Focusing Your Marketing
Hot Take:
Insta May Not be Worth Your Time
When running a small business, we often feel like we have to be marketing everywhere all the time. But I wanted to share a recent experience to show that your energy is best spent where you’re customers are actually hanging out–and you may have to be honest with yourself about whether or not you’re putting your focus in the wrong places.
I’m sure most people agree that Instagram is the #1 social media platform for small businesses. It’s where I started. And I’ve gotten a fair number of clients through IG, so I’d say it’s worked for me. But the amount of energy that it takes to perfectly curate a grid and be active on stories everyday is… a lot. And honestly, this year I’ve been burned out on it. The juice just hasn’t felt worth the squeeze for a while.
So lately I’ve been paying more attention to one of my other social accounts and noticing how well it’s performing for me: Pinterest.
My Pinterest account has really started to gain traction lately. It’s such a low effort platform that keeps on giving for years. I currently get 3x the traffic to my website from Pinterest vs. all of my other social media accounts combined, and my top-performing pins are still some of the first ones I ever made. To date, I’ve booked more clients from being found on Pinterest vs. Instagram! So lately I’ve been paying more attention to which pins are getting the most saves and clicks to my website.
And a couple months ago I noticed something. This pin for Nauman Treats was getting the most outbound clicks to my website of all my pins, but I didn’t have that particular project up in my portfolio.
And I wondered: am I missing out on leads who are clearly interested in that project, and am I providing a bad user experience by not having a project on my website that’s driving so much traffic to it. So I added Nauman Treats’ branding to my portfolio page.
And guess what?
I had a new bakery owner inquire within a few weeks, and she said she had seen Nauman Treats’ branding on Pinterest, she came to my website, and she wanted to work with me because of that project. I haven’t had any leads cite that project until this client. So I’m pretty confident that I proved my theory! I paid attention to where my traffic was coming from and what my potential leads were interested in, and I tailored my content and user journey to fulfill their needs. It makes me wonder how many leads I’ve probably lost who came to my site to see this brand, but left because it wasn’t there.
So the lesson is to know where your people are hanging out and where your leads are (really) coming from. It may not be Instagram… and if it’s not, you shouldn’t be putting all or most of your eggs in that basket. It might not even be social media at all! Do most of your customers come from word-of mouth-referral? Google searches?
Make sure you’re paying attention to your website traffic data if your platform has a built-in analytics tool (like Squarespace). Or check your traffic data through Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
If you have a Pinterest account, which pins are people responding to the most? Do you have a good funnel set up for them if they come across those top-performing pins and click through to your website? And if you don’t have a Pinterest account, this is your sign to make one! Here’s mine if you want to catch me there.
Hope this inspires you to get nerdy with your traffic analytics and stop putting energy into marketing efforts that aren’t serving you!