The Business Fixer Blog by Wes Schaeffer, The Sales Whisperer®

Sue B Zimmerman: How Businesses Use Instagram To Grow Sales

Written by Wes Schaeffer | Sep 07, 2017

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

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

PODCAST INFO:

SUPPORT & CONNECT: Check out the sponsors above; it’s the best way to support this podcast