I DOUBLED my business by quitting Instagram
→ Fun fact: I quit using instagram to market my creative business and that's when I actually had my first $10k month! Are you tired of the endless grind of creating content consistently on social media to market your business? Overwhelmed by all the instagram growth hacks, trending audio, content calendars and everything else you feel like you're "supposed to do" to grow your online business? Same! This video is all about how to market your business without relying solely on social media platforms like instagram, tik tok, and twitter. Social media marketing is a great strategy, but I want you to know it's not the ONLY way to grow your brand and business. Because if you're NOT a full-time content creator, you need time to actually run your business and focus on doing what you do best.
↓ TIME STAMPS:
00:00 — Why business owners are tired of Instagram
03:20 — Creating content while also running a business
04:48 — More followers =/= more money
06:14 — Social media is not the only way to market your business!
08:00 — You don't need a lot of followers to make money
10:55 — SEO marketing strategies
12:40 — Is paid advertising worth it?
14:04 — Grow your business with in-person events
Note: This was written as a transcript for the video. Please excuse any grammatical errors.
I think this topic is sooo important right now because lately I feel like there’s are a lot of business owners who are frustrated and just like tired of social media marketing, specifically on instagram.
Hello my imaginary friend, if you’re new here, my name is Leigh, I’m a designer and multipassionate creative business owner and yeah today I wanna talk about how to actually market your business without social media.
Because I actually completely quit using Instagram for my design studio and the craziest thing happened — I actually started booking more clients and making more money. And I wanna talk about it, because I kinda feel like all anyone ever talks about in the online business space is how to grow on Instagram or now Tik Tok.
But first things first, I wanna say I don’t actually have anything against social media marketing.
I just feel like it’s kind of a lot sometimes. And this is mostly about Instagram in particular, but I feel like there’s this growing resentment coming from a lot of business owners and artists who are just getting tired of the pressure to grow a huge audience and constantly be putting out valuable content and actually engaging with people in comments and stories and keeping up with trends and trying to hack the constantly shifting algorithms.
I’ll sometimes come across these instagram growth content creator expert type accounts — you know the type I’m talking about. And the output that is often recommend to actually see results growing on Instagram is absolutely wild to me. Like posting 5 reels a week, and also 3 photos, and also 2 educational carousels, and oh don’t forget to update your stories every hour AND eheh did you think you were done? Oh no, you also need to manually find 30 new people in your target audience every day and comment on their posts so that they maybe might see you in their notifications and decide to follow you. And oh, don’t forget all that content you’re mass producing in a short timespan also has to be like actually good and creative and compelling.
Yeah rewind back to like 20 seconds ago when I said it’s just kind of a lot sometimes.
Like don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not throwing shade to those types of content creators, at all. Honestly I am jealous of their energy.
But I kinda feel like the only way you’d have the time and energy to do all that stuff consistently is if creating content was your job. Which, you know, makes sense, because the types of accounts that post that kinda advice, that is what they do, that is their job! They’re full-time content creators and social media managers and marketing agencies. And I don’t know how to articulate how I feel about this exactly, but I just find that kinda interesting.
But if you have a business that is not all about growing on social media — If you’re like a shop owner or a ceramics artist or life coach or designer —
Does it actually make sense to be spending like 80% of your work week just on social media?
It just makes me wonder why prioritizing social media marketing for entrepreneurs and small business owners is so normalized as like the ONLY WAY — when there are other ways to market your business.
And I kinda get it, the idea of growing an audience on social media — is so appealing as a business owner because we tend to think that the larger our audience, the more money we’ll make. It’s - It’s math, right? But honestly that is quite simply not always true. Even for content creators and influencers where growing a large audience is actually an important part of their job, there are still so many other factors and variables that determine how much money they actually make from that.
So I kinda went on a tangent there for a little bit — but let’s bring it back coz the purpose of this video is not to just hate on instagram and complain about the algorithm. And I know that’s literally what I just did but like also I am very aware of the fact that Instagram is a free platform that doesn’t owe me anything and I should be grateful that I don’t have to like go door to door in my neighbourhood to try and sell my design services.
I know. And I am grateful.
I just wanted to make this video because I know that like me, there are a lot of freelancers and entrepreneurs out there that are just feeling like the effort they put into social media is not actually benefitting them in the way that they’d like.
And I just want to offer a friendly reminder that social media is not the only way to market your business.
I just want you to remember the fact that millions of businesses existed and succeeded before instagram was even a thing. And also, just wanna point out, that there are still millions of businesses all over the world that are thriving today, right now without using instagram or Tik Tok at all. So it’s possible, ok.
And I’m not even trying to say that you shouldn’t use social media to market your business, ok. Like I’ll be real, I am currently trying to grow my new instagram account please follow me. And also Youtube is kinda social media and I’m trying to grow my audience on here too [subscribe] so like yeah, it would be hypocritical of me to say don’t use social media to market your business.
