Struggling to Sell Your Creative Work on Instagram?

Courtesy of @tomrossmedia

The conversion rates on Instagram suck because clickable links aren’t a thing in post descriptions ??

However! I’ve been using a hack that I invented (I think I invented this, I’ve never seen a soul do it before me) and it’s been working SO well.

Here’s how it works:

?? Decide what it is you’re selling, and to whom.

?? Go on your Instagram stories and weave a compelling narrative showing off your latest creation available for sale. Get people excited about it.

?? Next story slide, use a poll, asking something like ‘are you interested in buying this limited run print for $30’ and have the poll options ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

?? Start a group dm with all the yes voters. There is a group dm limit of 32, so if you get more than this setup multiple groups

?? Enthusiastically post videos, audio, and text in the groups thanking folk for their interest in your latest piece and offering them a link to where they can buy it.

?? Use things like urgency and scarcity (only 10 prints available!) to encourage interest. Share in the group as people make purchases, to encourage others to follow suit

?? Message those who voted no privately and ask if they’re comfortable sharing their honest objections. This feedback can be gold.

?? Rinse and repeat. Realise this approach works for everything from selling paintings to building a newsletter. I even used it to kick start my Patreon.

STEP 1: DEFINE VALUE

Figure out the value in what you're selling, and whom you are trying to sell to.

Are you selling body positive illustrations to plus size women or portrait paintings to creative folk?

STEP 2: BUILD INTEREST

Post a series of content in your Instagram stories designed to resonate with your intended audience. Get them emotionally excited by your work and build interest in why they may ultimately want it in their life.

STEP 3: QUALIFYING POLL

The next slide, after this narrative building interest, hit them with a stories poll.

It should be along the lines of: Are you interested in buying this limited-run artwork for $197

OPTIONS: Yes / No

STEP 4: GROUP CHATS

The beauty of the poll feature is that you can use it as a low friction way for potential customers to identify their interests.

Start a group chat (or multiple if you get more than 32 votes) with all the folk that voted 'yes'.

STEP 5: SELL IN THE DMS

Group message all 'yes' voters with a link where they can buy this latest work. If possible, use common sales triggers like urgency and scarcity.

E.g.: `thanks so much for being interested in this latest piece, here's a link to purchase (but only 10 available).'

STEP 6: HYPE IT UP / NO'S

Use the group message setting to build hype around your product. Send exciting videos. Share when folk in the group make their purchases to encourage others to follow suit. Also, message the 'no' voters and ask for honest objections about why they're not interested.

STEP 7: RINSE & REPEAT

The beauty of this technique is that you can use it to sell virtually any product, and you can do it over and over again with your community. It also reduces the friction of `link in bio' (which converts horribly) as the DMs are one of the few places on Insta for clickable links.

STEP 8: SUITABLE PRODUCTS

Use this approach to:

• grow a newsletter
• sell your paintings/illustrations
• sell physical products
• sell digital products/courses

6 useful marketing tools:

Funnelytics — the best funnel mapping software available to marketers and entrepreneurs today.

Notion — is a note-taking and collaboration application with markdown support that also integrates tasks, wikis, and databases.

Manychat — Messenger bot platform for marketing, E-commerce, and support.

Crello – free graphic design editor that helps create images for social media, print and other web-based graphics.

HypeAuditor – empowers users to analyze any Instagram account for insights on audience quality and authenticity of engagement

TubeBuddy — the premier YouTube channel management and video optimization toolkit.

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