← Call Her Creator with Katelyn Rhoades
Call Her Creator with Katelyn Rhoades
Ep. 42: Turning your Instagram Followers into Loyal Paying Customers
00:25:41
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What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Call Her Creator, powered by Stan. I'm Kaitlyn Rhodes and I am so excited to have you guys here today. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you are new here, Call Her Creator is all about making money doing what you love online. I'm here to give you Instagram growth tips. Maybe sometimes we'll talk about Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, all the social media channels that you love and use. And we always talk about how to either grow your following or make money while doing it. So I'm really excited for today's episode because we are going to be diving in to how to actually turn those followers into paying customers. So you might be growing your account, you might be getting those followers that are attracted to your content and they're DMing you, but you just haven't made a sale yet. So today I'm going to talk to you guys about strategies that I've used to make money from my Instagram profile that they're easy to implement. I think the biggest thing is getting out of your head when it comes to making money online. And that was probably one of the biggest things that I struggled with in the beginning. But we'll talk about my personal story and how you guys can implement these strategies into your everyday posting schedule. Now, before we get started, I need you to download this podcast episode because what that does is one, you'll get a notification for next week. When next week's episode comes up, you'll get a little pop up on your phone saying, hey, episode 42 is out, or whichever episode it is, and that lets me know that you are liking this content that I'm putting out. This is how we measure the success of the podcast is through you. Downloading the podcast and leaving me a review is really nice too. So if you want to go do that, I would especially be grateful. So before we dive into today's episode, I want to tell you guys a little short story. I was talking with a client last week and I hadn't heard from this client in a while. Actually, like, we're. We. We worked together probably two years ago, and I've been following her journey on Instagram ever since. Like, we became friends because I'm cool like that and she's cool like that. But I noticed that for several months she hasn't been posting like she was like, after we had our one on one together, she was out there killing it. I saw her posting regularly. I got excited for her post, but I noticed, you know, she'd just been a little bit quiet. Now, she did have a baby, and I was like, you know what? Maybe her having a baby, that's hard to juggle. Both. I get it. I have two kids, but I knew something was up, but I wasn't going to press her. So then fast forward a little bit. She actually reached out to me. She is wanting to be coached again, which I'm super excited about because I'm working on a coaching kind of program that I want to do. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is perfect. You can be my guinea pig. So we got to talking and she's like, you know, I got in my head a little bit, and I was like, yeah, I've noticed you haven't been posting like you used to. What's. What's going on? Turns out she was with her friends, and one of her friends made, like, a slick comment about her posting. And I know we've all been there where you are probably killing it on Instagram. You're posting consistently, you're getting traction, and you think you're doing a really good job. And then you. You have a friend or acquaintance that just comes and burst your bubble. They're like, oh, yeah, I see your post. Why are you doing that? Or sometimes they won't even say it like that. Like, they'll. They'll. They'll just come across as they're annoyed with your content or maybe they're tired of following you, or, yeah, I see your posts all the time. I had to mute you. Like, those are real things that I've actually heard, too, from friends. What happened is she heard that from her friend and got in her head so hard and completely just kind of shut herself in and stopped posting regularly. And this really, like, hurt my heart for her, because that's what those people want you to do. Girl. Listen, these people out there that have an opinion on your posting frequency or want to say something smart or sly or slick about you putting yourself out there, that is 1000% a problem that they have within themselves, and it has nothing to do with you. I read something the other day. I can't remember exactly what it said, but it was basically saying, like, if there are people out there that are rude to you or say mean things or write comments, like, snarky comments, that's because you're doing something that they wish that they would have the guts to do. And it's so true. So I kind of just like, got back in her head and. And reminded her, like, hey, her opinion of you, this friend that you have, her opinion of you is none of your business. So don't even worry about it. Don't even think. Think two seconds on it. Keep doing you. She does not pay your bills. She does not, you know, have the work that you have. She doesn't live your everyday life. So if those people have gotten to your head, if this is you, if you've had something similar to this