Sarah Watkins

Professor Haslett
Social Media Campaigns
April 28, 2023

Soulfull Spaces Client Report

Executive Summary

Soulfull Spaces is a home essentials brand based out of Pittsburgh, PA. They currently only have

one employee, Courtney Handy, owner and founder of the brand. The brand’s mission is to

create a unique scent and experience for each customer who makes a purchase and to keep them

coming back. Soulfull Spaces sells hand poured soy wax candles and melts in handcrafted scents.

This report encompasses all things social media regarding the brand. The social media audit

outlines the brands competitors, social profile statistics, and the brand assets. The social listening

analysis analyzes all aspects of media including paid, shared, owned, and earned as well as what

people are saying about the brand. The social strategy touches on how Soulfull Spaces will

achieve its social media goals and how to reach its target audience complete with a month long

social calendar. Finally, the social media campaign touches on a potential campaign idea for her

socials that can help reach two of her goals. Soulfull Spaces is a relatively new brand, so for that

they are heading down a good path. Within the past eight months, Courtney has fully curated a

solid brand aesthetic, identity, and personality. Her brand is set up for social success.

Company Overview
Soulfull Spaces is a woman-owned small, black home goods store. The company is owned by

Courtney Handy who started the company late last year after being a part of a different candle

company during 2020. Hardy has struggled with her share of mental health issues and coped with

them by redoing and reinventing her space. She also works full time in the mental health field in
accordance with her business. Soulfull Spaces creates hand poured, soy candles and wax melts in

Pittsburgh. On the online storefront it states that Soulfull Space’s mission is “creating moments

that feed your mind, body, and soul through home essentials.”

Social Media Audit

To begin, owner Courtney Handy came up with the idea for the business venture in 2020. She

originally started the idea with a partner and while the sales were good the partnership was not.

The pair separated but ultimately she knew she still wanted to create a home line. Handy decided

to start the company because she has always loved home decor and has always been business

oriented. In a text she stated that “even at a young age, I was always particular about the details

of my bedroom.” Soulfull Spaces officially launched on November 11, 2022.

The name Soulfull Spaces originated from a phone call that Handy had with her aunt. She

said that “...creating candles felt purposeful and made my soul full.” The name was ultimately

broad enough that she can eventually expand into other products if she wishes. Soulfull Spaces

sells small batch hand poured 100% soy wax candles and wax melts. The candles come in either

3 oz or 7 oz and the wax melts in packs of 6 or 12. She currently has 8 scents out with more on

the way. Her candles are pretty affordable starting at $10.

When she first started, the goal was to “create a home decor line, become a popular brand

and be an entrepreneur.” While those are still Handy’s goals, she wants the ability to branch off

into stuff such as event spaces and rental homes or home stagings. Handy also wants to use her

company to create a positive impact in the community. She explained that she grew up in

poverty and lost her mother at a young age which created a lot of obstacles for her growing up
and still now. She wants to be able to give kids and young adults that grew up like her financial

opportunities to help them succeed. She was kind enough to share that she is attempting to start

an annual scholarship so this year from April 12th to June 6th she will be taking a portion of her

profits to create a $1000 scholarship. Her goal specifically for me is to help her with her social

media marketing to boost sales to be able to achieve this.

Handy identifies her competitors as Bath and Body Works and Yankee Candle. While she is not

wrong, I decided to analyze businesses a little closer to home. First is Fjord and Fable which is

another candle brand formed in 2020 as a pandemic hobby. They sell 100% natural soy wax

candles with non hazardous fragrance oils and essential oils. Similar to Soulfull Spaces their

packaging and branding is very sleek and minimal. It seems their unique selling point is that they

are ethically sourced and free of everything. On Instagram, @fjordandfable have 1,334

followers. It is a threat that they have more followers but they do not post frequently and they

have a low engagement rate. They do not use TikTok which is an opportunity for Handy. On

