When I launched my kids’ spa party bus, Luxe Gather, in 2022, it felt especially challenging given my business is fairly niche and a new concept to many. I knew that building brand awareness would be critical and that showing off the party bus experience would be valuable to help parents get a tangible sense of what we offer.
Given these goals, building a strong Instagram presence felt like a natural fit. Most of our target audience is moms, who I know spend a lot of time on the social platform — 68 percent of U.S. moms use it daily. I also felt Instagram Reels would be the perfect way to show snippets of the party experience.
Ultimately, reels is just one piece of my social strategy and marketing funnel, but it’s created a critical foundation for brand awareness and education. Here’s how I quickly developed the right reels strategy for connecting with customers, how I streamline the process as a busy business owner, and how reels plays into converting customers.
I started with DIY customer research to fine-tune my messaging
Before I created a single Instagram Reel, I wanted to nail down the best way to message my business to catch the eye of my target audience. What do moms care about most when it comes to planning a birthday party for their daughters? What draws them to one party option versus another?
I had some ideas based on my own experience as a mom, but I wanted to hear the perspective of others, too. Unfortunately, like most business owners, I didn’t have the time to do extensive customer research.
So, I found a more roundabout, DIY approach: reading the reviews of similar businesses. Looking at spa buses in other markets as well as indirect competitors in my area of South Florida (e.g., other kids' party businesses), I compiled what actual moms were saying in their reviews.
By organizing these thoughts in Notion, I started to see common themes: how special their kids felt, how important cleanliness and customer service was, and how organized the experience was.
Since launching the business, I’ve also reached out to our customers to ask for reviews or thoughts, and I feed this information back into my “voice of the customer” research.
This has since formed the foundation of a messaging document that I refer back to whenever I’m working on reels. By pulling content themes and copy directly from people who have enjoyed a business like mine, I can give my messaging a stronger chance of resonating with future customers.
I use templates and trending audio to easily make compelling reels
I knew from researching Instagram best practices that consistency is essential for building an audience and keeping engagement high, so I had a goal of posting two to three reels each week. Any small business owner knows that’s a lot of content to create on top of everything else on our plates. So, I found a few ways to make the job easier on myself.
First of all, I am always collecting content. Part of our party experience is that we take photos and videos of the kids throughout the event to send to the parents afterward. With the parents’ permission, I add all of this to a library of footage I can pull from when making reels.
