Turn Your Audience Into Buyers by Moving Them Off Social Media
Social media may still be fun-ish escapism, but we can all agree that it has broken its promise to us and no longer exists as the reach and engagement opportunity it once was before corporate greed took over.
With some apps reaching twenty years in existence, and given the accelerated aging of things on the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are old media.
The original media entities those apps were built to replace are decaying slowly, and social media has become the attention overlords, stripping away almost all independence and autonomy.
If you’re like me, you’ve struggled to talk to your most loyal fans, let alone anyone new, because the new rules for engagement mean creating video content that’s either sensationalism or cringy memes and trends.
The days of authenticity being the critical factor in why people enjoy our content are gone, at least within these platforms.
It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way
Here’s a wild idea. What if instead of sharing the same performative junk that everyone else is posting, you spend your time finding ways to take the audience you have and bring them over to your platforms, where you dictate how and when to talk to them?
Without being a constant pitch monster, begging for sales by posting desperate memes asking for patronage, what if you used a little marketing and subtle persuasion in your content to entice, tempt, inform, and delight the audience enough for them to join your email list and buy from your shop?
And before anyone shouts, “External links will get my content shadow banned.” That myth was busted long ago [source 1] [source 2]. It’s time to move away from that notion.
How to Move People
To affect someone enough that they want to leave the platform they’re on to join yours. You need two things first.
Know your ideal customer.
Know how to tell good stories.
Both subjects require in-depth articles, but you're ahead of the game if you have these two things. Once you know who your person is and how to speak to them to pique their interest, you can lead them to your creative promised land.
These are just a few marketing and persuasion methods to accomplish that goal.
1. Make an Irresistible Offer
Here’s what most creative people do.
“I made a thing. Will you buy it?”
“I made a new thing. Will you buy this one?”
What if you said, “I’ve created a bundle of things that normally would sell for $X price, but for one week, I’m selling the entire package at $Y (ridiculous discount), and it’s the only time I’ll offer this up.”
Or, “If you buy one of my new collection pieces for $xxxx, I’ll ship it out priority, and when you get it, we can get on a video call, and I’ll talk you through how to frame it and where best to hang it for your home or office.”
Very few people go to that length to get the sale. If you make an offer so good they can’t say no, you’ll get more orders and collect more email addresses than you did by trying to sell one item at a time with no intriguing offer.
NOTE: Never discount your work unless you sell in multiples of 2 or more. This is not about giving friend deals to everyone, but rather, sacrificing a little profit once someone has put two or more items in their cart.
2. Share Snippets to Deeper Content
You share a lot of things on Instagram. Maybe it’s your process, perspective on art, collection, or snippets that would make great content in longer form.
If you’re already making a post about these things, take a little extra time to expand on those thoughts and post it to your blog. Then, make your content snippet and let people know if they want the full-length version so they can check out your site.
You can also do this with a newsletter, but in the snippet, you’ll need to tell people when it goes live. That will help get them on the list, and if you do have a blog, you can send people to that post. Make sure there’s a newsletter sign-up form in the blog post, too.
One caveat: You might not want to do this too often. If you’re constantly telling people to see the full version of your posts, they will stop paying attention. Instead, make it something special.
3. Tease Upcoming Work
A point of view I’ve been sharing lately is to be infinitely accessible and keep the work limited. What I mean by that is to post anything you’re open to sharing on social media. As I mentioned above, that can be your process, philosophies, struggles and triumphs, studio tours, and teases of the work itself.
At the same time, limit when and where people can get access to that work. People crave what they can’t have, and if they can’t get to your work without an invitation, they’ll eagerly wait for that invite.
When teasing the work, tempt them with being the first to know when new work drops by joining your email list. Then, launch your drops quietly, sharing them with the list before publicly announcing them.
If things go as they should, you’ll already have sold some or many of your pieces, which gives social proof to outsiders who didn’t join the list and are sad now because they missed out. Make sure they don’t miss out next time by inviting them to join the list.
Sculptor Arielle Alasko is a genius at this. When she first appeared on blogs like SFGirlByBay, Design*Sponge, and FFFFound, she would sell her hand-carved wooden spoons and cutting boards for hundreds of dollars, selling out within hours of dropping dozens of pieces.
A bit shy around media, Alasko was still a brilliant visual storyteller, and her limited drops were highly anticipated weeks in advance.
If you try this technique, devise a release schedule so there’s some anticipation of when you might drop next. Share that schedule with subscribers, and they’ll keep it to themselves if they want to keep getting early access before the outsiders jump in
4. Use Tech to Guide People
There’s an app called ManyChat that has tremendous capabilities for sharing unique opportunities with audience members.
Let’s assume you have some lead magnet to attract people. That could be a special discount, teasing the next limited drop, guides on your process, invitations to live events, or whatever you believe would bring the right audience to your site.
With ManyChat’s automation, you can set up a system where people comment on a post with a specific word, and that will send them a DM with a link to the thing they’ve requested.
ManyChat has more functionality than that and works on various platforms, but the first one is an excellent start to getting people on your list.
5. Ask
This is the scary one, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. Ask your audience one at a time to check out your site and join your email list. Of course, you’re not going to ask everyone, but if there are people you believe are your best audience members who aren’t on your list yet, invite them to join.
Sometimes, doing the unscalable thing is the best thing, and if you reach out to the right people, you’ll be surprised how many didn’t even know you had an email list and would love to join.
Not everyone will do it, but the small percentage that join will likely be the first to buy from you the next time you share a new collection drop.
Also, if you’ve paid attention to who is buying from you in multiples, and it differs from your current ideal customer avatar, make a revision and proceed accordingly.
Some Final Thoughts
Moving people from one platform to another is never going to be easy. Expect most people not to make that jump on the first ask or even the tenth. Still, if you focus on identifying your ideal customers (not necessarily the ones you currently have) and making content for those people, you will have more success pulling the right people over to your site and email list.
I believe everyone’s primary objective should be to get people on their email lists because that is the most valuable attention on earth. However, not everyone has a list set up yet.
If you’ve meant to do that but procrastinated, I have a free training called 5 Days News, showing you how to start an email list in five short and simple email lessons.
JOIN HERE and tell friends.
