Based on the responses to my last post, it’s pretty clear that many of you are feeling the same way I am, especially when it comes to Instagram. Someone even responded to my email with, “I totally agree, so now what do we do?”
And since my last post was fairly short on advice, today I want to take some time to answer the “what do we do?” question.
But first, I want to take a moment to talk about Instagram for community versus Instagram for marketing. Because the truth is, I barely think about Instagram when it comes to my marketing strategy.
I’ve talked about this before here on Designing an MBA. The way I think that Instagram has made us lazy marketers and the idea that just posting on Instagram does not count as marketing. For most of us, Instagram has never been a reliable enough marketing strategy on its own.
Even Pinterest, which I spent lots of time teaching and talking about as a marketing strategy, was never the full piece of the marketing puzzle for me. It was just a slice of the pie, and, at the risk of mixing metaphors, one that has always lived at the very top of the funnel for me. (Translation: I used Pinterest as a high-level traffic generator, not something I counted on directly for sales.)
For me, a lot of the lament in my last post came from losing Instagram as a place for community. Because despite my many frustrations with Instagram as a marketing tool, it is still the first place I turn to when seeking connection online. (At least, when I’m on my phone. On my computer, I go to Artists & Profit Makers and focus on giving as much attention and feedback as possible to my people there.)
And my hope is still that I can find a place online that’s photo-based and where I can connect with others. (Someone suggested the Making App, and I’m giving it a try. If you want to connect with me there, I’m @meganauman. And of course, I’ve worked very hard to create a great community inside Artists and Profit Makers.)
But I also know that for many of you, you aren’t thinking of Instagram as just a place of community. You view it as a marketing tool, because, unfortunately, that’s how a lot of people see it. I say unfortunately because I think Instagram has an outsized presence when it comes to putting together a marketing strategy, at least compared to the ROI you get from it. I like to say that when it comes to marketing, Instagram sucked all the air out of the room. And so the answer to “what to do” is to build a robust and holistic marketing strategy where Instagram and/or Pinterest are simply pieces of the puzzle, if they are even still part of the equation at all.
I’ve actually written about this before, in this post, on all the ways to market your business that aren’t Facebook or Instagram, but more recently in this post, where I talk about the three-pronged strategy for growing your sales online.
I still stand by that post, but today I want to offer a correction because when I presented it, I gave fairly equal weight to all three pieces – email marketing, content creation, and other people’s audiences. (Otherwise known as OPAs.) But the truth is, especially in the current digital landscape, I would put way more of a focus on email marketing and OPAs and not worry so much about content creation, because right now it’s hard to win at content creation if you aren’t making video. (Which of course, as a person who loves image-based content creation makes me really sad, but as a pragmatist, I also recognize playing the hand you’re dealt.)
For years now, I’ve taught making email marketing a priority, and it still is. But the challenge, especially in the beginning, is that you’ve got to get people to your list in order to be effective, and that’s where OPAs come in.
Yes, you should 100% try and bring as many of your social media followers onto your list as possible, especially as fewer and fewer of them are likely to see your posts. But to use your social media as the only way to try and get people to your list is just too difficult in the current climate.
When you’re just starting out, OPAs act as an accelerant for your business, and that’s where you should focus your energy.
Now, when I start talking about OPAs, most artists and makers immediately jump to influencer marketing and start giving me a whole list of reasons why that won’t work for them. But OPAs are so much more than that. OPAs are literally anytime you can get your work in front of an audience that someone else has built. That could mean press outreach. It could mean advertising. But it also means wholesale (leveraging the audience a store has built) or retail shows (leveraging the audience of the show organizer).
Truth be told, wholesale and retail shows can both be great options, because not only are they OPAs, they are revenue-generating. So you can actually make money while growing your audience.
Look, I get it. Most of us want to build a business online because we’ve been fed a false promise of how easy it is. If you just post the right things to Instagram, the sales will start pouring in and you can stay home, making and shipping art in your pajamas. But for most of us, that’s just not the reality. And with the move to video, unless you’re willing to play that game, the likelihood of growing your business solely through Instagram or Pinterest is even lower than it’s ever been.
Plus, not to be a buzzkill, but online still only accounts for about 13% of all retail sales in the US. Yes, that’s right, most purchases in the US are still happening IRL. (That’s in real life. And yes, that 13% is a post-pandemic number.)
So the answer of what to do about the move to video on Instagram and Pinterest, from a marketing standpoint, is to build a better marketing strategy. One that leverages the power of other people’s audiences and makes connecting with your audience through email your main focuses.
This means less time stressing about pleasing an algorithm and more time focusing on things that actually move the needle in your business.
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PS. If you want more help with email marketing AND leveraging OPAs, I’ve got multiple trainings inside Artists & Profit Makers that dive deep into these topics! And you get instant access to all of them when you join! Plus, to celebrate A&PM turning four, you can take $40 off your first month of membership when you join by Thursday! Click here for all the details and to claim your spot.