Today on the Virtual Visionary Podcast, we are answering the question “what the heck is an Instagram sales funnel?” If you have been wanting to set up a sales funnel for your business, this episode is for you!

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What we covered in this episode:

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Episode References:

Come connect with me on Instagram: @kara_cahill

Free Masterclass: How to make more sales on IG – Watch the masterclass

My Signature Course: The ‘Gram Guide

Flodesk: Get 50% off your subscription

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FREE Masterclass

This Episode was brought to you by my FREE MASTERCLASS: How to make more sales on Instagram without posting everyday Access the free training here >>

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Transcript:

Welcome back Virtual Visionaries, I am so excited because today I want to talk to you about one of the most important things you can do if you want to make consistent sales from your instagram account, which is to set up an Instagram Sales Funnel. 

If you are wondering, what the heck an Instagram Sales Funnel is, this is for you. I am going to be covering what it is and why it is essential for your business if you want to start making consistent sales from Instagram.

So, if you have been in the online space, you have probably heard the term, “sales funnel”. Basically what a sales funnel is, is an automated system you have in your business that attracts new leads, gets them on your email list and then converts them into a paying customer through an automated email sales follow up sequence. 

The beauty of this is that once you have this set up, you are able to make sales for your online business 24/7, this is often what people refer to as “passive income”.

So what I teach my students inside  The Gram guide is how to set up an Instagram sales funnel, which means that you are getting leads into your sales funnel through your instagram content and then using an email sequence to warm up those new leads, pitch your offers and make sales!

The real beauty of this process is once you set it up, it is all automated. So that means new leads can enter your sales funnel at any time which means you can make sales 24/7. There is really no better feeling than waking up in the morning and having notifications on your phone saying that you made sales while you were sleeping…and yes it is 100% possible for you!!

So if you are like okay kara, yes I absolutely want a sales funnel in my business, let’s talk about how you actually go about setting one up for your business.

To give you an overview are three main steps in the customer journey inside of a sales funnel: first someone will stumble across your content on Instagram and if they love your content they will head back to your profile to check you out. Then if they love what you offer and want to go deeper with you, they will click on the link in your bio to download your free resource, this will then add them to your email list. Once they are on your email list, you then have that automated sequence of emails that goes out and nurtures the sale! So that is the bird’s eye view, so let’s not break it down step by step using my signature method, the Follower to buyer blueprint.

So the first step in the blueprint is Audit. This is where you make sure that your Instagram profile is set up for conversions! There are a few things that you want to make sure your profile has because once you start attracting people to your profile, you want to make sure that they will convert into leads for your sales funnel. So #1 is to make sure you have a clear Bio, you want to make sure you are letting new followers know who you are, who you help and how you help them. For example, if you are a weight loss coach, your bio might say something like “I help college women keep off the freshman 15 while still enjoying their college experience”, something like that, you called out who you help, college women and you let them know how you help them. So if a woman in college finds your account and is struggling with the freshman 15, she knows you are the perfect person to help her. So make sure that your bio, your highlights and your IG content is all makes it very clear what you do, who you help so that when someone stumbles on your page you have a resource library that gets someone excited and makes them want to continue hearing from you!

This is where step number 2 comes in which is automated. In the automated phase of the follower or buyer blueprint you are going to set up that automated email sale sequence that nurtures, pitches and sells your offers. So the first thing you need is a free lead magnet or free resource. This is essentially something that you are going to give someone for free in exchange for their email address. This resource can be something simple like a free pdf guide or it can be something more complex like a webinar. If you are just starting out, start small, create an amazing pdf guide with some high value tips, for example, if we go back to the weight loss coach, a free resource might be a free guide to eating healthy on a college budget. You want this to be something your audience really would find valuable because this is like getting a sample of what it would be like to work with you inside your paid offers. So once you have created that resource, you are then going to set up an automated sales sequence that is essentially a series of emails that warms up your audience and then also pitches your offers. I will do another episode on what exactly goes into those because that really is an entire episode. But you can do this using an email service provider like mailchimp, active campaign or Flodesk. I personally love flodesk because it is so easy and user friendly, even for someone with tech challenges like me. I will put a link to flodesk in the show notes if you want to get started!

So once you have that all set up and ready to go, the final step in the blueprint is attract, this is where you are attracting new people into your sales funnel by getting visible on Instagram. You can do this by creating great content, engaging with new audiences, collaborations, ect. I teach my students inside the gram guide exactly what they should be posting and exactly how they need to engage so that #1 their content not only attracts people to their profile but also converts them into email subscribers by getting them excited to click that link in their bio! One mistake I see people making is they often think that more content will lead to more visibility, but actually the way Instagram works is that the algorithm favors content that gets engagement. Quality content is what gets engagement so when it comes to instagram posting fewer quality posts is actually going to be more effective than posting tons of random posts that your audience doesn’t engage with. So this is your permission slip to stop posting everyday and spend your time focusing on a few quality posts per week!

So to recap, the three steps inside of the Follower to Buyer Blueprint include Audit, where you set up your profile for conversions, Automate, where you set up your free resource and sales sequence, and attract where you use your IG content to attract people into your sales funnel!

Sales funnels are absolutely essential for making more sales on Instagram, so if you are super serious about setting one up for your own business but need a little help, make sure your sign up for my FREE Masterclass at karacahill.com/freetraining where I will be walking you through how to create your very own IG sales funnel!

As always, if you have any questions about sales funnels or Instagram shoot me a DM over on Instagram and let me know where you are feeling stuck, you can find me @kara_cahill on Instagram, my inbox is always open!

Talk to you next week friends!