Ronan Galvin of Kickstagram: Marketing Automation Led to 282 … – Small Business Trends

Kickstagram co-founders Ronan Galvin and Casey Mathews developed a platform to help businesses automate engagement on Instagram. But according to the duo, it wasnt until they started using InfusionSofts marketing automation platform that they were able to simplify a complicated and time-consuming onboarding process that improved the customer experience. And within eight months, Kickstagram achieved 5,000 more leads generated, a 282 percent increase in revenue and a 336 percent increase in customers.

I had an opportunity to speak with the two cofounders at last months InfusionCon User Conference (ICON) to learn more about how automation made such a sudden impact on their business, as well as to get a few tips on how to get more traffic from Instagram.

Below is an edited transcript from our conversation. To see the entire interview, click on the embedded video below.

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Small Business Trends: Lets talk a little bit about how you guys got started. Maybe give us a little bit of your personal backgrounds and how you guys got started with Kickstagram.

Ronan Galvin: After college I went over to China and started sourcing and manufacturing products for clients back in the States, and then Casey and I hooked up because it was too hard to do it just from China. So Casey was in the States, and he would travel back to China and meet up and, visit factories, and whatnot.

As we were starting our business, Kickstarter was also taking off, and social media, Instagram, too, around that time, 2012, 2013, something like that.

We would get a lot of clients. They would be successful with their Kickstarter, then they were like, now how do we fulfill our products, whether its watches, or a new little tech device or something like that. Friends of friends were like, Hey, you guys are in China. Can you get this product? Then we would oversee the manufacturing and the development of that, and then ship it back to them.

Now after we fulfilled on the Kickstarters, we had selfish interests in the fact that the more they sold, the bigger our commission would be, so it was like after the Kickstarter they were like, Well, now what do we do? Can we go into retail? They didnt really have access to a retail distribution chain, so it was obviously eCommerce. One thing with eCommerce was, social media. So 2012, 2013, 14-ish, it was able to post on Instagram, or Facebook, or Twitter and get traffic back to your website. Once you got the traffic back to your website, you can convert into sales. We found that Instagram was a good solution. Casey was sitting around one night, and

Casey Mathews: I was working on one of our clients at the time, their Instagram, and I just started liking pictures based off hashtag words that were relevant to their wood and steel watch, people that were into watches, that fit that type of vibe, or different things like that. The next day I was pretty surprised they got a lot of followers back. I was like, Wow. They were telling me how much theyve been struggling lately, and yeah, my thumb hurts. I did about two or three hundred likes, but I was actually really pleased with the results. Obviously I did it for a couple more days just to make sure it was the real deal, it kept working, and then I realized how do I do this without my thumb falling off, more or less, you know.

Initially we looked into automating this process, but we knew when you do something automated youve got to be careful because you have to put filters in place, and so we partnered with a developer and made our own software on the back end, and really just being like students of Instagram, and also knowing our clients, I think we did a pretty good job of finding the happy medium of being able to do these 2,000 engagements a day. But at the same time be extremely targeted cause you dont want to waste that when you have such only a limited amount of engagements.

That was kind of the birth. Initially kind of a hobby. Liking and picking up 5, 10 clients at first. We were like, Wow. This is cool. People are interested. Lets try to email a hundred people this week or something. We sent them out of Gmail. Four, five responded. Theyre interested. Thats pretty good return. Next week, 200, and then we got to the point were like, Wow. We could actually We had 20, 30 clients, and were like, Yeah, we should probably stop the other things were doing and focus on this, because we see the potential in this industry.

Ronan Galvin: Its kind of, I guess, ironic, we started out doing this automation for social media, and now were using this Infusionsoft that automates a lot of our stuff.

Casey Mathews: Automation, automating our automation.

Small Business Trends: Whats been the impact overall What are some of the results youre seeing?

Ronan Galvin: One of the biggest stats we like to share is we had a hundred clients and four employees, and everything. Theres a lot slipping through the cracks, and kind of unorganized. Everything was out of Gmail, and just a lot of manual work. We started to implement Infusionsoft, and now were sitting at 700 clients with six employees, so the biggest things is for us is we were able to get to 700 and only add two more employees. A lot of it were getting sales in now. We brought our whole team here [to ICON]. Everyone whos signing up now is getting a sequence of automation; they think someones sending it, which is cool.

Small Business Trends:How has that been able to enhance the way that you do your work with your customers?

Casey Mathews: I think a big thing were starting to get into is providing that extra value that, I guess like you were saying, we didnt have time to provide or create. Video, were doing a lot more in-house video, because the better their Instagram is, our software and our service is going to do better stuff for them.

The better their Instagram account is, the more were going to send traffic to them. We create new videos on whatevers hot or trending on Instagram. Show them that. Send it out to them. Thats something we couldnt do before. Hand hold them a little bit more on the onboarding, but make sure some of its going to be through a personal touch.

Small Business Trends: Give us something that the folks dont know about Instagram that they should know about it.

Ronan Galvin: Just be consistent with posting each day, and be consistent with the content that you post. Sometimes we have people who will sign up their brand, and they have great jewelry, for example. The jewelry is flawless, but then you go and look at their Instagram, and theyre posting selfies, or a picture of their dog, or what they had for dinner on their brand profile, and no ones following you because of that. Theyre following you because of your jewelry. Show off the lifestyle, the jewelry. Dont intermix the personal.

Casey Mathews: Unless its the most high quality picture and

Ronan Galvin: Theres a good reason.

Casey Mathews: Yeah, theres some good reason, but seems like people really co-mingle that personal and brand thing a little bit too much.

Ronan Galvin: Being a smaller business, you probably are the one who is handling the social media, and so its probably easier to say, Oh Im at this cool event. Snap a photo.

Casey Mathews: My tip too would be dont be afraid to emulate other people that are doing it great.

Ronan Galvin: We always say look in your space at the big players. So if Im starting an athletic shoe brand, I would look at Nike because Nike has the team of 15 social media managers, and they know what content to produce, when to post it. Theyre already doing it, just take what you can and tweak it to fit your brand and your voice. Thats the easiest way to do it.

Small Business Trends: Tell folks where they can learn more about what you guys are doing.

Ronan Galvin: You can go to Kickstagram.io, and all the information is right there.

This is part of the One-on-One Interview series with thought leaders. The transcript has been edited for publication. If it's an audio or video interview, click on the embedded player above, or subscribe via iTunes or via Stitcher.

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Ronan Galvin of Kickstagram: Marketing Automation Led to 282 ... - Small Business Trends