Welcome to our weekly update of the "Founder's Log" a blog dedicated to the progression of American Butchers JERKi, highlighting the things we've accomplished thus far in the past week, paths we are currently working towards right now, and unchartered paths we hope to accomplish in the upcoming week! Starting a business can be a tough decision so I've added this so you can stay up to date with things I've learned along the way! Have a question, don't hesitate to leave a comment below!
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A look into the past week
And we are back... one week as an official open business and things are looking good. We have be able to help so many service members stationed overseas so I do want to say thank you to so many of you. Our first unit deployed overseas from Fort Hood, Texas is still waiting to get their batch (thank you USPS) but they are very eager and excited. The unit was selected based on an own personal connection which can be read here!
To make my life easier when writing these blogs, this particular past week I decided to add a notebook by my desk with the title "THE PAST" written on the top. It's allowed me to take notes of my days to assist in the back analysis of the week and determine the approach in this particular blog. Sow without further ado - Priority #1. Blog setup.
If you go to our website you'll see a new graphic about halfway down that expressed we have officially launched the podcast format for this particular blog and hopefully others to come. We can now be found on Soundcloud and officially on Spotify. Pretty big moves if you ask me. The setup wasn't nearly as tricky as I had thought but now it comes down to decisions to incorporate a podcast either attached to the blog similar to this setup or should the blog and podcast be two separate published items? I will leave that to a future decision... On the topic of blogs as well, you can now find two additional blogs listed under our "Memoirs" section. 1st being The JERKi. A blog dedicated to anything and everything related to the meat and beef jerky industry! There are a wide variety of topics to cover within this particular section so to do my best to inform and educate, entries can be found there. Our 2nd edition is called Paying It Forward. These entries allow for me to articulate stories and posts regarding those that are being supported. Particular units that have received a bag, a unique first-responder group that we've engaged with as well as some other posts dedicated to the communities we are trying to donate towards.
With blogs officially covered, I want to cover Priority #2. The engagement with social media and understanding paid advertising. There will 100 million, thousand percent be a post dedicated to my understanding of this as I continue to learn but in order to see some effective statistics and see for myself we decided to do a little trial. In order to check the effectiveness of ads through Instagram we decided to run two additional campaigns from our previous week.
One post was similar to our first post explained in last weeks blog except that we decided to focus customers to our website. Same $35 for 7 days. Our second we decided to double the focus as our first one. Direction towards our profile but for $70 for 7 days. The first thing I can tell you even though our ads aren't quite finished is... We have gained zero offers through Instagram ads to our website. It might just mean we suck at creating ads but we thought we might pull one sale or something but zero. nothing. The second thing i've noticed that i'll leave you with is the engagement of posts. If you are going to be promoting a specific post through Instagram ads you can except a very large increase in that specific post. Not follows or clicks but "likes." We've noticed that we are engaging with ads as a way to reach new audiences but the majority is likes rather than follows.
Today
In todays news, I can whole heartedly say we are helping about 1 service member a day right now. This is incredible! To be able to send a Taste of Home to a military service member each day due to a consistency in orders is such a pleasure. With Monday being a holiday we had a little hiatus of shipping out packages because post office were not open but we figured it out and adapted so we are back on schedule.
As we focus entirely on the concept of shipping bags to overseas military units we are still trying to build a list of deployable units to donate. If you do know of a service member that is currently stationed overseas and are interested in sending them some beef jerky, we would love to be able to assist! We understand that deployments can be a challenge especially on the family back in the states so leaving a personalized message attached can make a world of a difference. Please write back to us and we would love to partner together.
One final little blurb i'll write here is that we are continuing to look for alternative methods of outreach. Today we sent an email to a larger podcast of military veterans with the hopes of trying to reach out and donate. We have a meeting tomorrow (Thursday) with their advertising members so this should be interesting. Wish us the best of luck!
Cheers to the Future
So where does the future look too for American Butchers JERKi? Well we are still focusing a large amount of our attention on outreach and customer engagement. The large amount of articles that i've read to help in these particular fields stress the importance of consistency and content. I highlighted on this in last weeks writeup but I want to address it in more detail here. We want to specifically market towards a very specific group of people. In other words stay away from VANILLA. Be that chocolate chip cookie dough mint flavored ice cream and market towards people that love that brand. Everyone can and does make vanilla ice cream.
I want to focus more on giving rather than expecting a return. As a business we get so caught up in this mindset that we want to make sales and we want to support the causes we are doing this for but as I continue to read articles and posts they talk about the giving tree. "Give, give, give, then ask." It is important to understand that we should be establishing our business with the idea of giving someone an opportunity to give and to share. The point is to show you, the customer, the proof and consistency with action. We see too often companies try to throw some fancy way of pulling in a crowd by a tactic of helping and in return asking for something on the back side.
Yes I do understand we are a business and yes i understand we have a great goal/ mission but why not be that great business by providing an audience an opportunity to learn? Providing valuable information that could inform and support in other unique ways? I understand that this isn't a quick solution to gaining business but the point is to build a brand and be representative rather than be a business designed to just sell a product. We want traffic to our website because they are learning and not just buying products.
That pretty much sums up the this week and look forward to talking in next weeks writeup. Check out our podcast too above if you want to listen! If you have a question feel free to leave a comment also! Have a great day!
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The Founder's Log is designed to be a behind the scenes of American Butchers JERKi. With that, I encourage you to ask any questions you might have regarding our product or about the business! Hope to catch you next week, Same time?
-Calvin