But for me personally, I’m just not putting all my marketing strategy and efforts into Instagram anymore. It’s not my top priority.
Because like I alluded to earlier, I previously got so burnt out and frustrated with Instagram that I just randomly decided to quit one day. I stopped using it completely for a few months and instead I put my efforts elsewhere and the result was that I received more inquiries about my business than usual and I actually booked more clients. (And made more money)
WILD!
And I think one of the most important things that experience made me realize is that having a large audience on social media is not even really as important as it seems when it comes to actually making money in your business.
Like obviously it’s cool to have big numbers, and it’s still a goal of mine to grow my audience. But at the end of the day — I’m running a design business, not a social media marketing agency. I only need like a couple clients a month to make a really decent living.
And I think that there are a lot of service based business owners out there that are putting so much emphasis and effort into growing a massive audience when really they could put more effort into actually converting the audience they already have.
And I think even for a product based business, which usually have a much lower price point compared to most services so therefore you think you would need to have a large audience, right. But if you can sell your products wholesale, to a handful of boutiques, you can make a VERY good income, you don’t have to just rely on selling direct to consumers one by one. And even if you don’t do wholesale, there’s still other marketing strategies besides just social media.
And I feel like even if you looooove Instagram, it’s still a really good idea to diversify your marketing strategy. Some channels are great for nurturing your audience, some are better for getting discovered my new people, and some are better for converting to actual sales.
So if you wanna grow your business without relying so heavily on social media as your only form of marketing — here are some other things you can try.
Search Engine Optimization
So the number one thing is SEO — which if you don’t know stands for search engine optimization. This is when you try to rank well for certain search terms so that people find your business when they’re actually looking for stuff.
I think most people think of Google right away when it comes to SEO, which is valid, it is literally the number one search engine in the world. But there’s also this Youtube — youtube is a really great Search platform that also doubles as social media, which is cool. And there’s also Pinterest, which is one of my personal favourites, it’s another great search based platform. And like I mentioned earlier I have another video all about why I love it and how it helps me get my ideal clients.
So there’s basically 2 different approaches when it come to SEO based marketing strategies — there’s the metadata approach, and then there’s the content approach. So the first one, the metadata type of approach, is when you hear about like using keywords all across your website and in your file names, and it’s things like hashtags and just like getting really nerdy about the details so that the algorithms will know where to put you.
And then the content marketing approach is a little more human, it’s like, blogging or creating youtube videos in a way that specifically answers questions that you know your target audience is searching for. I know for me personally, that is how I discover new businesses all the time. I’ll just Google something and then there’s always a blog post or a youtube video about that thing.
I think when it comes to SEO, doing a balance of both approaches is a good strategy. You wanna use keywords and tags and things like that so that the algorithms can help your audience find you, but you also need to appeal to the human side of things as well, because at the end of the day, even if you show up in search, the content needs to be compelling and interesting enough for a person to actually click on.
Paid Advertising
The next marketing strategy is paid advertising. I think that paid ads kinda get a bad reputation in the small business owner / entrepreneurship space. And I do understand why, and I also haven’t ever really done ads yet. I know it can turn a lot of people off because it can seem expensive or daunting or not worth it. But I think if you actually go about it strategically, paying for ads can be an amazing way to grow your business.
Like if you think that ads are too expensive, but you’re spending hours on instagram and still not getting any clients from all that time and effort, you might want to ask yourself how much your time is worth. The truth is, paid ads often have a much better return on your investment compared to growing organically when you actually value your time and energy. And I think this might be an unpopular opinion, but ads do actually work — if you do them right.
The next marketing strategy I wanna briefly mention is Press. So this is like, getting featured in articles and magazines or on the local news. But honestly, I don’t know how any of that really works, so I’m just gonna skip over it.
In-Person Events
And the last marketing strategy that I wanna talk about is just
GOOD OL’ FASHION IN PERSON EVENTS. Do you guys remember events? Do those still exist?
This was actually how I grew my jewelry business back in my youth — like 4 years ago. I used to participate in lots of pop-ups and craft fairs and that was actually the main way that I marketed my business and also where I made a lot of my sales, and also where I met shop owners who would buy wholesale to stock my jewelry in their shops. And also also as a weird side note — those in person events were actually the main way that I grew my instagram audience which led to more sales online later. It’s also how I got my jewelry stocked at LOFT stores, one of their buyers discovered my brand at a Renegade Craft Fair.
I feel like literally no one ever talks about the power of marketing your business in person, but idk I think that’s probably one of the most powerful ways to start building your brand. There’s just something about that real human connection.
And marketing in person can also just be really fun. There’s such a different energy when you can actually talk to your customers face to face. It’s obviously a bit trickier now than it was 4 years ago, but I think there’s still lots of ways you can grow your business offline, in the real world.
Ok bye!
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