Facebook they have 592 followers. Again, they have a low engagement rate and do not post

consistently. It seems a lot of their audience comes from markets and home shows where they

usually have vendor tables. The second competitor is Raised By Wolves candle company. Their

unique selling point is that they are a veteran owned brand. They have 1,080 followers on

Instagram but they have a super low engagement rate. On Tiktok, they only have 92 followers

and again, a super low engagement rate which is an opportunity for Soulfull Spaces to really

dominate the TikTok realm. On Facebook, they have an official shop page with over 528 likes

which is a threat to Handy. Overall, if Handy chooses to really focus on growing her Instagram

and TikTok she could really dominate the Pittsburgh small candle business.
Instagram

Stats Likes Comments Shares Followers

134 47 10 205 (+14.4%)

Over the last 2 months, Soulfull Spaces has averaged 134 likes across all posts on Instagram.

From February 25 to March 26, the account gained 26 followers totaling 205 followers. She has

averaged 47 comments across all posts in this time period. Most impressions come from home,

so from followers and the lowest amount of impressions come from the hashtags she chooses to

use. Overall though, her content engagement was down 29% over the last 30 days. She posted 10

photos, 63 stories, and 8 reels over the last month. As for website traffic, she had only 15

external link taps. Her top performing content by reach were the reels but her top posts based on

likes were her grid posts. See top performing posts below.

TikTok

In the last 30 days, Soulfull Spaces video views reached 1,106 (up by 6.1%). Over the last month

the account got 19 profile views (down 44%), 81 likes (up 1.3%), and 4 comments (down 60%).

Overall, the entire account has 1559 likes. Over the last month, she has posted 6 videos. Soulfull

Spaces has 1039 followers on TikTok. Over the last 30 days, the account has gained 3 followers.

95 likes is the total number of likes over the last month. She averaged 3 comments over the last

30 days as well.

Facebook

Over the last month, Soulfull Spaces has made 18 posts over the last month. From those posts,

she gathered 210 likes for the month, 12 comments, 32 shares, and 3,230 video views. The
Facebook page itself has 69 followers and 51 page likes. I am not able to see account metrics so I

cannot elaborate further.

All Accounts

Across all accounts, she uses the same profile picture which is a picture of her logo. Her bio for

TikTok and Instagram are the same but the Facebook “About” page lacks personality.

SWOT Analysis

Soulfull Spaces strengths include:

● Cohesive brand identity

● Aesthetic content

● Large reach

● Small business, black-owned, woman owned

● Marketing background

Soulfull Spaces weaknesses include:

● Low engagement rate

● Not a lot of time

● No conversions

● Low website traffic/link clicks

● No storefront

Opportunities:

● More people shopping small

● PGH - major vendor market

● Opportunity to get candles in other businesses

● Wholesale candle sales

Threats

● PGH - major vendor market

● Competitors already at home shows

● Competitors have larger following

● Lots of small business competitors

Social Media Listening Analysis

Paid Media

To start, my client does not pay for any media. According to Courtney, she does not have the

ability to be able to do so right now. However, upon further research, she participates in a

Shopify influencer program called Shopify Collabs. Through Shopify Collabs, a brand can gift

influencers products, discounts, affiliate codes, and pay them commission. She is a small

business so she is not able to pay commission but she does gift discount codes and free products.

In turn, she posts some of their content onto her Instagram page. In this two month period, reels

seem to be outperforming her regular grid posts.

Owned Media

Courtney currently takes most of the pictures on her business Instagram or designs them herself.

Any picture that is not a photo of a product, she designs herself through Canva. On TikTok, she

also records all videos herself. Her Facebook posts are the same as her Instagram. She currently

has an email marketing program on her site where you can sign up to receive email about

discounts, new releases, and news about the company. She currently does not partake in any

search engine optimization. Courtney does own her domain.

