If you have an online and brick-and-mortar store it can be difficult to determine how much focus you should put on one or the other in your social media marketing. Let’s chat about how to balance your social media presence between promoting your online vs. your brick + mortar store. And more specifically Instagram.
Now, this won’t necessarily be the right move for everyone. It really does depend on your business, your goals, and where you’re at right now but this strategy I’m going to walk you through is based on business owners who have an in-person presence but their current goal is to grow the eCommerce division of their business.
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The first one is an esthetician who has one local spa location and then sells skincare products and makeup online. Her spa is her bread and butter and the majority of her followers are local people.
But truth be told her spa is typically booked out, so while we want to make sure we’re communicating spa-related things, we’re really shifting to focus on that eCommerce growth.
So here’s how we’re going to divi up our social content.
The feed is going to be focused mostly on awareness content to grow her audience, and of course, the products she sells on her website. Booking in-spa services is going to be a secondary message when it makes sense.
For example. In May we have a big focus on pedicures (sandal season is around the corner) and featuring her Spring Nail Polish collection which was just released. Our feed posts are going to be about the importance of pedicures beyond just looking pretty and how to take care of your feet at home between professional services.
So in those posts, we’ll be featuring the at-home pedi kit she sells on her website which we can also tag in the post.
At the end though we’ll also have a secondary call to action that says local to city where the spa is, and invite them to book an appointment.
Then, her stories, which are only seen by followers and not really good for visibility and growth is where we’ll spend more time inviting them to book appointments, attend events, etc.
If we feature a certain product, our call to action will say available online and in-store.
Now, as we know segmenting your audience on Instagram isn’t the easiest thing… but once the feature is available to her, we’ll create a broadcast channel specifically for in-spa content.
And, to make sure it’s still obvious that she does have a physical location, we’ll use the pinned post feature to show what’s happening in the spa. We’ll switch these out monthly and then archive them when the new one is released.
The other client is a coffee business. The majority of her business is local and wholesale, but she too wants to focus on growing the eCommerce side of her business. She’s in the process of moving to a larger production location which also means she’ll have more space to do in-person tastings and lots of other fun stuff in her local community.
When she initially reached out, her first question was should I start a separate Instagram?
My answer was… immediately NO.
Initially, she was concerned that her non-local followers wouldn’t care about her journey building out and opening this new location or seeing information about events and tastings they couldn’t be a part of.
First off, people love to see the behind-the-scenes of a small business. Humans are naturally curious, voyeuristic, and love to cheer on their favorite small businesses.
Secondly, those tasting events, if you’ve got people enjoying the coffee and giving feedback… that becomes great social proof and conversion content.
Plus, what product-based business owner wants to worry about running two Instagram accounts… right?!
Ultimately, when it comes to social I wouldn’t typically lean more toward the eCommerce side of things. As long as local people know you exist locally, they’ll come in person if that’s what they want to do. Otherwise, don’t alienate the location-independent reach you could get on the Internet.
The places that I would lean more heavily into in-person promotion would be Google My Business, paid ads, and email marketing.
