Turn Followers Into Customers With These Simple Tips

Turn Followers Into Customers With These Simple Tips

In the past few years, Instagram has developed into a juggernaut of a marketing platform. Everyone is on Instagram, from small businesses to conglomerates, and they all are racing to increase their followers, likes, and comments metrics!

According to Facebook statistics, 500 million users log on to Instagram every day and spend an average of 30 minutes on the platform.

Right now there’s a huge opportunity for those who take action.

If you are a business owner with an Instagram page but somehow struggle to find leads, conversions, and growth on the platform, you’ve made it to the right place.

This article is going to show you the best methods of conversion and the biggest mistakes you need to watch out for when promoting your business on Instagram.

To start off let’s look at what you NEED to be doing to kickstart the process:

The DO’s of Instagram Conversion

Be active with your followers in the community

The key here is to go from building an audience to creating a community of engagers. Remember, Instagram is more than a one-way platform. Audiences want to enjoy your content, but what they really need is to be a part of it. Don’t forget that you’re behind the screen and you have the power to control their actions and influence the steps they take on their journey.

To create an active community on Instagram, remember:

  • Reply to comments
  • Reply to DMs
  • Host giveaways and competitions
  • Encourage follower engagement in your content with call-to-actions and questions
  • Start conversations
  • Post on national days

Switch it up

Consistency is important, especially if you’re a smaller business looking to gain traction and successfully convert your audience into customers. However, sticking to the same content over and over is going to leave your follower’s losing interest. Nobody wants to scroll past 100 images that add nothing to their life. Instead, audiences want familiarity AND uniqueness. It sounds like a tricky combination to pull off, but it IS possible.

To ensure you’re sticking to a regular positing schedule whilst remembering to switch up you need to:

  • Experiment with different formats: Post stories, reels and both short/long form videos to vary the kind of content you give to your followers. This could even mean going live for your followers (building that active community at the same time). To start off, add in some carousels to your content as this is super simple!
  • Vary the content you use in your posts: Filmed a great ad for your business? Show off behind the scenes. Get creative with emojis and stickers and add new people to the mix. As a local business, reinforcing the idea of community is important, so don’t be afraid to involve others in your content.

Become more than just your content to your followers

For a local business like yours, a large number of your followers might be those who live within your area or even come into your physical store if you have one. This makes showing who you are behind the brand even more important.

Don’t be afraid to show the real you and connect with the local audiences you have around you.

Get vulnerable and open up. Consumers love reality and you’ll find, we as a society are VERY nosey, so finding out more about the owners or team behind a brand is crucial if you want to maintain audience attention and start building a relationship with them.

To successfully be you, try this:

  • Incorporate pictures of a day at work into your content with the team involved
  • Reply to comments with the name of the team member who replied at the end of it help create that community
  • Use stories to document genuine business life

These 3 tips are sure to take your business from followers on Instagram to traffic on your website.

By keeping it real, switching it up and getting active online, conversion is guaranteed.

Now, it’s time to take a look at the mistakes you don’t want to be falling into:

The DON’T’S of Instagram Conversion

Avoid over-selling

The most crucial part of transforming followers into customers is by making the transition feel seamless for them. Your audience does not want to be bombarded by boring sales pitches, they want value and relatability. And as a local business, this means incorporating ‘filler posts’ your community can engage with OUTSIDE of the sphere of sales, such as:

Weekend/Weekday posts: Use these as a check in with your audience to see how they are and/or update them on what’s going on for the business that day.

Quotes or sayings: You can’t go wrong with a bit of motivation every now and then to help push through the day!

Tips, secrets or how to’s: Always think about adding value. Help your audience learn more and positively change their life.

Doing more than just pushing sales will help you convert without it feeling like your customers have to do any challenging work or be convinced to take action.

Posting inconsistent content

While it’s important to switch up the format of your content, don’t end up losing your brand image in the midst of it. Sticking to a general theme, tone and voice is important for your followers to get to know your business more and want to become a follower.

  • Make sure your posts flow well and represents your vision.
  • Stick to brand colors
  • Stick to ONE tone of voice for cohesive purposes

Not engaging with your followers

For audiences of businesses, Instagram isn’t just a window shop. It’s a place to interact, learn, chat and so much more. So, why limit yourself by not returning the favour? If you’re a small local business, building a positive reputation and good rapport with your followers will lead to more people visiting your page.

Consumers eat with their eyes and love a place where they feel valued, appreciated, and can get something out of it. So, ENGAGE! Get stuck into the community you’ve created and interact with your followers.

Conclusion

If you're a local business trying to convert your followers into customers, don't sweat it, you've got this!

Creating great content is all about the strategies you use to improve the customer experience even more, and by monitoring your analytics and clarifying your objectives on a daily basis, incorporating these tips into your marketing will be easier than ever!

We want to help you market your business in new, unique ways! Click here to sign up to meet with Jay Vics on the Meet the Experts podcast. Share your knowledge and get your name out there!

Instagram and Influencer Trends That Can Help Your Business Drive Engagement

Instagram and Influencer Trends That Can Help Your Business Drive Engagement

three gadget of tablet, laptop, and smartphone showing three popular social media apps like facebook, whatsapp, and instagram

Instagram is often overlooked as a social media platform due to its nature being entirely ‘images’ based. However, this fact alone is what makes Instagram very powerful – it allows you to convey much more emotion and to really make a product or a lifestyle look desirable.

Not only that, but Instagram is the second largest social network behind Facebook. That’s a pretty impressive stat, so you really shouldn’t leave it out of your plans!

In 2018, expect more small businesses than ever to jump aboard the Instagram marketing train. The eye-catching format is easy to use, and provides businesses with tools to keep their audiences engaged and informed.