experience, just know that those people get them out of your head. They don't. They are not worth your stress or putting any tension on your heart. You are out there to do you. You are the one that lives with your everyday. You are the one that wants to build success. You are the one that wants to build we for your children, whatever it may be. You're doing it for you and your family, not for these outsiders that are jealous or envious or maybe they are annoyed with your content, but who cares? They're not sitting in your spot. They're not putting themselves out there. They don't know how hard it is that we work. So get those haters out of your head. Just wanted to say that because I've been in that same position before and, you know, we don't talk about it enough. So if that's you, let it go. All right, so today's episode is talking about turning followers into actual paying customers. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see I've started to bring my computer with me because I have really bad ADHD and I'm pretty sure I have short term memory loss. So, like, I'll try to remember everything. I want to tell you guys, but when I'm on the spot, I just, like, my mind goes blank. So if you see me with my computer, that's why I just want to make sure that I don't miss anything for you guys. So I've wrote some notes down. This is gonna be a mix of strategies that you can use, but also like, sales tactics that aren't sleazy. Before we get into it, let me just say one of the tactics I'm gonna talk to you guys about is selling in stories. I'm kind of jumping the gun here. I shouldn't even start out with this, but I have to. One of the biggest mistakes we make as creators, as online entrepreneurs is that we don't talk about our offer enough. And I was in my head the last couple of months because my digital download sales have been so down. But guess what? It's my fau. I haven't been talking about It. I haven't been promoting it, so I actually put my head out there. Last week I talked about my offer for the first time in a long time and I made like 500 bucks in one day just by mentioning it in my stories. So get out of your head. Talk about your offer. People need to see it more than once. They need to see it several times before they make a purchase. So get out of your head and just talk about it. All right, so let's get into some specific tactics that you can put into place to make money from your followers. So first and foremost, I talk about this all the time, and I'm sorry, but I have to start with it, is that you need to know who your audience is. You are not selling to everybody. Whether you think it or not. You're really not. You need to really understand deep down who is the perfect audience for you. Where do they live? What do they look like? What do they do for a living? Do they have kids? What do they do for fun? What are some things they struggle with? What are the biggest struggles that they struggle with? And then how do you come in there and solve that struggle? Once you can nail that down and really nail down your audience, that's when you are able to put together a marketing message or a strategy because you know exactly who you are talking to. So I've talked about buyer Personas before. When I was just getting started into digital marketing, I took a bunch of HubSpot certifications and that was like the very simplest training. Not simplest training, but the very core, I guess it was. The core of all the trainings was to understand who your audience was so that you can sell to them the correct way. So that is your first and foremost, number one thing to do when you are starting to sell is to know who your audience is. Once you know who your audience is, then it's time to go over to your profile and optimize it. I've talked about this before, too. I have a free checklist. I'll put it in the show notes for today that will help you go through your Instagram bio and just make sure everything is plugged in and good so that when you do start posting to those people that you want to attract, they'll land on your profile and be like, oh my God, this girl's for me or this man's for me. Because you've got those keywords and things in there that speak to them. So make sure you have an easy to search for username. Don't put a lot of numbers in there or crazy letters or underscores that are just hard to type. Needs to be simple. Make sure your page name is filled out completely with a keyword or phrase that your target audience would be searching for. And then once you get into that bio, how do you help them? Why should they follow you? What are some accolades that you have that they can be like, yep, I want this girl. So if you can hit those three things in your bio, you're doing really well. And then lastly, make sure you have a link in there to send them to. Are you going to send them to your website? Are you going to send them to your stand store? Are you going to send them to your YouTube channel? Where are these resources at that they can go to? I highly, highly recommend a stand store and I can put my notes or my link in the show notes for you for that too. Stan is the simplest online store for you to offer your products on that they can click and buy easily. You don't have to know how to do any coding or any of that. Sand does it all for you so that you can start making money as soon as possible. So optimize that bio, get your, get your sand, store your link in