INSTAGRAM MARKETING STRATEGY FOR 2020!

Hi everyone. I’m Alex Tooby, Instagram strategist, educator
and online course creator. I’ve been teaching entrepreneurs just like
you, how to use Instagram to promote theirbusinesses for almost five years. I personally got my first big break using
Instagram and it has since been my trustysidekick and growing multiple online businesses. So I’m super excited you’re here because I
have a jam packed session for you today. My goal is to provide you with some thought
provoking content that inspires you to takeaction differently than ever before. We all know that Instagram is an extremely
powerful platform for brands and businessowners, but as the app changes, it’s hard
to keep up with what you should and shouldn’tbe doing. After today’s session. I promise you you’ll have a crystal clear
outlook on Instagram and a solid strategyto start implementing. So before we dive in, I want to get the elephant
out of the room today. I’m not going to teach you how to get more
likes and followers. In fact, those things don’t matter to me. Instead, what we’ll be talking about is the
bigger picture of Instagram, what we shouldtruly be focusing on and what’s going to make
the biggest difference in both our day today and long term efforts. Remember, Instagram should be treated as a
marketing tool and part of your entire businessfunnel, not a standalone method for building
your business. Other important elements of your funnel might
be a website, an email list, and a monetizationmethods such as affiliate links, digital product,
or your own merchandise. By switching, our focus from vanity metrics
to something more meaningful. Not only are you going to see a boost in your
personal enjoyment on Instagram, but the actualbottom line of your business. And yes by that I mean making more money. Who doesn’t want that?So let’s get started. My method for using Instagram as a marketing
tool that can generate hundreds of potentialcustomers every single month is made up of
five parts. The first part is to have a plan. A plan is going to guide all of your efforts
and make the outcome much more fruitful. So the first thing I want you to do is ask
yourself what is your primary goal with Instagram?Hint, it shouldn’t be to grow a following. I want you to think bigger than that. Is it to get traffic to your website, build
up your email list, make sales of your productor service, decide what’s important for you
and write it down. This will be your new motivation when it comes
to Instagram. Every piece of content you create and every
caption you write will have this overarchinggoal in mind. Part two is to identify your target market. Not sure who they are. Well, you’ve got work to do. Knowing who your target market is is one of
the most important elements of any business. Without this information, all the time you
spend on creating content, writing captions,choosing hashtags, and dishing out likes and
comments will all be wasted. Instagram can be a very time consuming platform,
so we want to make sure that everything wedo has purpose. So what exactly is a target market?Well, it’s the person you believe is going
to benefit from your content and your offeringsthe most. This will be different for everyone depending
on what your business or brand represents,but it’s super important that you flesh it
out. So before you say that yours is a 35 year
old woman and head off to the next step, Iwant you to stop and dig way deeper than that. You want to identify as much information about
this person as possible including their age,gender, marital status, annual income, education
level, hobbies, and even personality traits. Why?Well knowing if your target market shops at
Walmart versus Gucci can make a really bigdifference in the vibe of your content, the
tone of your captions and the way you priceyour products, which brings us to part three. Creating strategic content by deeply understanding
who our target market is. Making content becomes so much easier. Each photo you take and caption you write
should speak directly to that person. It should provide value and offer a solution
to that particular person’s problem. The idea here is that if we create content
for a specific demographic, we’re going tonaturally attract that person to our feed
while them with our content. Because it sounds like it was made just for
them and easily convert them into real payingcustomers. If we do the opposite and create random content
with no real direction, we’re going to attracta mix of people that don’t end up taking the
actions that we want. So to make sure that we’re consistently getting
the right people to our feed, we need to implementpart four which is to locate and engage with
your target market regularly. This is something that should be done daily
and lucky for you. It doesn’t have to be hard, especially since
you know exactly who your target market is,finding them on Instagram, will be a breeze. One easy way is to think about the Instagram
accounts your target market may already befollowing. Go to those accounts, click on one of their
recent posts then hit the liked by button. This will open up a list of engaged users
who fall into your target market. From there, you can easily leave a few likes
and comments on as many accounts as you havetime for. What this is going to do is send those people
a notification and encourage them to comeover to your feed. Generally, when someone new likes or comments
on your content, we’re instantly intriguedby who they are, right?And remember we created content specifically
for them. So once they’re there, they’re going to be
pleasantly surprised and prepped to take thenext step in our funnel. Which brings me to the last part of my method. Part five is to encourage meaningful activity. Far more important than likes and followers
are actions like website clicks, post shares,and DMS inquiring about what you offer. So instead of posting a picture and hoping
