There are two things I am sure of, first one is that you want to make more money by converting more followers into customers. And the second one is that you are tired of stupid tactics and strategies that are all over the internet, ideas that have nothing new to say.
If you are tired of those stupid tips and are looking for a practical strategy to make more money, this article is all you need.
So let’s get right into it and waste no more time.
The golden key to turn followers into customers
According to Satista, Instagram has over 854.5 million users and the numbers are still going up.
By looking at this number, you can already guess that Instagram has become a MUST for any business, and it deserves to be treated just like you treat a business.
Every professional business knows everything about their customers, from how and where to find them and the journey it takes for a cold lead to turn into a warm lead and then a customer.
If you are not familiar with this customer journey, don’t worry. Because we are going to explain it to you in a really easy way.
The golden key is to be aware of your customer’s journey and lead them through it the right way!
What is an Instagram sale funnel?
Let’s talk simply! A sale funned is the journey that your customers take since they meet your brand until they buy your product.
To be more precise, a sale funnel has 4 stages:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
In the following, we are going to tell you what they are, and how to optimize them in 3 parts.
After reading the whole article, not only you can boost your growth but convert old and new followers to loyal customers.
The first Phase of turning Instagram followers into customers
Your first mission in growing a business account on Instagram is to fill it with as many relevant people as possible.
The more relevant people you put in your Instagram funnel equals to more people that get to the bottom of your funnel which is sales.
The only way to enter these people into your funnel is by grabbing their attention and holding it as long as possible.
Here are a couple of ways you can do this:
- Relevant striking visuals (Beautiful, high-quality photos and entertaining videos)
- Develop a consistent posting strategy (based on the number of your followers 15-30/month and more if you have a really large audience) that has two things:
- Great Design
- A Lot Of Value
- Use popular hashtags and the optimized number is:
- 3 Small-sized Hashtags
- 3 medium-sized hashtags
- 3 large-sized hashtags
Keep in mind that your content must be in a way that pushes your audience to the next stage of the funnel. Try using:
- Engaging Content
- Educational Content
- Inspirational Content
- Funny Content (Related to your niche)
- User-Generated Content
Bonus tip: Another great way to make sure that you give them a little help to press that follow button is to run contests and giveaways.
You should also make sure that the content you are providing is what your followers like, and Instagram insights can help you to do that.
We will talk about it more in our next Phase which is keeping them engaged (Interest+desire) and taking them a step further from being followers to customers.
The second phase of turning Instagram followers into customers
In part one, we talked about building the top of your funnel with high-quality, compelling content. now its time to get those new followers to engage and take another step down your funnel towards your paid offering.
Here is where you need to keep an eye on your engagement rate that is the number of people that actively like, comment, save and share your post.
Having 2k followers is amazing, but if you are getting only 20 likes, this is not a good sign.
In other words, having a large number of followers is amazing, but its just the first step toward your goal, the first step is all it is.
There are really simple ways to make sure you are keeping your followers engaged:
- Replying to comments
- Asking questions in your posts and your comments
- Including a strong call to action
Post captions can play a really important part in your business. It might be your post that captures their attention, but its the comments that can catch or lose their interest.
You’ve got to keep them hooked by entertaining or offering value consistently.
A good Instagram caption:
- Gives your audience context
- Adds personality to your brands voice
- Inspires your followers to take action
Lets talk about CTA a little bit more.
Please don’t make every CTA, check the link in bio, it takes people off the platform and Instagram doesn’t like it at all.
Some times you can use simple call to actions like double-tap, or tell me what you think, or tag a friend who needs to see this.
Your CTA should be more about creating engagement, than to generate sale
Try to use longer captions more often, but keep in mind to use spaces and breaks to make your post more digestible.
You can also use emojis to make sure that you can distinguish your captions and help your audience feel more related to your post.
One of the last things that you really need to do is to schedule your posts ahead of time so that you are not writing your captions at the heat of the moment.
There are plenty of free Instagram tools that help you do that.
This helps you to prepare better content and a really well though strategy or way to keep them engaged.
Remember:
Your only mission here is to keep them engaged and interested in your content, and a little bit of creativity doesn’t kill anyone.
The third phase of turning Instagram followers into customers
Now its time to get down to business and convert them into business.
Remember, you can skill the two previous phase, but you probably wont get as many conversion as you can by taking them to through the whole funnel.
People in this phase have a couple of things in common:
- They have been following you for a while
- Frequently engage with your post
- Have a strong interest in your product or brand
All they are waiting for is to see the right post that leads them toward your landing page.
Although, you can promote your product and make your sale happen, you can get more out of this process.
You can design a beautiful landing page and get a lead such as email or phone number that can help you even sell more in the future.
All you need to do is to add another step before a promotion post, which is offering a high-value content like a free ebook, an hour of consulting or even a coupon code.
Don’t forget to have a STRONG call-to-action post or caption to get people go through your mobile-friendly landing page and actually give you that lead.
This is where they are ready for sale, and not only that but are at your grasp for future promotions.
How to control your funnel
You might be wondering how to control your funnel, or in other words how to make sure that you are on the right track?
Well, depending on your goal, you need to develop KPI’s in different phases of your Instagram funnel.
Here are a couple of KPI’s that are worth monitoring:
- Follower count
- Number of likes, comments per post
- Number of people clicking the link in your bio
- Number of conversions from your landing page
- Number of leads (Emails-phone numbers) you get
- Any other relevant numbers
Just keep in mind that you should always keep an eye on your funnel and optimize it wherever necessary.
Conclusion
If you are looking to make more money from your Instagram account, you must look at it more than just a platform and as a real business.
The best way to keep things in control is to develop your Instagram sale funnel, write everything down, pay close attention to your KPI’s.
Now that you know how to create your Instagram funnel, which one of the tactics mentioned above you have tried?
How were the results?
