Grow With Soul: Ep 61. How To Move People From Instagram To Your Own Channels With Kayte Ferris
Today I’m talking about a topic that someone mentioned in a survey I shared - so if that was you, thank you for the great question! We’re talking Instagram. So often the default when we think about marketing - it’s the first place we think of to be able to talk about new products or share a piece of coverage or introduce changes. As consumers too, I know that if I hear about a business or someone is recommended to me, I go off and find them on Instagram as a first stop, following or saving like the app is my own little Filofax. Yes, Instagram is often our first and last resort when it comes to marketing our business, but we’re always being told not to rely on it. ‘What if Instagram disappeared tomorrow, what you have?’ is what people like me always say. We get it, it’s not good to have all your eggs in one basket, but how do you actually get the eggs out? How do you move people away from Instagram and onto your own channels?
Here's what we talk about in this episode:
What is the creative solution when trying to solve a problem?
How do you overcome the disruption for your consumer to move from Instagram
How do you minimise disruption to people to come over to your different channel?
How can I make the disruption worthwhile to make people come over to my website?
Using the bread crumb method
Making an unapologetic disruption
Choose your call to action and own it
Make it easy to find what they are looking for
Create a Start Here page on your website
Provide clarity on what they are getting themselves into
Be scroll stopping - start with your target customer
What makes you leave Instagram and deconstruct this
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Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 61 of Grow With Soul. Today I’m talking about a topic that someone mentioned in a survey I shared - so, if that was you, thank you for the great question! We’re talking Instagram; so often the default when we think about marketing. It’s the first place we think of to be able to talk about new products or share a piece of coverage or introduce changes. As consumers too, I know that if I hear about a business or someone is recommended to me, I go off and find them on Instagram as a first stop, following or saving, like the app is my own little Filofax.
Yes, Instagram is often our first and last resort when it comes to marketing our business, but we’re always being told not to rely on it. ‘What if Instagram disappeared tomorrow, what you have?’ is what people like me always say. We get it, it’s not good to have all your eggs in one basket, but how do you actually get the eggs out? How do you move people away from Instagram and onto your own channels?
Here’s how I approach marketing conundrums like this: not with the result (ie, moving people onto your newsletter list or website), but with the problem. It’s much easier to think of creative solutions when you come to solve a problem, rather than force an action.
So what is our problem here? It’s not that no-one is interested in your business, because they’re following and engaging on Instagram - they’re interested. My view is that the real problem here is that we’re asking them to leave a space they’re happy and comfortable to go somewhere they don’t know.
Put yourself in your customer’s position for a moment. You’re there in the app, maybe for a snatched few moments of zone-out time while the kettle boils, maybe to catch up on comments, perhaps in a well deserved scroll after a trying day. They went to Instagram for a reason, even if that reason was the unconscious habitual seeking of the neuro chemicals the app releases. Our problem is that we are asking them to disrupt that action, to leave behind their zone out, their task, their chemicals and go somewhere else where they might not get those things. Couple this with the fact that Instagram makes this pretty hard (if you don’t have the swipe up function, they have to navigate to your profile or a browser), then we start to see the problem from the customer’s point of view. We are disrupting them in the middle of something that they are getting something out of.
So we need to ask a different question - how do we overcome the disruption for people to leave Instagram and come to your channel? I use the word overcome here because it’s going to look different for different types of business and what communication style fits with you. It might be that you aim to minimise the disruption, it might be that you want to make that disruption worthwhile, it might be that you want to maximise the disruption, play with it to get attention. Let’s discuss these scenarios and what they might look like:
Minimise disruption
This is where we’re sneaking in and disrupting people without them realising they’re being disrupted. This might look like using a very short, to-the-point call to action that they can do without getting out of the flow of their scroll (like swiping up to add an email address). Or it might be bringing as much of the information as possible to Instagram so that going over to your website feels like a natural progression.
I used this method when promoting my Playbook course on Stories - A good chunk of the sales page I actually typed out onto Stories templates so that people could read the information there in the app without needing to leave, with the aim being that they then felt more motivated and in the right mindset to go and check it out.
Think about some ways you might be able to minimise the disruption of getting people to engage with you away from Instagram, by making it really quick and feeling in flow with what they’re doing.
Making the disruption worth it
This is the approach I tend to take because I want people to want to engage with my other channels - I want them to really want to read a blog post or sign up to my list. Here they don’t mind being disrupted, because what you’re disrupting them with is so much better than the zoning out. But in order for them to want to, to they need a bit more information.
I generally use a more breadcrumb method when using this approach. While sending people to go straight to a product or email sign up is efficient and to the point, you’re going to get a lower volume of people coming over because they’re not in the headspace where that’s worth it to them - there’s not so much instant gratification. Because a lot of people are on Instagram searching around for inspiration, I want to give them even better inspiration on my own channel, so I frequently share new blog posts and podcasts (and not just using a swipe up link, this did just as well telling people to click the bio link in a caption). This disrupts their scroll because they think ‘well that sounds really interesting I need to check that out now before I forget’, and then they’re on my website. By using internal linking to other posts in the post they’re reading, and appropriate calls to action to products or email list, I can then keep them moving through the content on my website and eventually converting. The key here is in creating content in the first place that is unique and valuable enough to grab their attention, make them leave Instagram, and then keep their attention.
Maximising disruption
You can also be unapologetic about the disruption, make it a feature of your strategy. This is basically saying ‘hey you, stop scrolling’.