there, and then from there you want to put a plan in place. So I don't know if you guys have ever heard of smart goals. I, that was kind of like in my infantry, if that's the word of my marketing journey. Smart goals are like the first thing you learn about. So smart goals are specific goals. Okay, what it says here, establish specific, measurable. This is what smart stands for, specific. Is it specific enough? Are you telling me exactly what you want? Is it measurable? Can we say, can we measure and say, okay, we got this, this and this. Is it achievable or is it a crazy goal? That's not achievable? Is it relevant? Is it time bound? Those are your smart goals. So when you're really thinking about, okay, like, let's just say like we've got the last quarter of the year here. Now what is your smart goal? What are you setting up for yourself? What specific goal are you going to put in place for yourself for the end of the year that you can measure? So for me, let's, I'm just going to talk about it right now. Let's put a smart goal out there. For me, I've really been leaning into my agency lately and pulling in clients there because that's like my big ticket offer and like that's the fastest way for me to make revenue because they're big ticket items. But let's just say we're focusing on my sand store and selling stuff that just mean I don't need my team for it. So let's just say my smart goal would be to sell October, November, December. So that's 90 days. What if I sold one reels challenge a day, which is not even that much. I honestly want to do more than that. But if I sell one a day, so that would be 90 reels challenges by the end of the month. Okay, I'm gonna calculate this too. So 90 reels challenges times how much I sell them for. Ooh, I'd be making a pretty penny. I'd be making. This is. So my real challenge is actually like my least like, like my cheapest offer. So I'm kind of trying to just put an easy goal for myself. So if I were to sell 90 reels challenges by the end of the year, I'd make an extra $2,000 which would be really amazing. Let's say for Christmas time. I have two children, I have a husband, I have a dog. Need to make some extra money for, for Christmas time. So. So my goal here, my smart goal is specific. I need to sell 90 reels challenges in the next 90 days. Is this measurable? Absolutely. I can go into my stand store and see how many I sold. I I can see how much they were worth. I can calculate, you know, how much I'd make from that. Is it relevant? Absolutely. Reels are still the best way to grow online. They're kind of what my signature offer is. I'm known for my reels, I'm known for my dancing. And are they time bound? Yeah, I'm saying in 90 days. So that would be my smart goal for the remainder of the year. So if you're listening to this episode right now, let's just put it in, put it in your mind. Let's said it. I'm very big believer of putting it out into existence and it will come true. So let's just kind of put out into existence. Just for the example of this episode, let's think about your lowest ticket offer right now. You have 90 days left in the year. So you're gonna take that low ticket offer. You're gonna sell 90 of them. Cuz we have 90 days left. Actually we might have less than. No, we do. How many more days that are left in the year? Let me just see real quick. How many more days left in the year? 92. Okay. Okay. So we're giving ourselves a little bit of buffer there. So we've got 92 days, but we're going to do it in 90 days. So you take your lowest ticket offer times 90, you can see how much you'll make. And then your time sensitive limit there to measure it is in 90 days. So that is your goal, guys. We're going to put that on your vision board, write it in your phone notes, and we'll come back to that in 90 days to see how you did. And hopefully this episode can help you sell those 90 offers. All right, so once you have your smart goal in place, then we need to realize what is going to be, what's your like, what's your plan of action there? How many days a week are you going to post? What is your strategy going to look like? So whenever I do stuff like this, I end up opening up like a Google document and I'll put my goal at the top. And then I kind of work in like monthly increments. But if you really want to get jiggy with it, you could do the full 90 days. Um, but what I would do is I would just probably put together like a 30 day plan. So week one, I'm going to post five reels. Week two, I'm going to post five Reels. I'd probably do five reels for the next four weeks. And then from there you need to think about what are your reels going to be about. And that's typically when I will focus on the what, the who, the where, the when. So for week one, we probably want to just like kind of announce it and get people accustomed to what your offer is. Again, you've probably posted about this offer before, but people need to be refreshed. They need to see it more than once. They need only a small percentage of them anyway. So you need to talk about a lot. So that first week should probably just be like educating your people on what your offer even is and like how it solves their problem. And then the next week after that could be like the benefits of purchasing your offer, like how it's going to solve their problem. And then the next could be like the how does it solve the problem? So then you get really nitty gritty and what exactly they're