Sue B Zimmerman: How Businesses Use Instagram To Grow Sales

Sep 07, 2017

Wes Schaeffer

The Sales Podcast Marketing Automation Digital Marketing Entrepreneur

Watch your teenagers to determine where to market your business next

Stream below or right-click here to download the episode.

[ LISTEN NOW ON ITUNES ]

Social Media Marketing Tips you'll learn in The Sales Podcast...

Has started 18 businesses
Market, promote, amplify
Used to sell polliwogs as a young girl
Was teaching social media locally
Applied it to her retail business
Tried everything...including FourSquare and Animoto
Her teenage twin daughters told her about Instagram (follow the leads of your kids to see what is the next hot trend)
This was around 2012, and her retail sales blew up (jewelry, etc, in an affluent seasonal resort)
Loves teaching
Used to teach Pinterest, which is primarily a bookmarking site that creates backlinks
You don't share selfies on Pinterest
Instagram is more of an emotional pull and connection
Put your YouTube videos on Pinterest because the backlinks are so valuable
Instagram is your digital magazine
- There's a promise on the cover of a magazine
- You buy the magazine to benefit from the promise on the cover
Stay in your lane, your niche on Instagram, which is why she has a business, a personal, and a team account on Instagram
Each serves a different purpose
The description of your photo—2,200 characters—doesn't have to match the image. Make it a micro-blog like her "The Instagram Expert"
Go deeper
The theory / philosophy of creating an effective funnel on Instagram
- Match your business name to you
- Have a good photo
- Have a good logo
- Have a good bio in a creative way, i.e. not your LinkedIn bio
- A good URL with a good Call To Action
- Not spammy or salesey
- Provide value: inform, inspire, entertain
- Nurture your leads, and you can eventually close big deals that started from your Instagram account
- Sue B Zimmerman nurtures her leads with Ontraport
- Show up, hustle, and put in your time
You have to cross-pollinate with your leads who opt-in
Include video on your blogs
Bring people back to your published content
Your site is your home base. It's what you own.
Published content is the site, while promotional content is social media.
You only need three promotional sites to do this right. You can't do everything right by being on every platform.
Meet your clients where they are
On "blog day," she treats it like a launch
- Animated Gifs
- Updates link in her Instagram bio
- Goes live on Instagram at the same time each week (stays live for 24 hours) and 3x viewers on replay
- Does not repurpose her videos. Wants followers to watch soon for fear of missing out
Everything she does feeds into her main goals. This is not all giggles.
They batch videos (6-10) with outfit changes, intros, outros, scripting, transcription, blog post creation
- 6-10 hours per blog post
- Makes it so good you come back for more
People make too little money because they complicate things
Show up consistently
Spends money on professional photos annually
Left Periscope and Snapchat
The magic is in the video
She'll go live on Facebook at the same time every two weeks
Play to your strengths. If you're an introvert, then create great written content.
It's okay to go live wherever you are to "take your followers with you"
Creates micro-groups of 15 on Instagram
Strive to surprise and delight
You can be an affiliate and recommend tools that make sense to grow your income
Take the #SueBMadeMeDoIt challenge - search it on Instagram
- Let her know your favorite thing you learned on this
- Tag @SueBZimmerman and @SalesWhisperer

Listen To Previous Episodes of The Sales Podcast

Links Mentioned In The Sales Podcast

Get Sue B Zimmerman's 20-page guide on Instagram Strategy
Follow Sue B Zimmerman on Twitter
Subscribe to Sue B Zimmerman's YouTube channel
Enroll in Sue B Zimmerman's "Ready. Set. Gram." lifetime access course

Sales Growth Tools Mentioned In The Sales Podcast

Hire The Best Speaker for your sales meeting or marketing conference
Take The CRM Quiz: get a free consultation with me
Donate: Just because you like the show, the no-bullshit approach, and don't want to buy a book, software, or The Make Every Sale Program.
The Sales Agenda: take control of every sales opportunity like a pro.
Leadferno: Turn lurkers into leads
Founders Card: Get $20,000 in free processing from Stripe, save 15% on Bose, and save on hotels, travel, car rentals, you name it.
Send Drunk Emails: ...that get opened and get you paid!
Phone Burner: work the phone like a machine so you can be a human when you connect.
Apollo: Find targeted accounts and send cold email at scale to them and hit the inbox with Apollo