August was seemingly a transformational month in more than one area. Instagram channel followers grew 20% month over month and sticker sales also grew 138% month over month.
Results – August 2024
If you’re interested, I have broken down both what I did and what I learned below.
Product – I Need New Stickers
I launched the website with just three designs and knew that I had three on deck that I would be releasing in August. In my mind, updating the website with new sticker designs on a monthly basis will provide a reason for my target audience to come back on a regular basis.
In a super small sample size, 10.1% of the traffic coming to the site in August had previously visited in July – which shows me that I am on the right track.
What I Learned
I am using a proxy for this hypothesis as the @shipmatestickers Instagram account has a similar following to the @mandatoryfun.club account, with around 20 sticker designs available on their website.
With that in mind, I spent a great deal of time designing new stickers toward the end of the month that I plan to release in September.
Audience Growth via Instagram Reels
My general hypothesis has been that I need to grow a niche audience of my target persona on one or more social channels in order to drive traffic and sales to the website.
I have started with Instagram because there are a number of military related meme accounts on Instagram, which has lead me to believe that there is an appetite for this type of content on that channel.
At some point I know that I will need to experiment with paid ads, but my goal has been to build an organic audience first to drive revenue that I can use on paid ads to continue to grow the audience.
This is a slower approach, for sure, but it’s how I want to do it.
What I Learned
Most of the military meme accounts seem to dislike Instagram Reels, for whatever reason, but I have learned that they only help accelerate audience growth.
Two posts I created last month reached a combined 127,000 Instagram accounts for a combined 229,000 plays. And the funny part is that I wasn’t even going to post the first one.
Here they are in all their glory:
Although the number of accounts reached and Reels played is twice the size of my addressable market and the majority of people liking and commenting are not Air Force Academy cadets or grads – I have learned two things:
- Instagram is still pushing Reels because Reels keep people on Instagram
- Apparently, crazy car stuff is insanely popular on Instagram.
For a meme channel, Instagram Reels make content creation super easy. My new process is to scroll my feed for funny Reels and repurpose them with something I think is funny that relates to my target audience.
I also learned that Instagram allows you to schedule posts on your account, which I plan to exploit in the coming months.
As far as posting is concerned – I used to rely on a single post per day and I have doubled that output. I am now posting twice per day and am finding that strategy to be helpful to the account’s growth.
I have noticed that I will get both post likes and new followers on posts from earlier in the week, which has made me realize that not everyone with an Instagram account checks it every day.
And that I am discovering new accounts from posts they had made days or even weeks earlier – so there is something sophisticated going on with the way that Instagram introduces content to new accounts.
Key takeaway is to simply post more than once per day and to keep testing ideas.
Lastly, I know that my account has benefited from a new class coming into the Academy, as a large percentage of the new followers acquired this month have a ’28 in their bio.
Time will tell if this has a negative effect on audience growth moving forward.
Sales – Instagram Story Tests
Instagram Stories have a ton of functionality that made it an ideal testing ground for my hypothesis on conversion. My target audience is following the account because of the memes I am posting on it, and for now I would like to keep that part of the account purely memes.
Instagram Stories do not show up as posts and they allow you to embed hyperlinks in them. Posts and Reels do not.
So I started making Instagram Stories related to new stickers that were available on the website about once or twice per week and linked directly to those product pages in the Stories.
What I Learned
This has been successful.
Anecdotally, when I would post an Instagram Story I would receive orders on the website later that night or the next day. It’s not empirical evidence and the sample size is low, but it definitely feels like I am validating my major hypthesis.
So, the plan for September is to couple this learning with the new stickers I am designing…
The next iteration of this hypothesis is that having new designs, and the stories behind those designs, will drive people to the website and a percentage of those people will buy stickers.
Final Thoughts
Conducting these tests has helped me set some internal direction moving forward. There are two things that I know that I need to do for growth related to this project:
- Continue to post memes twice a day
- Continue to launch new sticker designs and promote them via Stories
This probably sounds trivial, but the simplicity of it is what makes it great. I have clear direction on two activities that I need to do in order to continue to achieve growth.
That means that I do not need to second guess whether I am spending time on the right activities or not. I believe that knowing the specific activities required for continued early success is a huge win for any project when you are starting out.
More to come as I learn it and I hope it helps.