I’m thinking here about the Audible ads with one orangutan playing on a phone and another listening to the Art Of War and completing a Rubik’s cube - they always make me super conscious that I’m on my phone and could probably be doing something more worthwhile. Or the ads for mobile games you get where you trial the game in the ad and provides a different kind of same experience as you were having with the scroll.
It’s hard to do this without passing a value judgement about phone use, but that maybe just right for your business - maybe your target customer is someone who takes phone detoxes, maybe one of your big selling points is getting people off social media, which could be true whether you create craft boxes or are a life coach.
You may want to choose and stick to one of these methods of disrupting the scroll, or you may mix them up like I do depending on the occasion. Whichever strategy you go for, there are a few rules of thumb that apply for each.
Make it clear what you want them to do - this is not the time for waffly, apologetic calls to action! It can feel awkward telling people what to do, but as humans online we actually like signposts, we like to be led by the hand and have surety about where we’re going. I know people mock the old ‘link in bio’ but have you been on a website where the menu navigation doesn’t work, or there’s not a hyperlink to a new page where you’d expect one? It throws you off a little bit, it feels frustrating and you leave the website because you can’t get around it - even though for the website owner it may have seemed obvious where to go next.
A smooth process means there’s less thinking time for the user and less opportunity for them to change their mind - it’s the difference between them thinking ‘ooh that blog post sounds interesting, now where can I find it? Oh, they’ve not included a link. I’ll go onto their bio. Oh, actually, I can’t be bothered’ vs ‘ oooh that blog post sounds interesting, it’s linked right there in the bio’ and then they’re reading. Make your calls to action simple and to the point so they’re recognisable as signposts to someone scanning a caption, and don’t mix them up! A temptation can be to give people lots of options ‘you can read it now over here or wait for it to come out in my email newsletter which you can sign up to over there’, but that’s just too much to compute and they carry on scrolling. Choose your call to action and own it!
Make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for
Similarly to the last point, it’s got to be easy for them to find what they’re looking for from you, but it’s important not to overcomplicate this too. One of my personal frustrations on Instagram is super specific Linktree links - quite often, if I find an account that’s caught my attention, I just want to go to their website and get the full experience, but their Linktree is crammed with links that go to external pages, or lead pages and I just can’t figure out how to get to their website - and inevitably I leave. See also: bio links which are ‘shop the feed’ but you can’t show anything else.
While I think their are some situations where Linktree type solutions are the right option, I think 90% of the time they act as a barrier to getting people to your website as it’s another level of decision making for the customer to make, and another point at which they can give up. I much prefer a ‘start here’ style page (I have one in my bio if you’d like an example). I’d say mine is a more complex version, but essentially it is a landing page on your website where you can link to your latest blog post, new products, anything that you’d put in a Linktree but crucially they’re already on your website. If they can’t find what they want in the links you’ve curated the menu is right there for them to go and find it.
Provide clarity about what they’re getting themselves into
We are wary online, and especially when we’re in a comfortable scroll in an app we trust, we want to be sure it’s worth our while clicking that link - are we going to be asked for our card details or email address straight away? Is this the kind of post I think it is? Is this really for me?
As with all our marketing, we need to pre-empt the doubts and counteract them. This is the difference between sharing a Story with ‘new blog post’ and sharing one with a short paragraph of what the post is about - the latter option gives the person some more clarity about what they’re going to be getting into and that yes, it is for them. Eliminate unknowns while still being enticing and inspiring.
Be scroll stopping
Ultimately, this is the main aim. We’ve gone into a lot of complex ideas in this episode but if you take one thing from it is this - be scroll stopping. This is the starting point for getting people off of Instagram and over onto your channels - being so interesting/insightful/entertaining/beautiful that you stop them in their scroll. What this looks like while vary from business to business and from person to person, in order to figure out what this might be for you, start with your target customer. Think about what they are doing on Instagram, who their favourite accounts are, what they are in the app for? Are they lovers of quotes, do they prefer interiors imagery, are they more into captions than photos, is a messy desk going to grab them more than a tidy one?
Look at your most engaged with photos to give you an idea, look at accounts that are inspiring to your customer, ask your audience what kind of content they love on Instagram. Once you have some ideas and a bit of a formula, do that on steroids. If they like a quote post, Canva the crap out of a great quote. If they like photos that feel cosy, get the kettle on and style up your sofa with your plushest blankets. If they love a neat, geometric flat lay, then invest in a ruler.
Go flat out to give your target customer what they need to see to stop that finger. Then use the breadcrumbs of a succinct call to action and clarity of content to get them to tap over to your website.
And just a reminder, you don’t have to do this all the time! You don’t have to strive to have better and better scroll-stopping posts every time you put anything on Instagram. That’s just not going to happen so let’s not even entertain that as an objective. I think there is a tendency to want to always ‘improve’ your numbers post after post after post, but that is a lot of pressure for a lot of potential disappoint. Instead, have specific jobs for each post. Yes, you’ll have some stand out photos that are going to be scroll-stoppers, so the job you want them to do is drive people over to your website. Some photos are not going to be as dramatic, but they may the ones where you post a heartfelt caption and really connect with people, or, you know, they might just fill a gap on your feed and that’s legitimate too. Not every post or Story is going to get someone off of Instagram, so have different expectations of those ones because they can do something equally as useful for your business.
Finally, whenever you’re pulling your hair out that you’re not getting the traffic from Instagram, think about what makes you leave Instagram? What gets you clicking on bio links and swiping up. Pay attention to the people and posts you leave the app for, and deconstruct them. How did they disrupt your flow and scroll, was it the visuals or the words, was it inspiring or matter of fact, was it quick or were there breadcrumbs? And, most importantly, how can you replicate that in what you do?