Episode 66 | How to Improve Your Instagram Marketing & Website Conversions

Sophia Noreen: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another amazing episode of The Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I'm going to be your host for today. And today, we are going to be talking about marketing strategies, specifically, Instagram and how we will use Instagram to drive traffic to our website. And also, drive traffic to our Instagram profile. I think it's undeniable. We have to admit that Instagram is an amazing vehicle to start conversations, to make connections. And I know a lot of people will focus on growing their accounts. They'll look at their following. They will look at their engagement. They'll look at the numbers. But sometimes we forget that when we market with Instagram, we are developing real relationships with real people, and hopefully, that will help translate conversions into your business. And I'm going to give you some real-life examples of how we have been successful at making real relationships and how it's helped with our business, in our product-based business, Also Sophia, and now, with our service side, The Boss It Club.  
 
I'm going to give you some real examples of how you can start using Instagram to really curate your community of like-minded individuals in business or customers who would be willing to purchase your products. So again, Instagram is not just for the service side of the business, Instagram is also for a product business. I think both businesses, products, and services, could benefit from using Instagram as a vehicle to not just market but to build these real relationships. And hopefully, these real relationships will come over to your website and then convert. So let me give you some of these tips, and then at the end, we're going to just touch on what you can do to help optimize your website. That, of course, should be a whole additional episode so we'll just touch on it. And then that way, you are not just driving traffic to a website that doesn't convert. Okay, let's get into it.  

So the first tip I have for you is when you're using Instagram, you really need to consider it to not just be a marketing tool, but a tool that will help you build those relationships. What that means is you need to collaborate with other people on the platform. The more you collaborate, the stronger and stronger you'll build those relationship bonds, and they will then help you penetrate and grow further bonds with more people. And I'll give you a few examples of how we do this in both Boss It Club and Also Sophia. I'm sure you've heard of it. And if you have not, then this will blow your mind, but just doing shout-outs on stories is huge when it comes to the visibility of your profile. For example, you could be the one who initiates a shout-out. You could easily tag somebody in your post and ask them a question, or tag a series of small businesses, for example, and ask them a question. 
 
And we have done this multiple times, and it works really well. When I tag somebody on my story, then they get visibility of that story. It also tells Instagram that, hey, look, this account is drawing in more people, and it's more likely to put the story forward to more individuals. Plus, it's inviting the person you've tagged to reshare your story. Now, this only works if you are a public profile. So again, I should make a note that these tips are really great if you have a public profile on Instagram. I cannot reshare a story from somebody who has a private account. And I may not even see it. It depends on your settings on Instagram, if I'm not following you and you have tagged me in a story, I might not even see it. So just keep that in mind.  
 
When it comes to shouting out, if they're public profiles and I've tagged you, you can then see it and you can reshare that story on your profile. This means that a whole new bucket of people that may not know my account exists has now seen it. So example, I take you on a story, and then you have a thousand people on your profile. And you tag, and then you reshare that story and let's say 30% of your followers see it, so now we have 300 new eyeballs who have the opportunity to see the story, and there you go. So that is the best and easiest thing you can start doing. And if you can do it daily, if not three times a week, try to figure out a way of tagging other businesses and get that ball rolling. The more they see your account, the more they want to engage with you. And the more they build that know, like, and trust factor. So shout-outs are key, and it's really fast, and it can be really fun.  
 
Another great strategy that is very common on social media as a whole, specifically Instagram, is giveaways. You can easily go ahead and collaborate with different businesses, make a giveaway of your products and services that you have to offer, and make a special around it. So for example, with the holidays coming up, Christmas is huge and many people are looking for gifts. So if you're an Etsy shop or you make handmade goods or you curate beautiful products, then you can go ahead and say, hey, let's make, for example, a baby giveaway for the holiday season.  
 
So you may say, okay, I'm going to collaborate with all the businesses that have everything to do with baby and holiday, and we're going to put together a nice basket of treats. And we are going to then post it on all these platforms. And now, there's more visibility to your products, to your business, to your brand. And a call to action is, of course, following all the accounts that are signed up for the giveaway for your chance to win. Plus, tag a couple more friends so that way, there's more visibility of your brand and your products and your offering. And what a great way to not just collaborate, but to get more visibility again. And then, in the end, one lucky winner gets your product in their hand who then has an opportunity to leave a review. So giveaways for a brand and for a business really work well with product-based businesses, but you can do it with service-based businesses if it's within the same niche. For example, let's say you're a wedding planner and you want to give away your services to one lucky winner. You could collaborate with a photographer, you could collaborate with an event planner, and you could collaborate with a florist. And you could put together a beautiful $5,000 package for a lucky bride within a specific geographical area. Just give an example of what you can do and how giveaways are a great way to, again, get visibility and collaborate with other brands.  
 
So those two strategies work fantastic for big collaborations, for smaller collaborations. The giveaway may take a little bit more time to get going, so I would likely try to schedule my giveaways throughout the year. Perhaps, let's say, I'm going to do a giveaway with each holiday season. The last tip I have specifically about Instagram marketing is about commenting and starting conversations, meaningful conversations with anybody who is following your account, even those who are not following your account. Instagram as a social media platform has been designed to have you start conversations below a post or below a reel, or even messaging within direct messages DMs.  
 
If you start those meaningful conversations with each other, with others in the community, or within your Instagram community, you will be not only a pitcher now, but a person behind the post. So make sure that even if you're posting that you are taking the time to find other accounts that are resonating with you, and you are starting to comment on their posts. Liking is fine. Liking the post is great. They don't know who you are until you actually say something in the comments. So take the time. It may be a couple of minutes to an hour a day. Try to find some time and really just go ahead and comment. Okay, I know, again, liking is part of the equation, but the comments are really where people get to know you. And when they get to know you, they're more likely to follow your account, and they're more likely to build that relationship. And then they trust you. They're more likely to recommend your business or your service to others, and they're more likely to purchase from you. So again, the plan with Instagram is not just to focus on numbers, but to curate real relationships with real people.  
 
Okay, so those are the three tips I want to leave with you today. The first was to try some shout-outs on your stories. It doesn't need to be difficult. You just have to find a motivational quote, for example, on another post. Share on your stories and then tag a few friends and be like, this quote is for you and see if they reshare your story. The next one was, try to collaborate for giveaways with other businesses. And the last was two start meaningful conversations within the comments. And remember, we're not just a catalog of posts, we're sitting there and trying to build those relationships. 
 
So now that we have a few tips about how to market on Instagram, what's next? We have to have a call to action. We have to be pushing our audience or followers somewhere. We're a business account. Unless you are closing your transactions within your direct messages, you need to move your potential customer or client of the social media app and move it onto a website, or you need to collect payment. Now, we're not going to go into selling within your direct messages. That's not the game here that we play. We actually have a website of products, which many of you do, and we also have services on an educational platform. So what we want to do now is we want to move our client or customer to another site, and we want them to do something on that site.  
 
This is where it can get tricky. Generally, you're not going to have a lot of people that will leave the social media app and move over to your website. I like to have affiliated accounts built-in or links, like links that are showing me where the customers are coming from or clients are coming from, or I look at the analytics on the backend of my website. Why I'm bringing this up, is because you might be thinking, there's so much work going into Instagram. I'm spending hours each day trying to get my followers to engage with me, community to grow but as soon as they go over to the website because I can see a hundred people are leaving the Instagram app and they're going to my website, but then I have zero sales. General websites have about a 1% to 2% conversion up to 4% to 5% conversion rate when they get your website.  
 
There could be a few other factors that you need to consider when you are developing your website. For product-based businesses, it's really, really important to not only build a know, like, and trust factor for you as a brand owner or brand founder, but also for the product itself. I'll give you an example. People could love me, but I may be developing a handbag, for example, and they may not be convinced that I'm the best handbag owner or designer. So they may not want to buy a handbag from me. But if I have other customers that are saying, this is the best handbag I've ever purchased, this is amazing. Sophia is a great designer. If I have those testimonials coming up when somebody lands on my storefront, on alsosophia.com, for example, then that is going to convince my potential customer and my Instagram follower, perhaps they're an Instagram follower, to go ahead and purchase or complete their purchase. 
 
That is something that I feel like many businesses forget about. Yes, social media is important, but the real transaction and conversion happen on your website. So if your website is leaving some trails of concern or not making your customer feel as confident that you can produce a result when they checkout, then they may be like, eh, I'm just going to be her friend on social media. Subconsciously, that's what will happen. They may not say that out loud, but in reality, that's what will happen because they'll leave your website without checking out. And there you go, you've lost that customer.  
 
Now, there are different ways of bringing them back. If they put something in their cart, you can set up things on different websites. We use Shopify. Shopify has ways of doing abandoned carts. So we can talk about that in another episode of how to recover your failed conversions. But in the end, if you can try to harness some confidence in your customer when they get to your website, then you're more likely to have a successful transaction. We have said in the past, and it's very true. It does take your customer seven to eleven times to be convinced that they want to buy that product. So keep that in mind as well. If you're brand new to them and you have just shown up once and you push somebody to your website, chances are, they may not check out at that point unless it's something of urgency like a holiday product, or if it's something that they have high confidence in like a brand that they've heard of before, you have to keep that in mind. The sales cycle for each customer, for each client, will be different depending on different variables. But those are the two largest ones I've seen. Also, the price point is very important. It takes five minutes for me to decide if I'm going to buy something maybe $20 or less, but if it's like a $2,000 product, I might need to visit the website a few more times before I make that purchase.  
 
Okay, so we've spoken about the product. Great. But many of us are also service-based businesses. We have different things that we're offering from professional services to coaching, life coaching and marketing, and being a virtual assistant, and everything in between. So now, as a service, how do we manage conversions on the website? We have spoken about moving people from our social media apps over to our website, and now what? I would say it's similar to products, but there are a few differences. Of course, you can put testimonials on your website. I highly recommend that if it is a website where your intention is for them to check out. But what I actually find more appealing than just sending them to a checkout page is having more interaction with your potential client. Remember, it's a relationship.  
 
So if you're trying to just send them from your social media site to a checkout page or landing page where they check out, chances are the conversion will be really low. Unless you've gone through some dialogue with them on your social media, you've perhaps given them other things to look at and do, perhaps you've given them videos to check out, perhaps they have gotten a referral from you. Those are big considerations when you are thinking about your customer and their sale cycle. So again, you're doing all this fantastic work on Instagram, the things that we've spoken about with collaborations, shout-outs, and giveaways, and having those great, meaningful conversations in comments. Now, they're coming to your website. And as a service provider, I wouldn't send them just to a landing page. I would go ahead and direct them to something else. Because when you're doing a call to action on your Instagram profile, go check out this, go check out that, there should be something that you're always going to invite them to. So go check out this podcast, which is an example, or go check out my blog. What else can they do on that website that will help get them to sign up for something else? Now, I like having them sent up on the mailing list, then we continue to have conversations through email. That is the go-to strategy for us at the moment. We do have a couple of other strategies to help out our followers and our community by getting them back into the business because we find a lot of individuals have a hard time staying motivated, and sometimes they need a little bit more motivation. So we're going to be serving our clients and our community by providing additional resources before we ask for anything back.  
 
For example, as a service-based owner, if you're in real estate and you really want to get this client, you could offer them simple things like a newsletter that gives them updates on what houses are selling in their neighborhood, for example. Or if you are a photographer, you could offer them a free tutorial on how to pose. There are so many things, but the point is, selling to your community or your followers right away may come off as a bit more aggressive than you wanted to appear. I always say it's great if your customer or client is 75% convinced that they want to purchase something from you before they land on your website. And then when you get to the website, you're just really closing the deal.  
 
So if somebody comes to your website as a service provider and checks you out on your profile and on the profile, check out here. That's really aggressive. But if it says, get access to your free home assessment, that might be a bit more appealing. So many things to consider for service-based owners, and it gets a bit trickier because, of course, not one solution will fit all. And it really depends on the industry that you're in. For product-based businesses, it's a bit easier because it doesn't matter what product you have. You can place great apps on your Shopify website. We used Loox, and we use Sales Pop up, which is social proof. Both of these apps provide social proof so your customers know that people are actively shopping from your website and getting great reviews and great results. 
 
Okay, so we have gone through a lot of information as always. I hope, I hope you can use a few of these strategies. Remember, collaboration is key on Instagram. So try to do your shout-outs on stories regularly. Think about a few great other brands and businesses you could collaborate with for giveaways. And don't forget to have those meaningful conversations in comments. Remember, it's not good enough to just like a post. And I know it takes time and energy, but make it a fun game and just think of it as this is a modern-day way of networking. Especially with the pandemic, networking really came to a halt. And social media is an example of social networking. When your customer is called off the social media app to go to your website, do an audit of your website and ensure that it is not just selling a product or service, especially if you're a service business, make sure you're warming your audience up so that the conversion is going to be higher when they land on your website.  
 
For product-based businesses, you can call to action to go ahead and check out. But you may need to add examples of social proof to your website to really increase the confidence of your buyer. We want them to be 75% to 80% even, primed, and ready to purchase from you when they land on your website. That way, you just have to convince them a little bit, and you're not doing a huge sell on your website.  
 
Okay, guys, that's all for today. Remember, you can catch us every week. And if you found that this information was extremely helpful, feel free to share it with another business owner or hit like, or subscribe or follow. And we will see you, guys, again next week, same time, same place. Remember, make a plan and take action. And yes, you can have it all. Talk to you later. Bye.