Making sales on Instagram is the main goal for many businesses but why is it so hard? In this blog post, I go over 3 common reasons why nobody is buying from you and how to fix them.
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1) You are either just educating or just promoting:
Reason #1 why you are not making any sales on Instagram is because you are posting the wrong content. I often see businesses either JUST post educational content ("3 reasons why you should market yourself on Instagram") or they already add some more promotional content but it is very "in-your-face".
Let's talk about educational content first and why only posting educational content is not going to make you sales:
While educational content is great because it holds a lot of value for your audience, it won't bring you sales. If you only ever educate in your content, you risk that your audience doesn't see the added value in accessing your expertise outside of your free content. This also teaches them that you are someone that educates and not someone that sells.
Promotional content:
Don't get me wrong: there is nothing bad about having the occasional very promotional post but you should limit them. Instead, try to create a need in your audience, show them the consequences of not buying your offer, and paint them a picture of what it could look like if they were to take action and sign up with you. There are different ways to do that but it all comes down to understanding your target audience and the objections that they might have about making a purchase.
To sum it up: don't just post educational content because people won't see you as a business. Secondly, don't make these very boring, promotional posts but instead, try to keep it interesting and valuable for your audience. Try to find a good balance between educational posts and more promotional posts.
2) You don't talk about your offer enough:
You need to talk about your offer every day, in one way or another. This goes back to reason #1: don't talk about your offer in the same way all the time but bring a lot of variety into your content. I know talking about your offer every day sounds like a lot but not every person in your audience will tune in every day and people need to hear different things to shoot into action as well. I also know that YOU know what your offer is about, what that looks like and what kind of clients you work with but other people don't. You always want to think that this is the first time someone hears about your offer when you post about it.
3) You make selling look tedious or uncomfortable:
Reason #3 why people don't buy from you is because you don't make selling look effortless. Often, business owners on social media make selling look like a real chore. A great example are the trending audios on Instagram that go something like "Here is a video because Instagram doesn't like photos anymore now".
Those videos make me, as a customer, feel like you absolutely hate marketing your products/services and you are just doing it because you have to. That is not the feeling I want to get from a business. I want to have the feeling that the business loves its own products and its services and that they are so proud that they are able to offer them to me.
If you are honest with yourself, then there's probably something inside of you that makes you feel uncomfortable about selling. Most often, it is a lack of confidence...
Final note:
Of course, there are many other reasons why you aren't making any sales on Instagram but from my experience, it is very likely one of these three.
And that brings me to a final, important point. Every day I see posts on Facebook groups where someone asks for advice because they haven't had a lot of sales recently. Within minutes people will comment with potential reasons and recommendations. The problem is that they rarely know your situation, your strategy and your goals. This often leads to really cool businesses not reaching the success they deserve and it's not something I want to support.
If you have tried different things (maybe they were even recommended by someone online) but you still don't seem to grow on social media and achieve the goals you have set, then it's time to get personalised advice:
Book a Strategy Deep Dive audit with me where I get to know your business, understand what you have been doing so far on social media and give you personalized recommendations on what you need to fix. Together we go deep into your strategy and find the root cause behind the lack of sales or any other problems that you might be experiencing. Have a look at the sales page here for more information. If you aren't sure if this is the right fit for you, there's also an option to hop on a free call to ask your questions.
Talk soon,
Hanna