5 Steps to Stress-Free Marketing on Instagram with Katie Costa

by Katie Costa, Founder & CEO of The Wellness Marketer

The polls are in — In 2021, Instagram is still one of the top ways to expand your holistic business, reach more of your ideal clients, and make a meaningful impact with your work. But if you think marketing on Instagram is stressful, or worse, an uncrackable code, you’re not alone.

“What should I be posting? There are so many things I could be doing. Do I sound okay? How do I know what is right for me and that this all fits together?”

As a marketing professional for health practitioners and wellpreneurs, these are questions I field daily in my DM’s. The fact is, Instagram doesn’t have to be stressful, it can actually be a lot of fun while producing incredible results in your business.

If you’re after more reach, more engagement, and more followers-turned-clients, keep reading for 5 steps to market your holistic business on Instagram with more intention, and less stress.

1. Get Clear on Your Business Goals

Identifying what you’re really going for will help you stop obsessing over vanity metrics like followers and likes. That’s because if you’re stressing about growing your followers, it’s usually not about followers…

In other words, do you NEED more followers on Instagram or do you need 2 more clients per month?

This is a huge perspective shift because while most people correlate more followers with more clients or more revenue, it’s simply not the case.

There are many people with 10K+ followers who can’t make consistent sales. And there are people with less than 2K followers who are running six-figure businesses…

Identifying your true business goals (I love a good financial goal, freedom goal, and feeling goal), It gives you permission to let everything else fall away that doesn’t align with that goal.

Ask yourself, how many sales do you want to make this month, and if that thing isn’t helping you achieve that goal, it doesn’t deserve your energy.

2. Pick A Posting Frequency That Feels Attainable

Pick a frequency that doesn’t scare you and that you can commit to for at least 3 months. Even if you are only committing to 1 or 2 posts per week. It’s the commitment and the consistency that matters.

If you want consistent results (aka consistent sales) you need consistent marketing. You need to show up consistently and invite people into your business consistently. The frequency is just going to dictate the quantity, not the consistency of your sales.

One high-quality post that gets you one client, is WAY better than 5 mediocre posts (because you spread yourself too thin) that gets you zero clients.

PRO TIP: When you can only create limited content, be super intentional about what you create. For example, reels are having massive reach and way better engagement than other posts in 2021 thus far. This is a great place to focus your energy.

3. Create a Premium Piece of Content and Recycle It

One of the best tricks of the trade, if you’re not repurposing content, you’re not leveraging your time! I like to start with creating one piece of premium content per week. Premium content is anything that is audio or video, because it is highly engaging, builds the like-know-and-trust factor, and delivers tons of value to your audience. For me, my premium content is my podcast, and I record 1 episode per week and create 3 different pieces of content from that episode and post them to my Instagram. For you, it might be a weekly IGTV! This is a great, low-barrier way to start creating your own premium content.

PRO TIP: Go live on Instagram and then save it to IGTV to get double the exposure for the same content!

To reiterate, I don’t mean re-posting something you previously posted, although that can work too. When it comes to repurposing your premium content, you can pull out something quotable and post about that, you could highlight one point of your video and expand on it. Maybe you went off on a tangent about something that is really juicy… create a post about that!

4. Look at What’s Already Working and Do More of It

Look at what is already working for you on Instagram by looking at your Insights. What kind of content does your audience love and how can you do more of it?

For those who are new to Instagram and Instagram for business and you don’t have a lot of insights yet, take a look at some of your competitors or complementary businesses (people who do something similar to you but you wouldn’t call them a direct competitor) and see what is working for them.

PRO TIP: Use Instagram for desktop by going to instagram.com/[inserthandlehere] and you can see how many likes their content gets, aka what gets the most engagement for them!

You can use these high-performing posts as data on what works and inspiration for your own content, but be mindful of not copying other businesses’ marketing!

5. Diversify Your Marketing

Instagram is a low barrier to entry and a great way to start marketing your business. However, when you can take the pressure off of Instagram by adding other marketing channels, you can log off with a lot less stress.

Why? Because you know you have (for example) a website that has been optimized for SEO and you’re getting found on Google. Maybe you’re also doing email marketing and have a freebie + automated emails going out on a regular basis.

Using a combination of websites, social media, and email marketing is part of my signature holistic marketing method, that empowers you to attract high-quality wellness clients on Instagram every single month.

The most powerful thing you can do for your Instagram marketing is to support it with other high-quality marketing like web and email marketing, and can significantly decrease the stress and pressure you may be putting on the ‘gram.

Bringing It All Together

In summary, Instagram marketing doesn’t have to be stressful, and here are the five steps to market your holistic business with more intention, and less stress:

1. Get clear on your business goals (the ones behind the vanity metrics)
2. Pick a posting frequency that you can commit to
3. Create 1 piece of premium content per week + repurpose it
4. Look at what’s already working to guide your content creation
5. Diversify your marketing with web and email marketing efforts

Katie, founder, and CEO of The Wellness Marketer is a Nutritional Scientist and Marketing Professional who helps holistic practitioners and wellpreneurs grow their business online using holistic marketing strategies. She is also the host of The Wellness Marketer podcast and creator of Holistic Marketing Academy, a self-paced program for health pros who want to grow their businesses online. Connect with Katie on Instagram! 

If you would like more support around marketing with more intention, download Katie’s free Marketing Checklist, a marketing protocol specifically designed for health professionals who want to know what to do every day, week, and month when it comes to marketing their business.

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