Shared Media

In terms of sharing, she gets 1-2 stories mentions a day on Instagram. On average, she gets about

3-6 comments per post. Her likes have steadily stayed within the 20s on Instagram and are

unfortunately lower on TikTok. One thing that can be said about her engagement is that she does

have a few loyal followers who like, comment, and share her posts all the time. As of right now

there are only two organic/gifted reviews of her products that were shared by other local creators

on Instagram. On Tik Tok she has a lower engagement rate. Some videos have a few favorites.

Her Facebook probably constitutes her lowest engagement as she does not post on there as often

as her other social sites.

Earned Media

While it is upsetting to say, she has basically no earned media besides story shares from

followers from Instagram. I do believe this is for a few reasons though. Soulfull Spaces is a fairly

new business, it has no brick and mortar storefront, and is not easily searchable. Other than that

she does have a few reviews on her website under her products.

Sentiment Analysis

On her Instagram, she has a whole highlight of reviews as well as reviews on her site. The most

common things that are said about her product is that the packaging is beautiful, clean, and

simple. Customers say that the candles smell amazing, clean, crisp, and the smell distributes

evenly. Customers also compliment the attention to detail and how personal their packages are.

Recommendations
My first recommendation for Soulfull Spaces would be to invest in some sort of paid SEO. For

example, if the brand is one of the top results when someone searches “pittsburgh candle

company” or “small candle business” it would lead to a generation of sales if it can easily be

found. Following that, it would be good for Courtney to start developing some relationships with

local reporters and influencers. She could start by sending out some press releases, especially

regarding her recent donation tactic for scholarships, to reporters around the city. Specifically

ones who report on business, small businesses, or culture within Pittsburgh. It is a great idea to

outsource to influencers anywhere, but honing in on local influencers including mom-fluencers

and lifestyle influencers could generate interest at least within our region. Starting from a small

goal such as regional sales and working up to national sales will be more manageable for a girl

who has a full-time job and multiple side hustles. Another way to get more earned media would

also be to ask customers to leave reviews or incentivize leaving reviews of the product they

purchase. As for social, her posts and consistency of posting are pretty strong. I think the posts

are cohesive but lack a brand message that she conveys well in her website. It would be helpful

to do a few things through social. My first recommendation would be to invest some funds into

hashtag or keyword research. She does use hashtags on every post, but by conducting some

hashtag research based on her brand she may be better able to reach and curate more

engagement. My other recommendation for Soulfull Spaces is to go under the hashtags she uses

and engage with them. Follow others under the hashtag, like their posts, comment on their posts.

Engaging with those who post similar content or consume similar content will help to build your

own community. My last recommendation for social media is to push more engaging content out.

Ask questions, and involve her audience in the posts she makes to get customers to comment,

like or share. Lastly, overall I do think it would be helpful for her to use a tool such as HootSuite,
or Sprout or really any platform that can track her social listening for her. She is only one person

and can only do so much when it comes to monitoring her media outlets.

My one major suggestion in terms of platforms and content would be starting a LinkedIn page.

LinkedIn can be a great tool for advancing her small business status and helping to launch her

small business as her full blown career. LinkedIn is a business social media, like Facebook for

the corporate world. Using LinkedIn in a personal manner and creating a page for her business

could bring more brand awareness than she has been generating on mainstream social media.

Through her personal page, she can join groups for small business owners, mingle and network

with local business owners, and create posts detailing the processes behind running a small

business. Engaging with other local business owners can grow her network on and offline, if she

ever chooses to do vendor or home shows in the future. As for her business LinkedIn page, there

she can highlight new scent launches, and company accomplishments as they happen. It further

establishes her brand identity further in a more respected space and it allows for many new

opportunities to find her.

Strategy
Courtney’s first goal for Soulfull Spaces is to increase follower engagement. Specifically, she

wants to have a minimum of 10 comments per Instagram and Facebook post by July 31st. To

achieve this goal, it would be best to start asking questions in the captions of her posts on

Facebook and Instagram. Asking questions interests the audience and allows them to engage

with posts without a lot of pressure. This goal is able to be measured by engagement rate.

