platforms Mia Uses. [0:39:47.2]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:53:22.1]
Leverage exclusivity.
Use calls to action as much as possible.
Make sure the calls to action end with the customer buying something from you.
Use more calls to action to drive engagement and further sales after the first sale.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Mia Graves
Honeybee Clay
Website | Instagram | Facebook
I'm Mia Graves! I’m originally from a tiny town in North Alabama but transplanted to Louisville, Kentucky to finish up my degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. I'm married to the sweetest man named Bailey and together we own Honeybee Clay! Honeybee Clay is a small business specializing in handmade jewelry and 3D printed clay cutters. I started my business in January of this year and have worked my tail off to make it the business that it is today in order to give my talking dog, Gus, really good treats.
KEY TOPICS
Calls to action, Exclusivity, Sales pipelines, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Email, Marketing, Maker communities
