Have you ever wanted to see a trumpet thrown off the back of a car going sixty miles an hour?

What about a trumpet holding up an entire car?

Well, you can.

More specifically, you can see just how well Torpedo Bags protect trumpets from this kind of trauma. That’s the whole point of the videos, according to Steve Kriesel.

Since founding the Minneapolis-based company more than 10 years ago, he has worked hard to create a loyal online community for these specialty bags with these quirky, homemade videos.

Still, the company’s Facebook Page proved to be a problem.

“Our Page was just terrible,” Steve says.

But, over the past few months, he changed his approach and gained almost 500 fans in two weeks and made more than $10,000 from marketing on Facebook.

The power of photogenic emails

We’ve talked about the power of photogenic emails before. Just showcasing your finest products can help show what’s unique about them.

A Torpedo Bags email often has a discount, a fun & product-specific fact, and a testimonial all neatly wrapped into one.

Steve has been using email marketing as a way to convey special sales and offers since 2009. The newsletters have been so successful for Torpedo Bags that he says he has to wait between sending each one, because he receives so many orders.

“Every time I send out an email, I can count on getting around $4,000 in the next couple days,” he says. “As a small business, that’s basically my overhead. So it’s a great way to generate quick cash flow.”

Of course, generating the hype for Torpedo Bags needs to come before the newsletter, or no one would sign up in the first place. Email may be the backstage pass, but social media is the concert.

The YouTube Effect

Photographs can showcase products, but they may not exactly excite customers. That’s where YouTube comes in.

Steve has been uploading home videos to his YouTube channel for several years. Most of them involve creative uses of a Torpedo Bag, whether one of the hapless containers is being thrown from a moving car or bludgeoned by a baseball bat.

These videos often have more than 5,000 views each.

Just one look at a Torpedo Bags video shows us the YouTube phenomenon in a nutshell: film quality is second to entertainment value. Steve’s creative and fun applications of Torpedo Bags makes people want to watch something about a trumpet container.

What Steve really shows us is that, even if your product isn’t active, you can make it active.

Combining it all on Facebook

Despite the popularity of his YouTube videos, Steve admits to having trouble with Facebook.

“We had our Facebook Page for around a year and had around 140 fans. I did a few status updates, but didn’t put a lot of stock into it,” he says.

That all changed when he decided to try offering an exclusive discount to Facebook fans through Social Campaigns.

“I sent an email talking about how we were offering our biggest discount ever on Facebook and in the first hour, I got four orders.” In total, Steve made $5,000 in the first weekend of launching the campaign.

Word about the campaign quickly spread. Customers shared the discount with friends and friends shared it with their friends.

The first Social Campaign of Torpedo Bags offered a mystery discount – 15% – and earned more than $10,000.

As of May, Torpedo Bags has over 1,000 Facebook fans and the business is running a second social campaign. Steve estimates that he made over $10,000 total from his first Social Campaign.

“It’s really changed the way we think about Facebook,” Steve explains. “Now, we’re doing daily updates and we try to put videos and photos up there about every two weeks.”

The second campaign, which was launched last month, offers fans a 10% discount. Has the appetite for Torpedo Bags slowed? Apparently, the answer is a trumpeting no.

“We set a monthly record in April,” Steve says. “The sales beat our last two Christmas and December sales, too.”

The Torpedo Bags Facebook Page has gone from being just another channel to worry about to a central, quite profitable resource where customers can find videos, photos, discounts, and an email sign-up box … all in one “Likeable” place. 

Do you use Facebook as a hub for all of your different channels? Let us know below!