Optimizing your Instagram channel for direct sales will reap huge rewards.
This article will cover how to use Instagram with your direct sales marketing business. The purpose of this article is to turn your Instagram account into an income opportunity.
By ignoring the fundamentals of Instagram marketing, you allow the competition to succeed.
Marketing on Instagram increases your website traffic and the number of visits per month. Yes, Instagram is that powerful! (Source: affiliatemarketing.com)
Here are the best tips for all affiliate marketers. If you’re trying to sell your direct sales products using Instagram, you should keep reading.
#1: Tell people what to do
Nothing will grow your business faster than telling your audience what you want them to do. This is a call to action. It works, it’s time-tested, and it’s true. In the fast-paced world of social media, you need to show your audience how you can help them. Then you immediately tell them where to go to get that help. In fact, your audience will appreciate the “straight to the point” tactic.
From our first-hand experience, Instagram is a unique social media channel in this regard. A typical person on Instagram will look at an image, check the description, and follow the call to action. Simple as that. To get sales on Instagram, you need to make a call to action “Click the link in the profile if you want to learn more!”
From experience, when the call to action precedes the amazing offer, you get more leads.
Sounds amazing, right? Well guess what? Works.
There are many ways to engage your audience. It all starts with putting the right images and calls to action. This leads to tip #2.
#2. Identify your audience preference
Images that appeal to customer preferences are the most important step in monetizing businesses on Instagram.
Finding, targeting and staying relevant to your audience is the critical factor. And if you get the most income from this platform.
Identifying the preference of your audience is a huge topic. I’ve seen what happens when business owners post the wrong content for the intended audience. Let’s just say it’s not pretty!
Fortunately, you are reading this with some understanding of your audience’s preferences. So this should be simple. Take a look at your Instagram feed and see the popular posts. What has received comments, shares and likes? Your audience will have the same tastes and preferences as you. Start each Instagram post with the question “Would this image pique my interest?” “Would I buy this?” If you answer yes, then you have found some great content.
Consider going to your competitor’s pages as well. Take a look at their popular posts and images. As you find images that your niche audience interacts with, create similar ones for your page.
Once you’ve established your audience preferences, it’s time to move on to tip #3.
#3 Identify profit locations
Your monetization options on Instagram are still limited when you represent a direct sales company. Most direct selling companies do not allow their affiliates to purchase advertising space. Read the fine print on your affiliate membership. Paid advertising is most likely not allowed.
So what are you supposed to do?
Do you remember tip #1? The call to action? Your affiliate situation demands that you use a powerful call to action for a profit placement.
But wait. Don’t post your affiliate link in this location, create an intriguing giveaway instead. Your goal is to bring the audience to the content. You can post this free link on Instagram and any social media. This link will collect emails from people who want more information.
What is the content? Content is information that your niche audience wants. If you represent the makeup industry, then perhaps a giveaway on how to contour is a good choice. If you represent the health and wellness industry, then low fat recipes would work.
The purpose of these profit placements is to take your Instagram audience and convert them into leads. Make a call to action to “Click link in profile” in the description. This is your profit location. You then move from the profit location to a sales funnel. Read on for tip #4.
#4: Educate, Variety and Repeat
Once you’ve led your audience to the profit location, you need to have a plan of action. Take the leads that wanted your freebie and turn them into a product sale.
We suggest an approach that uses three different features.
Start with education.
A potential customer who wants your gift is a “gift seeker.” Until you continue to educate yourself on your valuable products, they will never buy.
Give them the information they need and start building trust.
Give variety to your leads.
A critical element in turning the lead into a sale is having a multi-step follow-up sequence. Create a marketing plan that incorporates email marketing, discounts, and valuable “how-to” graphics. Think of infographics that teach them a new technique with your products. Variety also means including invitations to webinars or other live events hosted by you. This is the key to getting them to sell, what works for some people won’t work for others. It must have enough variety to capture sales from many different personalities.
Repetition.
Humans need to hear the same message an average of 12 times before it is finally triggered. You can feel exhausted by repeating information about your products over and over again. Understandable. But you have to realize that your customers didn’t listen to you the first time. They have not listened to you the second, or the third, or the fourth time!
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your “before and after” image on Instagram will get you a sale. The purpose of Instagram marketing is to bring the prospect into a sales environment. This is where you talk to them over and over again. If your audience heard the sales pitch the first time, you would have already had thousands of sales.
Since that’s not the case, it’s likely they didn’t hear your speech. Remove them from the social media channel with a call to action. Direct them to a ‘profit location’. Launch a variable marketing campaign and talk to them over and over again.
#5 Analysis and Optimization
Finally, analytics and optimization should be a big part of your Instagram strategy. There are two different analysis techniques that you need to understand. Quantitative (measurement) and Qualitative (non-measurement).
Quantitative
This is where you can measure engagement with each image/post. Create (or use an analytics app) where you can calculate engagement for each post.
Your desired measure will be the number of clicks on your link in the profile.
You’ll want to measure how many of those clicks converted to leads (sent you an email). Quantitative measurement shows you the earning potential. When each of those leads follows your marketing campaign (tip #4), you have a good starting point.
Your goal is to make effective Instagram campaigns. So the more data you can add to this analysis, the more effective it will be.
Day/time of day published
Content type: link, photo, video, etc.
· Ratio of link clicks to lead captures.
Use this strategy to build a picture of which efforts are profitable and which are a waste of time.
Qualitative
Qualitative analysis looks at the aspects of your marketing that are not numbers. Your qualitative analysis will cover the aesthetics of your business. Here are some questions to get you started.
· Am I providing enough information? Does my content support my efforts (by giving people enough calls to action)?
Does my free link for Instagram platform work well?
· Considering everything I know about marketing, do I consider myself a “spammer”?
Am I offering real value to my target audience?
These qualitative measurements should be one of the most important considerations. Are you paying enough attention to the service you offer or are you just trying to make money? Trust us. People know the difference between a salesperson and someone who leads with courage.
The only way you will generate sales is by being the value leader first through qualitative analysis. The more value you give away, the more success you will experience.
This process is long.
You can feel safe aggressively promoting your direct selling products on social media. Again, trust us. Take the time to represent yourself as the value leader and you’ll reap greater profits in the long run.
Conclusion
You have read 5 tips to monetize your direct sales business using Instagram.
1. Tell people what to do
2. Identify the preferences of your audience
3. Identify the location of the gain
4. Education, variety and repetition
5. Analysis and optimization
Follow these steps and you will be head and shoulders above your competition in the industry. Direct selling is profitable on social networks. But first you need to show that it’s beneficial to your audience.
Now you know what thousands of people will never understand! Put it into action today, you’ll be glad you did.