that you get more likes than last time, Iwant you to be using calls to action that
asks your audience to do something that’sgoing to help your primary goal and send your
audience to the next step of your funnel. For example, encouraging them to click the
link in your bio to check out your websitenewest blog or latest offering, or asking
them to send you a DM or email so you canchat with them one-on-one. These actions are so much more powerful than
a like or follow and put you in a positionto better build your like know and trust factor. If you haven’t heard of this before, it’s
what makes people buy from you. When someone is continually exposed to your
content, has spoken to you one on one andhas received some sort of value from you,
they begin to trust you. And a longterm connection can be built with
every action they take on your account, theconnection, support and trust they have for
you grows. And that makes them much more likely to invest
in you than anyone else on Instagram. So by having a plan, understanding who your
target market is, creating content specificallyfor them and encouraging them to take actions
that really matter, you’re going to utilizeInstagram in a significantly better, business
building way than ever before. And trust me, just because you’re focusing
on website clicks doesn’t mean your followersand engagement aren’t going to rise. They absolutely will and it will simply act
as the cherry on top of all of your efforts. So now that you know my framework for using
Instagram as a real marketing tool, we needto know how to check in on our efforts and
accurately measure our success. Previously, you may have gauge your success
by how many likes or comments you got, butI want you to forget about that. Instead, I want you to keep track of two main
things. The first thing is your audience insights. To check these, navigate to your profile,
hit the hamburger icon in the top right andselect insights from there. Toggle over to the audience tab. This is where we can tell if you’re actually
attracting your target market to your feed. Go back to all the details you wrote down
about your target market and cross referencethem here. Are they coming from the right country?Are they the right age and gender?If so, awesome. You can’t really ask much more than that if
they aren’t quite right. That can mean one of two things. One. The content you’re creating is actually speaking
to a different demographic and you might wantto consider making them your target market. Instead or two, you’re missing the mark on
your engagement efforts and you need to switchup the accounts you’re using to locate your
target market. Keep tweaking your engagement strategy and
content creation until you see your audienceinsights are on track. The second metric we’ll use to measure our
success is activity interactions. I mentioned these earlier. There are things like website clicks, post
saves, post shares, swipe ups, DMS and clickson your email, text or direction button. Remember, these are most important because
we’re using Instagram as the starting pointof your marketing funnel. Once our target market lands on our feed,
the next step we want them to take is movingover to your website, getting on your email
list, and eventually buying your offering,so to keep track of your activity interactions,
head back into your insights and toggle ontothe activity tab. From here you can see how many website clicks,
emails and calls you got in the last sevendays. You’ll also want to navigate to each individual
posts and click the view insights button tosee how many shares saves and website clicks
they generated. I suggest keeping track of these in an Excel
document so you can watch your growth or determinewhich posts are performing better. This data will help you hone in on your Instagram
strategy even more and drastically increaseits ability to funnel potential customers
straight to you. So remember, having a ton of followers isn’t
the goal here. Getting the right people to your feed and
taking action is instead of stressing overhow many likes your posts are getting, divert
your energy to finding and engaging with yourtarget market. These actions will make a significantly larger
impact and will set yourself up for futuresuccess. If you’re not sure what the next steps of
your funnel should be, think about this. Instagram is where you introduce yourself
to someone new. Your website should be where you show them
your expertise, potentially through blog postsor free downloads. And your email list should be where you offer
the solution to their problem, AKA your paidoffering. So to quickly recap my five part method to
using Instagram as a marketing tool is, one,have a plan. You should always be working to achieve your
primary goal, to identify and understand yourtarget market. This is the person we’re creating content
for. Three, create strategic content. You can save time and see better results by
creating content specifically for your targetmarket, for engage with your target market
regularly. We cannot solely rely on the algorithm to
send us traffic. We also need to generate it and five, encourage
meaningful activity. Focusing on website clicks and DMS will help
lead your audience to the next step in yourmarketing funnel. If you follow this simple framework, I promise
you not only will you feel better about yourtime spent on Instagram, you will actually
begin to see a positive return on your timeinvested in the app. So that’s it guys, I hope you’ve learned something
new. I hope you are starting to think about Instagram
differently and are leaning away from theimportance of likes and moving towards the
importance of interaction and using Instagramas a true marketing tool. So thanks again for watching. My name is Alex Tooby, and you guys can find
me on Instagram at @InstawithAlex or at mywebsite, alextooby. com. I’ll see you next time.