Courtney’s second goal for her business is to get to 500 followers by July 31st. She currently sits

at 200 followers. To do this, we can engage in a few different tactics. The first would be to
actively engage with followers and actively engage in conversations surrounding the home

goods/candle community. In doing this, it increases awareness of the brand and showcases the

brand’s ability to keep up with conversation as well as actively participate in their audience’s

consumer journey. Next, it would be beneficial to partner up with local influencers to boost the

brand’s name and engagement. Using a well-liked, local influencer at least puts the brand’s name

in circulation and intrigues the influencer’s followers to check out Soulfull Spaces’ account.

Some potential influencers to use could be:

● @lfcostello - luxury/fashion influencer with minimalistic style

● @hannnah_honey - everyday luxury influencer

● @lane51btq/laura - small boutique owner who does pop-up events with other local

women-owned pittsburgh businesses

● @joyfullyyoursamanda - lifestyle content creator

These creators highlight local businesses and Soulfull Spaces would fit into their respective

niches. The last tactic for increasing followers on Instagram is to use the correct hashtags. As

outlined in the sentiment analysis, investing in some hashtag research to determine what those

hashtags are could prove to be beneficial in gaining followers. The last goal Courtney has for

Soulfull Spaces is to boost sales by 20% by the end of the quarter which is July 31st. We can

measure this objective by conversion rate. There are two potential ways that she can use to

increase the conversion rate through her Instagram and Tiktok. The first would be to shorten the

shopping experience by creating shoppable posts. TikTok has just rolled out TikTok Shop where

users can host their shop within TikTok and users can shop through their videos. This would be a

great tool for her to take advantage of as it is just starting out and TikTok is pushing out content
that is shoppable. The second way she can try to increase conversion rates is by writing more

persuasive copy in her social media captions. This would include adding a call to action in each

caption whether that be “shop now” or “learn more.” In doing these, it makes the customer

experience easier and engages the audience more into wanting to make a purchase.

Deliverables
Courtney chose the logo because she wanted a minimalistic look and she chose neutral colors

because she believes they bring a sense of calm to the packaging. She wants the candles to be

loud enough to speak for themselves. My recommendation is to change some of the physical

assets of the branding. First, the logo could be changed as it is a bit of a generic style. Having a

logo that is more relevant to the company itself could help create a more cohesive brand identity.

A logo that embodied something of a home or a home good item may suit the brand more. My

second recommendation is to add a pop of color into the brand colors. A lot of Pittsburgh

candle/home goods companies stick to minimalist and neutral packaging/branding so picking a

color that is still earthy/neutral may create a stronger sense of brand recognition. As for posting

topics, it could be beneficial to do some out of the box things that still are relevant to her line of

business. Some ideas are infographics, contests, and more personal posts. Overall, her brand

aesthetic is solid and her posts are pretty cohesive but there is not much variety within them.

The posting goal for Soulfull Spaces would be 3-4 times a week. She already does a mix of

photos and reels which she should continue to do. For Facebook, her videos are getting the reach

and the views. Refreshing video content to cross post could be good for increasing engagement.

Demographics
As stated in the social media audit, Soulfull Spaces current demographic lies within the majority

of the 24-34 range, with the second largest being in the 35-44 range. Her followers are primarily

women and she engages primarily women. Her followers are also primarily from Pittsburgh and

Philadelphia. Right now, I believe the target audience Courtney wants Soulfull Spaces to reach is

25-34 year old women who live in Pennsylvania.

Millennials are a hard group to market towards. According to Inc.com, millennials value

authenticity and transparency while also favoring brands who do good things and can bring them

social power. Having millennial family members, it seems that every moment needs to be

postable in order to be worthy of their time. The content that is being produced must be aesthetic.

Millennial users are most present on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. For Soulfull Spaces,

users are most active Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. During any day though, they are most

active at three, six, and nine P.M.

To engage any demo, it is beneficial to follow a formula to help create more content that is

engaging. For Soulfull Spaces, she should follow an educate, engage, and inspire model. In the

educate stage, she should be educating her followers or non-followers on what they need to know

before they buy from her which can be as simple as prices to as complicated as brand message.

