Customer stories with Jeslyn Miller
Building and promoting your online store requires both persistence and good marketing. And it doesn’t hurt if you have a unique perspective.
Unique and Lovely, Jeslyn Miller’s online apparel brand has all three.
Jeslyn Miller created Unique and Lovely, in 2015 to promote the idea that people should love and embrace their uniqueness. “In today’s society, we’re taught that we need to look a certain way to be accepted. And I want to challenge that thought process,” Jeslyn said.
PosterMyWall spoke to Jeslyn about her online business, her promotional strategies, and how she uses PosterMyWall to elevate her marketing.
Hi, Jeslyn! Let’s start by talking about your brand. How did Unique and Lovely come about?
When I was a child, my father came up with an affirmation to help boost my self-esteem. For years, he would refer to me as “Unique and lovely” and would tell me my differences make me special. When I decided to channel my love for design and illustrations into a business, this affirmation was the first thing to pop up in my head.
And that’s how I started Unique and Lovely.
Right now, it’s just me. My customer base is still pretty small, but I like it because it allows me to interact with a lot of the customers. I feel like I know many of them personally.
1. Maintain an active social media presence
What is the biggest challenge you face as the owner of a growing online business?
One of the biggest challenges, especially being an online boutique, is dealing with social media — particularly the constant algorithm changes and being able to engage digitally with customers.
If you have a brick and mortar, or a physical location, people can naturally just stumble on to your store. But when you’re 100% online, you really have to put a lot of effort into helping people find your boutique.
This is why I maintain an engaged social media presence. You have to constantly create visuals, have active social media accounts, pay for ads, and so much more to make sure your customer sees you.
What social media platforms do you use to promote your brand?
On social media, I Primarily use Instagram and TikTok. I do use other platforms, but those two are the ones that get me the most engagement.
2. Create engaging content for Instagram
What type of post performs best for you on Instagram?
On Instagram, I like to keep my audience engaged by creating unique and original content that represents my brand image.
I try my best to keep up with the affirmation trend that helped inspire my business. Every Monday, I create cute posters with inspirational quotes or affirmations on them, and post them on my feed. These motivational posts go out every week without fail and customers love engaging with them.
I also like to engage with my customers through a series of videos I call “What if Wednesdays.” In these clips, I provide fun tips on how people can expand the life of their old clothing. This has included videos on DIY tie-dye tips, adding patches to distressed clothes, and much more.
If I have a new product coming out, I post about that as well. The main idea here is to make sure your customers don’t just see one type of content on your social media. You need to keep them drawn in with a constant stream of creative ideas and fresh takes.
3. Promote your online store on TikTok
How do you promote your online store on TikTok?
On TikTok, I take advantage of new video and audio trends and incorporate my messages into them.
To keep my audience engaged, I create a lot of behind the scene videos which showcase how I pack up and send out orders. I like adding fun, trendy audios over these videos to make them more interesting to watch.
I also create video versions of my Instagram affirmation posts by creating a short video clip and adding my own voiceover as I say the quote out loud.
What I’ve learned is, especially when it comes to marketing a small business is: Yes, people are buying your product, but they’re also buying you. They want to know what you’re about. So having different ways for them to learn more about you or to engage with you really helps.
4. Make your content pop with fun colors, sounds, and images
What types of design elements do you find give your posts more traction?
The three most important design elements I like to incorporate into my posts are bright colors, fun sounds, and engaging images.
I’ve noticed that bright colors draw a lot of attention. My own brand image is a mix of red, black, and white. I like to play around with these and add in a lot of neons, fun tints, and shades — and much more to make my designs more exciting to look at. A pop of color works so much better than a plain black background with just some bland text on top.
I’ve also noticed that videos and audios draw more attention than an ordinary image post. I use PosterMyWall’s stock audio library to add fun sound effects to my videos. I also record my voice and add in onto my designs for some of my affirmation posts. These usually just include me narrating the affirmation or quote, or providing contact information in a teaser or video clip. Finally, I use
PosterMyWall’s stock photos as backgrounds for my posts. This adds texture and a pop of color. I don’t like plain, bland backgrounds.
5. Encourage conversations on social media
How do you encourage people to engage with your posts?
To create engagement and keep my customers interested, I create posts that encourage them to leave a comment or some other form of feedback.
The best example I have of this is a fun little word search post I created recently. I just plugged in random letters, with words like joy, abundance, money, and things like that. Then I gave them a prompt that said “What’s the first word that you see?” This was one of my most popular posts because people kept commenting on what words they saw. They also added this to their stories and tagged my page.
Another way to get customers to engage is by posting two versions of a new product design and then asking them which color or design they like best. This makes them feel like they’re a part of the design process and results in more likes and comments on my feed.
6. Boost your most popular Instagram posts
You mentioned using paid advertisements earlier. Can you elaborate on that?
I received a Google Ad credit upon the creation of my Wix Website. I used it once and that method of advertising wasn’t very effective for me.
However, when I boost well-performing Instagram posts, that has a much bigger return on investment for me. I frequently boost posts on Instagram, at least two or three posts a month.
7. Keep your customers updated through email
How does email marketing fit into your strategy?
I send out emails every week. I note the email of every customer who visits my website and signs up to join the “lovely community,” and add them to my email list. Every Monday, before I post my weekly affirmation on Instagram, I send it out to my email subscribers. I also use email to send discounts, exclusive offers, first heads up on new merchandise, and other promotions.
Email helps me reach the customers who are a little older and aren’t very active on social media. They don’t go on Instagram, but they pay attention to emails.
In order to reach everyone, I send out the same communication on email that I do on social media — and vice versa.
8. Make sure your website is easy to navigate
How does your website play into the mix?
I think my website does a good job of keeping my audience engaged. I’ve revamped it a couple of times to minimize the amount of clicks that they have to make to get to where they want to go. And I’m constantly moving the popular items or collections up to the top menu to keep people interested.
I try to have links on each page of my site to take my customers to other pages they might be interested in. My goal is to encourage them to spend more time on my site and navigate without leaving my site or getting distracted and not coming back.
9. Take advantage of promotional opportunities that present themselves
Do you use offline promotion as well??
I’ve used one major offline method of promotion so far; I piggyback off of local festivals and activities to expose my business to new customers.
Every Saturday, I set up a physical pop-up shop for Unique and Lovely. This pop-up is usually located in a small neighborhood in Washington D.C. that hosts a lot of local festivals and activities. Whenever there’s an activity in that area, my pop-up shop ends up getting a lot of free publicity.
One final question: What are your plans for the future of Unique and Lovely and how does PosterMyWall fit in?
Moving forward, I really want to branch out more as far as what I provide. I currently focus on hoodies and t-shirts. And I also create fun wallpapers for people to download. I use PosterMyWall a lot for those designs.
In the future, I’d like to expand more on these ideas. I particularly want to tap into the area of wellness and mindfulness. Maybe create a deck of affirmation cards to sell, or some fun journals, or maybe even stickers. So PosterMyWall will definitely play a role in my future plans to expand and promote my business.
Thank you, Jeslyn, for sharing your story. We wish you and Unique and Lovely the best of luck!
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Senior editor at PosterMyWall.
