As a business owner, as an entrepreneur, we want to ensure that if we are spending time on Instagram that we’re getting, you know, bang for our buck. That ultimately, we’re getting a return on our time invested. One of the biggest queries I hear every day is, ‘Can I actually generate sales on Instagram. Is this the platform for me to generate sales and start making money’

 

Quite often people haven’t tried it so they ask that question, but if they have tried it before, then often I’m met with  ‘I’ve tried making sales on Instagram, it doesn’t work. People don’t buy’ 

 

I’m going to totally disagree with that. 

 

I actually think that if we go out with the intention of looking to sell consistently, then. yes we are probably going to get rebuffed, and people are going to say no, that’s not for me, I’m not interested. 

 

One of the biggest mistakes that people make on social media (and especially Instagram), and I’ve shared this to countless times. And it’s certainly one of the biggest mistakes that I made when I first started on social media, not just on Instagram but on other platforms as well, is getting on there, and then because I had a business, because I felt like an entrepreneur I thought actually I need to start making some sales, I need to I need to sell – so we go out there and we start to sell. 

 

Stop – it totally doesn’t work. 

 

The reason is, that we’ve suddenly forgotten about why people actually go on social media in the first place.  People do not go on social media to be sold to. 

 

People go on social media to be social, to connect with people to learn new things, to see what friends and family are doing, and actually see what’s going on in the wider world, they don’t go on to necessarily make a direct purchase, sometimes people do, but they don’t go on there to be sold to. 

 

We need to do our marketing publicly, and our selling privately.

 

I’ll say that again – we market publicly, and sell privately, and one of the biggest mistakes that we can make is trying to sell to people who aren’t yet ready to buy from us. 

 

You may well have heard the phrase, know like and trust. Well we have to move people through that process of knowing, liking and trusting us. 

 

First people need to be aware of us, then they need to like us, then they can trust us, and then they will eventually purchase from us. 

So how do we actually get people to do that and take that through that process, without being salesy?

 

There is a way to do this. 

 

 

There are three parts of Instagram, and the platform is absolutely perfectly built for this process. Therefore, it’s almost like there’s a hidden sales funnel within Instagram that allows you to generate sales from the platform without being salesy at all. 

 

 

• Attract

 

 

So, there’s three levels. The absolute first thing that we need to do when we’re looking to start generating leads, clients and customers for our business on Instagram, is we need to attract people to our account. Now that sounds really obvious, but the way we attract people is by not chasing and trying to be salesy, the way we attract people is by sharing high quality content, valuable content and useful content that other people want to see. 

 

The more we give people what they want, the bigger, our audience will become, and there’s a great shift within this model that I’m sharing with you, where we become the person who is no longer being influenced by others. 

 

I’m going to show you how to flip it around so you become the person who has the influence and this is a really really powerful position to be in, because then it allows you to share your message and move people through the know like and trust process, so you can start to generate more leads more clients more customers from the Instagram. 

 

So the first step is attracting people by sharing content – our posts, our reels, our carousels,  whatever they may be, we start to get our posts into a wider audience using hashtags, and engaging with relevant content, and all the other strategies I share. 

 

So attracting is the first thing – the bigger the audience, the more attractive we become, the more followers we get to our account, but we do not try to sell to people at this stage. All we’re doing is building our audience; we’re engaging people to move through that know, like and trust process. 

 

 

• Capture

 

 

The next step is where we look to capture people. 

 

The way that we capture people on Instagram is Stories. Instagram stories are not the thing that is going to allow us to build our following, however they are the thing that allows us to connect with and capture our most engaged audience, if you like our, our most engaged followers, people that are raving fans, almost ;).

 

 

The beauty of Instagram stories in step number two, is that it allows us to start to capture people, it becomes very personal. Stories are full screen experience, you can connect with people straight away, it feels like you’re kind of breaking down that fourth wall and communicating with people. Stories are a bit more off the cuff, they’re a bit more relaxed, they’re not so curated and it feels like you get to see behind the scenes of who people really are, what theyr’e really like and that’s ultimately we want to feel like we know, like and trust people. 

 

You can do that through stories. The top 10 to 15% of your followers are going to see your stories on a consistent basis, not all of your followers are going to see your stories so your audience already starts to get smaller. 

 

Just like a funnel – It starts wide at the top (your newsfeed), and gets a little bit narrower as we come into the capture stage (stories) and then in the final step its gets narrower still. 

 

So we attract a wide number of people – our followers, and we capture the top 10 to 15% through stories.. 

 

Within our Instagram Stories, and remember around 600 million people now use Instagram stories every day, there is definitely an audience there. There are definitely people there that are ready to purchase from you. 

 

So once we move people through attraction, and we captured them in our stories, what we then need to do is transition them from Instagram stories, into a private conversation which I talked about just a moment ago (market publicly, sell privately). That private conversation may happen on or off Instagram. 

 

 

• The Transition 

 

 

If you’ve got to the magical 10,000 followers, then you have the advantage of the stories Swipe Up which will easily help you move people from Instagram to a private conversation. 

 

But I haven’t got the Swipe-Up Feature!’ 

 

If you don’t have 10,000 followers, don’t give up. What do we do instead, is move people into a private conversation in direct messages. In DM;s you can then start to engage people and test people and see if they are ready, or suitable to become a client or customer, or at least know more about your product and service. 

 

Let’s take an example of what this looks like. 

 

 

 

So we’ve been working on attracting people and we’re starting to build our audience, we’ve got 10,000 followers on the platform, we capture the top 10 to 15% of our Instagram stories so if we’re using stories consistently, then this allows us to capture 1000 people. That’s 1000 people every day seeing your Instagram stories to transition. Now, of course, not everybody’s going to take action and that’s okay, but if 10% of those people take action, that’s 100 people every day taking action by sending you a direct message or swiping up to your online store, moving from being in your followers, more engaged through your Instagram stories, and then transitioning them off the platform, or into a private conversation about your products and services. 

 

But what if you’ve only got 1000 followers? 

 

Well the top 10% of our audience takes action, that’s 100 –  so 100 people see our stories, the top 10% of those take action – that’s 10 people every day. 

 

Imagine 10 people every single day, who are connecting with you in direct messages, who are swiping up to your ad to your online store, or to a webinar registration or booking a phone call, whatever that might be. 

 

Suddenly, this becomes very, very powerful. 

 

For this to work you need to be consistent.  

 

 

For this to work you need to know the structure of how you get your stories right –  what is the perfect structure to be able to move people through the process, so they take action. 

 

And naturally, for this to work, you need to know about the types of conversations to have where we’re not being too pushy, whilst equally not being too friendly – not just chatting for the sake of chatting. 

 

The conversation that we have has a purpose, we’re clear on the end goal, and we can move people smoothly through the process to buy. And the real beauty of this comes if you continue to run this on a daily basis. 

 

People will gradually move through each of these stages, so that no matter whether they are totally new to your account, and they have never come across you before, all the way to if they’ve been following you for a number of months, maybe in a number of years, and then now in a position where they’re ready to move forward and work with you more closely. 

 

This is one of the most powerful things that we’ve ever used in our business is one of the strategies and processes that have helped our clients generate thousands of dollars, directly on the Instagram platform.

 

It’s extremely powerful, and it works really really well, so I hope now you can start to see how this would work for your business, and it works no matter what business, what product, what service you have, the process is the same.

 

If you can see how this could work for your business, your product, your service and you’d like more information, just send me a message on Instagram, or send me an email,  I would love to have a chat with you further about how you can get this set up for your business and if done the right way, then it’s going to have radical, radical impact on your business.