In the engage stage, it it not about engagement rates but how she is going to get her audience to

connect and relate to her. The inspire stage is where she gets to showcase the transformation of

herself and her product, which allows the audience to use that as inspiration.
To break this strategy down in a calendar term, Courtney can take four topic ideas and make a

month’s worth of content out of them. Each topic spans each week of the month. Out of that one

topic a week, she can make four TikToks, four Instagram posts, and four Facebook posts out of it

as well as any other additional content she thinks could supplement these posts. This strategy

also allows for cross postable reels and posts between platforms.

Campaign Idea and Title

My idea for this social media marketing campaign is a rainbow candle collection to be launched

during pride month. The title of the campaign would be “Smell the Rainbow.”

Campaign Objectives

The primary objective for the campaign is to generate brand awareness for Soulfull Spaces. The

secondary campaign objective would be increased sales. Courtney’s main goal from the

beginning was to hopefully boost sales through learning more about her social media. To get

more sales though, we would have to launch a campaign that created awareness of her brand.

Smell The Rainbow

Soulfull Spaces is known to be very minimalistic and sleek, so to garner attention why not do the

complete opposite? My idea for the Smell the Rainbow campaign would be rainbow colored

candles to be released throughout June for Pride Month. The campaign title stems from Skittles’

“Taste the Rainbow” tagline. The campaign plays off a popular brand and coincides with a major

month event.To extend the idea even further, each different colored candle would smell like

something of that color. For example, the orange candle would be orange scented or the yellow
candle would be lemon scented. The candles would still have their glass jars and minimalist

labels but would have colored wax to make up colors of the rainbow.

Starting May 29th, a different color would be released each week until the end of June. After

June, the candles will not be available for sale. The second half of the campaign is that a portion

of the proceeds made from the collection would be made to a LGBTQ charity of her choosing.

As she is doing right now raising money for a scholarship, attaching a charitable donation to the

campaign would make it even more special.

Media

The activation will run through Instagram and Facebook. As for posting, there will be an

unveiling of the color each week on Monday. These pictures can be from influencers and content

creators or just photos Courtney has taken herself. On Wednesday, there should be a scent profile

detailing what the candle smells like and what event it could be good for. All other posts

regarding the color of the week are entirely up to the owner.

The next part would be using LGBT Pittsburgh influencers to participate in the activation.

Influencers can make posts about the candles using hashtags such as #smelltherainbow or

#ssrevealtherainbow. Some potential influencers include:

● @Split_owl: twitch streamer, 3k followers on Instagram

● @tcapelli: Instagram influencer, 162k followers

● @bczape: realtor and influencer, 5k followers

● @alorachateux: pgh drag queen, 5k followers

● @alli_bellairs: tiktok and instagram influencer, 215k on ig and 767.4k on TikTok

This would be a good time to invest in some paid social ads. Running a paid ad on both

Instagram and Twitter would be easy considering she already uses Meta Business Suite. It would

also boost her campaign more which would help increase brand awareness. Owned media would

obviously be every photo and video that she personally takes. Earned media would include all

posts made by creators she chooses to use or users who choose to share about her collection. It

would also include any media outlets that could reach out to her or her to them to push the

campaign out more. Shared media would include the rates of engagement from the posts.

The campaign would be measured in two ways. To measure brand awareness, it would be

measured through engagement, reach, and earned media. Reach would show how many people

that have been made aware of the brand, engagement will show how many people chose to

interact with the brand and earned media shows how far the brand has reached in terms of

organic earned media. To measure increased sales, we would track conversions, lead generation,

and obviously website sales. Conversions and lead generation will show how customers made

their consumer journey and if they followed through with it. Website sales will show us the

volume of orders made.

Top Instagram Posts (By Engagement)

Top Facebook Posts (By views)

Top TikTok Posts (By views)

Mock Logo
Sample Instagram with a pop of color
Social Media Calendar