There are lots of Instagram profiles. Few stand out.
Welcome back to the tenth installment of our Social Spotlight Series! We’ve decided to start highlighting accounts that stand out in our feeds so we can share insights about what makes them successful. Our Social Spotlights focus on Instagram pages that have valuable lessons for marketers, entrepreneurs, influencers, and anyone else who wants to optimize their Instagram.
One of Instagram’s best features is its capacity for community-building. Brands can leverage great visual content to attract that community. When done well, Instagram can be a major source of sales — especially for products that look good in the feed!
Olive & June is no exception. Like most beauty companies, they have a lot of potential for attractive content. The brand makes good use of a playful, cute aesthetic to entice anyone to try out their at-home manicure and pedicure kits. We reviewed their Instagram profile and website to see what other brands can learn from them.
Featured Profile Overview
Olive & June’s primary value proposition is right there in its bio: “Salon-quality manis and pedis at home, finally!” It’s definitely a pandemic-proof enterprise, and a quick review of their page shows that Olive & June is committed to helping their customers. Rather than simply selling their manicure and pedicure kits, they’re heavily engaged with their followers, offering advice in the comments and frequently featuring user-generated content.
Their feed is a mix of products staged on whimsical backgrounds, photos of customers’ finished nails, employee spotlights, and promotional graphics. The content can be a bit repetitive at times, but there is a nice color theme, and we really like the human element seen in the posts. It all looks comfortable and luxurious — definitely something to get you in the mood for self-care.
What We Think Is Working
Olive & June’s main feed is full of up-close shots of manis and pedis done with their kits. Everything is well-lit and shot in a proportion that makes it easy to envision how your own nails would look with that color. This allows people to imagine results if they purchase the product — a marketing win. There are many product shots that are clearly staged, but overall, we see happy people with beautiful nails.
Olive & June’s bio is absolutely perfect for Instagram. It begins with an easy-to-digest message that expresses the brand’s core mission: “Beautiful nails for everyone.” It then gives a clear value proposition followed by a compelling CTA that invites followers to “learn the secrets on IGTV.” This makes their audience feel special and empowered, like gorgeous nails are just a click away! Finally, the bio invites people to DM them with questions.
In their Story Highlights, Olive & June does a great job of displaying their core values along with a colorful variety of nail designs. They include a lot of UGC within the story highlights, which is quite refreshing to see. Many brands use their Story Highlights to talk themselves up, but with Olive & June, we see a great emphasis on their community. This connects back to the bio that invites people to learn “secrets” and reach out with any questions.
We see that passionate community in the comments, and Olive & June rewards that engagement with advice, tips, and friendly conversation. And because their feed is so luxurious, we imagine it’s quite a privilege for their followers to be featured. This is Instagram gold: a highly engaged community who loves what you do and gives you free content and promotion.
What We Like (And What Could Be Done Better)
Each post has excellent engagement, with thousands of likes and usually a few dozen comments. Their followers frequently ask questions about the products or colors shown in a post, and the brand regularly responds to comments (although we notice they sometimes ignore negative comments — not a good idea).
Interestingly, the captions are quite sparse — usually just a sentence or phrase with some cute emoji and no hashtags. So it’s quite amazing that Olive & June has amassed more than 360,000 followers. It goes to show that regular engagement and great content are crucial to success on Instagram.
Olive & June’s story highlights are extensive, covering various nail design styles as well as their Studio Box and seasonal offerings. Some of the highlight titles can be a bit mysterious, but the images are enticing enough to draw in their audience and get them inspired to order their own kits.
Analytics / Insights
While Olive & June’s Instagram feed is certainly beautiful and inspiring, we can see some clear areas for improvement. As we mentioned above, the brand should do a better job of responding to negative comments. We’d also like to see a bit more variety of posts.
Naturally, we clicked on the bio link, which takes us to a landing page inviting users to join “The Olive You Club.” We love the wordplay in the name of this offer, which is essentially a subscription box. The website is designed with a delightful pink color scheme, which matches the overall IG feed’s palette. There is a clear brand identity, which is crucial to converting social media followers into customers.
That said, the overall funnel raises questions. From all the product posts on the IG feed, we would imagine that the landing page would be a place to buy those products. None of Olive & June’s posts are shoppable (a missed opportunity in our opinion) yet the landing page doesn’t give that option either.
Instead, the main CTA is to join their club. Now, if we look at the community they’ve fostered on Instagram, a subscription is a good upsell. We also like the teaser in the copy, which invites visitors to look for “members-only surprises.” The secondary CTA is to gift a membership — a further acknowledgment of their engaged community.
However, the landing page has no faces, no quotations, and no social posts. It’s quite bland compared to the Instagram page. The humanity is a bit lacking, which surprised us given how highly personal and customer-oriented their IG feed is.
We also think that if someone visits this landing page and HASN’T been to Instagram, the club is a tough first sell. There’s no social proof to show while the subscription is worth it and no FAQs that would overcome objections. Generally, the less information you provide when on a subscription, the more likely you are to have churn.
So, if you’re not sold on a subscription, what do you do? The rest of the site seems to be designed in a way that only makes sense if you’ve been following Olive & June on Instagram. For example, the main Shop menu immediately directs you to “The System” and “The Poppy” — brand names with little indication of what the products are. Now, it could be that the club is their primary source of income, but we don’t see a way to convert or recover leads who are not interested in a subscription box.
Key Takeaways
Olive & June certainly has Instagram community-building down pat. They’re also skilled at crafting a consistent, enticing feed and maximizing their Story Highlights. It’s impressive that they’ve racked up so many followers without using lengthy captions or lots of hashtags. We do think that they should respond to negative comments to help overcome new visitors’ objections.
While Olive & June’s sales funnel and business model may be working for them, we would advise most brands to draw a more direct line from their social presence to their website’s offers. Relying on your Instagram community to drive sales is a risky move — not something we would recommend for most brands. We also would like to see more of a human element on landing pages, especially when that works so well on Instagram. Overall, though, we see a great blend of promotional and user-generated content on Olive & June’s feed, which is refreshing to see for a beauty brand.
Tune in next week to see our eleventh installment of the Social Spotlight Series. Join our mailing list to get Goodwin knowledge and insights like this delivered straight to your inbox!