getting. And then the end of that 30 days could be like maybe testimonials that you've got from other people or success stories or whatever you gotta do to make that final push of the month. Right. So that's kind of how I plan out my months. And when I do that, I typically Will go look at my professional dashboard and kind of see how posts in the past have performed when it comes to selling that specific product or offer. And I'll take my top performing post and re, like revamp them to post again about my product or offer. It's, it's proven that when you repurpose older content that already performed well, like it usually does either really well the next time or even better than the first time. So don't sleep on repurposing. Then you want to turn up the trust factor. And that's when you really want to show off. Like, hey, I know what I'm doing. I'm the expert. Here's why you to buy from you. So that's why I was talking about the testimonials and the success stories, what you can do during this time. This is still in within that first 30 days actually while you're posting in between. Maybe like once a week. If you can really put the time aside to do all of this, go live once a week, get up on Instagram live, talk about your not so much your offer. Like let's just say, for example, I'm, I'm selling my reels challenge. I'm not going to get on my live and just talk about my reels challenge. I'm going to talk about reels, educating people on what works, what doesn't. Top performing reels, my top tips, just kind of educating them on reels in general. And then I'd probably start to get more nitty gritty with it as the weeks went on. So like the next week could be like more advanced editing techniques. And then the third week could be like, try these specific trends right now because they're hot. And then maybe showing them how to do stuff like that. Actually don't, don't steal my idea. But I'm thinking like I could even get on there and show them how to do like dances. Like that would be fun if there was like a specific trend going on with a certain Instagram dance. I could get on there and like teach them the dance, go back to my cheerleading days. But you're getting on there to one, show up for your people. Two, you're going to get live feedback from them so they're able to like reply back to your live. And so you'll be able to kind of get instant feedback on whether or not this is what your people really want. Right. So you're not just like playing the guessing game on, oh, I think they're gonna want this offer. Like, no, you're Getting on live, you're talking about it, people are replying to you. They're gonna tell you whether or not it's a good idea or they would rather have this from you. So those are just a few marketing ideas I have for you as far as, like, showing off your product, selling it, talking about it online. To make sales, you want to also make sure that you do a well balanced mix of content. So I know I said in the beginning that I would do five reels a week, but that's just like, what I'm comfortable with when it really comes to pushing a product that we sell or a service. I actually will do a mix of reels, carousels, and sometimes even static images too, just to see what performs the best. So you could even do kind of like a testing phase. Again, this whole strategy is like 90 days, but if we just did the first 30 days of kind of testing to see what's working, you could do a mix of reels, a mix of carousels, a mix of static images, and then the following month go harder into one of those formats. Like. Like, do like a 80, 20 or something like that. I have seen carousels doing well right now. As long as they're. I don't know. You have to. My. My content's different because I feel like my audience has gotten used to me doing reels. So when I do do carousels, they have good or else they're gonna get skipped over. So I have to put more work into my carousels as far as, like, the hook goes and the information that's inside of it. So you can't be lazy with your content, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Like, you have to really. If you're gonna do a mix of content ideas, then you need to plan it and not just throw it all together. That's basically what I'm saying. Once you have kind of educated on all of this, that's when stories come into play. And again, that's what worked for me last week when I just randomly decided to talk about my Reels challenge. If you. It's kind of similar to Instagram Live. You're getting on there face to face, you're talking to them about something. So I got on stories last week and just kind of said, I think I was. I was actually having a sale. So I was. I slashed the prices on my offers just a little bit. So that's why I talked about the reels challenge in the first place. And then when I started getting sales, I'm like, oh, my God, I need to talk about my offers. More on Instagram stories. So I got on there, talked about the sale. I showed screenshots of messages from people that have used the Reels challenge before. I showed some success from my own reels. And then of course the, the sales started coming in. I also mixed in email marketing too with that. So not only did I post like, I'm always posting reels and content based on my Reels challenge just to like subtly sale it not being too salesy. And then I was doing stories and then I also sent out an email. My email kind of was just like, hey, I'm having a sale in my