New features and toolsets, like Instagram Stories, have also expanded what the platform can do for small business owners. Thanks to Instagram’s powerful advertising tools, evolving features, and highly active audiences, small businesses can use the platform to make big gains.

To help your business prepare its digital marketing strategy for the year ahead, take note of the following Instagram and influencer marketing trends that have nearly every small business owner saying, “Oh, that’s Insta-worthy!”

More Small Businesses Using Instagram Marketing

Small businesses have driven huge growth on Instagram. This includes growth of both unpaid organic account posts and paid advertising use.

According to Forbes, Instagram now has over 8 million business profiles. The platform saw 500% growth in the number of business accounts in just a few months last year.

Instagram execs credit the majority of this growth to small business users. Setting up an account is easy, and it’s also just as simple to begin using paid advertising tools to promote posts.

Why are small businesses drawn to Instagram? Because huge audiences login every day, often several times a day. There were over 500 million monthly Instagram users and 300 million daily active users around this time last year.

Now, with the advent of features like Instagram Stories, that number has likely soared even higher.

Businesses can therefore use Instagram to get huge reach for their campaigns or fulfill brand awareness goals with just a little bit of effort.

Influencer Marketing Benefits for Small Businesses Stack Up

digital generated devices on desktop, with responsive design influencer marketing profile on screen. all screen graphics are made up.

Big brands aren’t the only ones who use influencers to achieve marketing goals anymore. The ability for social media personalities to drive engagement and direct attention can benefit small businesses, too.

According to a recent study, 94% of marketers from a range of company sizes found that influencer marketing programs are successful.

Because influencers can pique their audience’s interests and motivate action, campaign goals like conversions or product awareness become much easier to achieve. Twitter claims that just under half of social media users trust recommendations and product reviews posted by influencers.

That power likely explains why some business owners found that influencer marketing generates 11 times greater ROI than other digital marketing channels.

Micro-Influencers Take on Huge Importance with Small Audiences

Some influencers with a million plus followers like Michelle Phan have taken on celebrity status. They get invited to red carpet events and appear on mass broadcast TV ads.

As these average people become megastars, a clear distinction emerges between them and other influencers. Marketing experts have begun to split influencer types into multiple categories as a result.

“Macro-influencers” like Phan, Kim Kardashian and King Bach have millions of followers and a huge range of topics they cover. “Micro-influencers” have a small following of a few hundred to a few thousand people but often follow a much more niche focus.

Small businesses have realized that micro-influencers are not only cheaper to work with, but they also drive campaign goals more effectively. Micro-influencers have this power because their audience feels stronger connections and finds the content posted more directly relevant to their interests.

You can see this connection in micro-influencer engagement rates. Influencers with less than 1,000 followers can engage 8% of their audience on average, while influencers 10 million+ followers only get “likes” from 1.6% of their audience, and an even lower frequency of comments and shares.

Put simply: small business owners can work with micro-influencers to connect more authentically to audiences and drive more consistent action.

Instagram Stories and Live Video Make Engagement a Daily Affair

tablet with an instagram photo on the screen

Most brands generally avoid posting on Instagram more than twice a day, except for on special occasions. Their reasons include diminishing returns and a fear of oversaturating their audience.

But, two new Instagram capabilities have begun to change that: stories and live video.

Live video can encourage people to watch content for eight times longer compared to pre-recorded video. Instagram stories displays content that gets deleted after 24 hours similarly sparks our love of authentic experiences and our FOMO (fear of missing out).

Instagram stories provide a fun and unique way to engage followers and drive traffic to your web- site. Many businesses have yet to adopt Instagram Story as part of their marketing strategy.  However, you can be an early adopter and reap the benefits right now.

Instagram might have started as a fun mobile app, but it has turned into an extremely valuable and powerful marketing tool for companies that know how to use it.

If you create a compelling profile, use hashtags appropriately. Take advantage of new options like Instagram Stories. You can use Instagram to build brand awareness and attract new customers.

“Over 200 million people use Instagram Stories each month,” says Entrepreneur, “which is over 50 million more than those who use Snapchat — and Instagram Stories is just one year old! At this rate, nearly half of all Instagram users will be using Stories by the end of 2018.”

Businesses interested in driving attention towards certain campaigns or maintaining more active engagement with audiences can turn to Stories and Live video to accomplish these goals.

Increasing Demand for Brand Safety and Proof of ROI

The double-edged sword to influencer marketing is that some brands worry about influencers staining their reputation.

Video game streamer PewDiePie, who has the largest YouTube subscriber base of any channel, caused waves after repeatedly using extremely offensive language in his content. Brands that collaborated with PewDiePie had to cut their ties and make statements condemning his actions.

Since influencers are not brand employees, business owners invite a bit of risk when they collaborate with them.

The best way to avoid controversy is to look to influencers’ past behaviors. Ask questions before collaborating in any capacity. Make it clear that your relationship is dependent on a positive image for your business.

Similarly, tie any relationships you have with influencers to concrete KPIs, including ROI. It’s always better to start small with a relationship. After that, establish proof of ROI before committing marketing dollars to a true collaboration.

For instance, try sending an influencer a free gift or just a kind request to highlight your latest campaign. If you like what they do with the information, you can work toward more collaborative content or even an endorsement-type relationship.

Trends in Instagram and Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses Can Help Your Brand Take Off Next Year!

Remember, Instagram is not about instant conversions or links. This is about the long-term benefit, so rate your success in terms of likes, follows and comments – not profit.

Likewise, remember that this is a ‘young’ and ‘hip’ crowd. You need to get to know your actual audience, but you should also get to know the Instagram audience more generally. What you’ll find is that Instagram is a place where ‘in your face marketing messages’ don’t go down well. So, don’t do that!


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