stand store. Go over there if you want to grab my reels challenge. This real challenge, you'll get this, this and this. And it should help you with this, this and this. So mixing all of that, you can't really just rely on one channel in my opinion. I think you need to do omnichannel. So putting those all together can really help you sell your offer. And you're talking about it more. The more that you're doing that, the next part of all of this is engaging with those people. So yes, you're putting out this content, but it's not just sitting there. You're replying to people that comment on it. You are making conversation with them. Maybe people are sending you dms, asking about it. You're not just letting it, you know, letting the DMs die. You're in there talking and nurturing these people and selling to them. Social isn't just meant to like robotically sell to people. It's meant supposed to be a social experience where it's a two way conversation. So someone might have a question about your product or someone might have a question about the pain point that you're solving in general. Not specifically about your product, but about the pain point. So that's when it's your responsibility to go in there and answer them and give them valuable information about that topic that you're selling on. And then you also need to make sure you are being specific about your call to actions. Are you telling them what to do next? In every single post that you share about this product or service, you need to tell them what to do next. Whether that's comment, a keyword and you send the DM to them that you've set up in your ManyChat. Or maybe you say, drop an emoji and I'll send you a dm. I personally don't believe that everyone needs manychat. I Think it's a great product. But I. If you're just getting started and you don't have that many followers, I think that it should be easy enough for you to go in and reply to someone without having to do all that whammajama and mini chat. But it's up to you if you want to get it or not. But just telling people what to do next will change the course of your engagement. I actually tested this on Friday. I posted a reel, like a. A dancing reel. Cause that's what I'm good at. And it wasn't getting much comments. It was getting likes, but it wasn't getting comments. And then I looked back in the caption and the only real like call to action I had was very kind of salesy, like comment the word club and I'll send you information on blah blah, blah. So of course like not everybody wanted to comment that because they don't want to get sold to. So I ended up going in and editing my caption and it was like rate my dance skills from a 1 to 10. And once I did that, I started getting way more comments and that helped with my overall engagement. And then once they were able to comment about my dancing skills, I could go in there and have a conversation with them. That doesn't mean I was going in there and selling to them, but I was just having a conversation to nurture that audience. And then you also with all of this too, like your call to action, your engagement strategy, your content, your sales strategy, make sure you're keeping up with your competition too. So you want to peep those competitors. What does their posting schedule look like? What are they sharing about, what are they selling, what's been successful for them? With that, you can kind of strategize and kind of look over. You don't have to recreate the wheel is what I'm trying to say. Like you're able to look and see what's already working and then maybe put some of those motions into your own strategy. So maybe your competitors posting five times a week and you're only posting twice a week. Maybe you ramp up a little bit. Maybe you start posting three times a week and you start showing up on Instagram lives every two weeks. So there's just ways that you can optimize your own strategy by looking and seeing what's already working. Do not copy people. It's very unethical, but just you can get some inspiration and do kind of like a competitor analysis, I guess, in a way. I don't know that's just my 2 cents now. Bonus tips with all of this, what are some bonus tips I have for you guys? Don't sleep on other channels. We just started posting to Threads more frequently and we're getting really good traction over there. So if maybe Instagram has been a little bit sleepy for you, but you still want to sell your products and services, don't be afraid to go try to sell it over on Facebook or Threads or TikTok. Spread the wealth of your knowledge to other channels and see how it performs. Do it for 30 days before you decide to slash it. We say it at least takes 90 days to get some data to really decide whether what what you want to do or not. So 90 days, really, if you can. But if you can't do 90 days, do 30 days. All right, that is the end of my spiel on converting people from followers to sales. You cannot just expect to share content and people buy from you. You have to actually tell them what to do. You have to get specific with your goals. Once you put your goals into place and you you do know what you're headed for, then you're really able to strategize and follow that strategy to hit those goals. If you like today's episode, please let me know. Send me a dm, leave me a review, and don't forget to download the podcast so you get updated on next week' episode. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon.