In this episode of “The Marketing Nerdz Podcast”, CEO “Karan Dharamsi” shares his four step formula on “how to use Instagram to get more customers for your local business”.

If you too have a local business like that of a Salon, Dentist, Gym, Ice cream Parlours etc, most likely, people who stay in your area are the one’s who would visit you frequently and be your customers.

And Instagram as a Digital Marketing Platform has a great potential to reach out to your target audience, and scale your local business by getting in more customers.

So, wondering how to find your ideal target audience on Instagram and get them to follow your account and get them to your store?

Here’s the four step formula by Karan on how to use Instagram to get more customers for your local business:

The first and the most important step to use Instagram to get more customers for your local business is to find the right Hashtags:

To begin with, think of all the hashtags your potential customers would be using. Taking into consideration their buying behaviours, their spending patterns etc, you need to work on a list of hashtags that they would be using the most.

Giving an example of a local gym, Karan speaks about the ways to find your target audience if they were in the age bracket of 18-25.

Study which hashtags are they most probable to use and make a list of the potential hashtags.

Colleges, Cafes, Actors, Movies, other Gyms, Dance Studios, Fitness Supplement Companies etc are a few things to consider while finding the right hashtags your audience would use.

Once you have the list of the right hashtags, the next step is to search for potential customers who actually use those hashtags in Instagram.

Here’s the second step to follow on Instagram to get more customers for your local business:

Take the list of the hashtags you have finalised and put in each hashtag in Instagram’s search bar. Go through all the posts for that particular hashtag and look for your potential customer.
Browse through the profiles in detail and if you find a person who fits your target audience, here’s what you need to do next:

Apply the 4:1:1 formula

This formula is nothing but liking 4 to 5 pictures of that profile, commenting on one of the pictures with something genuine and following their account. But remember, do not spam the profile with trashy comments like “great job” or “that’s awesome”.

Find an area where you can build some authentic connection and engage with your potential audience. It will generate curiosity and entice the person to check out your profile, reach out to you and eventually follow you back.
With 4 likes, a follow and 1 comment, you usually have the person follow you back.

Once you have the person following you back, here is the next step on how to use Instagram to get more customers for your local business:

It is very important to use the bio and description part of your Instagram profile carefully!

Have a link in the bio which is typically a lead magnet, which will entice the person who visits your profile to click on it or sign up.

For example: 30 day free training or some diet consultation, tips to get abs in 30 days etc.
Offer them something interesting, irresistible and something that they benefit from so that they sign up for your lead magnet and have a sense of connection with you or your Brand.

And, here is the last step on how to use Instagram to get more customers for your local business:

Once you have the leads sign up for your offer, put them into your nurturing email sequence and eventually nurture them into a client with your awesome service.

For a more personalised process, make sure to send a DM, thanking the person once they follow you or sign up for your lead magnet. Once you have connected with all the potential leads for one particular hashtag, repeat the same process for the remaining hashtags.

So, here’s a quick recap of the four steps:

• Make a list of the hashtags your potential audience would use
• Search for the profiles on Instagram
• Use the 4:1:1 formula and offer them a lead magnet
• Put them in your automated nurturing sequence

This process might be a little more time consuming but the results are amazing as it is one of the platforms which ensure direct connectivity with your potential audience!

If you are not using Instagram for your business yet, you are missing out on a lot!

So, get started and find your ideal customer on Instagram using this four step formula.

And here’s a huge announcement that is revealed towards the end:

For all our listeners and viewers, Karan Dharamsi has launched a new YouTube channel for his Daily Vlog series.

The Vlog series is called: “The World, The Way I See It”

So, if you too wish to follow his daily vlogs where he speaks about Fame, Success, Glamour, Life, Philosophy, Books and much more, subscribe to the channel today!
YouTube Channel: Karan Dharamsi

Till then, use the Instagram four step formula to get more customers for your local business and let us know how it worked for you 🙂 And if you need any help on how to start implementing the formula, feel free to reach out to us and we would be glad to help you with the details.

In this episode of “The Marketing Nerdz Podcast“, CEO “Karan Dharamsi” speaks about 3 Digital Marketing Skills to master to have a successful career as a Digital Marketer.

There are a lot of successful Digital Marketing professionals out there and if you too wish to make a mark for yourself in this industry, here is the honest picture of where things are heading to and the most important skills to have.

So, the first and the most important Digital Marketing Skill to master is to have a great understanding of numbers:

From running your ad campaigns to tracking all your conversion, numbers play a huge role when it comes to Digital Marketing.

For a person who understands numbers, it will be extremely easy to track and analyse the ROI for any campaign or activity undertaken.

After all, for any company or business, the main objective of any marketing campaign is to increase the bottom line profits.

Hence, even if someone hates numbers but knows how to read and study a balance sheet, he would definitely do a great job as a Digital Marketer.

He would have a much better and clear understanding of what needs to be achieved out of each marketing activity and how to increase the ROI.

So, do not stagnate your career growth and understand the numbers for your business before anything else!

The second most important Digital Marketing Skill to master is to understand human behaviour:

It may seem to many that how can understanding human behaviour and psychology apply to online and digital marketing?

But here’s the reality…

Only a few people talk about this when it comes to Digital marketing. And in fact 80% of conversion depends on how well you understand and influence your customers who are human beings after all!

“Robert Cialdini“, “Seth Godin“, “Milton Erickson” are few of Karan’s favorite authors when it comes to reading more on human psychology.

Eventually, what great Digital Marketers do is replicate the real world offline behaviour in their marketing campaigns and messages on online platforms.

Speaking from personal experience, Karan also mentions how he has been using several psychological factors while creating his highly successful marketing campaigns online!

 
And the last but the most tricky Digital Marketing Skill to master for a successful career in the industry is to understand and stay updated with technological changes:

You may be learning the current trends and current technology being used in the market, but it may all change tomorrow!

Just like how social media has evolved from almost nothing to such a huge platform over the last decade, the future will see a lot many technological changes.

From Robots to Virtual Reality to Complete Automation, the future is going to change dramatically!

Sharing his personal experience from his engineering days, Karan explains how it is important to stay aligned to the changing technology. What you may be learning today, may not be relevant at all tomorrow!

So to conclude it all, here are the top 3 Digital Marketing Skills you should absolutely master, if you want to become a great digital marketer:

• First Digital Marketing Skill is to understand your Numbers
• Second Digital Marketing Skill is to understand Human Behaviour
• Third Digital Marketing Skill is to understand Technology

So go ahead and master these highly important digital marketing skills to build a great career as a Digital Marketing Professional. For more information on Digital Marketing and various trends and updates in the industry, feel free to contact us and we would be glad to help you with the same.

In this episode of “The Marketing Nerdz Podcast”, “Karan Dharamsi”, CEO of “The Marketing Nerdz” is going to speak about the “#1 Digital Marketing Tip for Success on Social Media”. He shares the importance of building genuine relationships with your target audience, using one of his personal experience that he came across on his twitter account.

Be it any social media platform, it is very important that you avoid this #1 mistake most people make while building professional connections to their potential target audience.

For any individual on any social media platform, when you like their work or admire their lifestyle, you go ahead and follow them.

Similarly, people discover your profile and follow you. And to build a connection, you too follow them back as most of the times, they are from the same industry and share similar interests.

But, here’s what Karan experienced, which happens to be one of the most common mistake people make on social media platforms.

A lot of the connections messages were automated and came across too salesy, right at the start of a relationship.

He further shares an example explaining how sometimes, these messages can completely put the other person off. Sending out these connection messages is surely not a bad idea, but what may be wrong is the timing!

At the very beginning of any relationship, you would hardly know what your customers want, what are their pain points, what are they looking at achieving from your product and services.

Hence, if at the very start they are bombarded with automated, pushy messages, it will leave them with a negative association with your brand.

So, here is the #1 Digital Marketing Tip for Success on Social Media on how to avoid this mistake

Not everyone who builds a connection with you or your business comes in with an objective to buy from you and become your customer immediately. It can happen eventually, over a period of time, once you have built some connection and interaction.

Someone who has been genuinely connected with you for a long period of time would be more probable of getting converted, than someone whom you just sell at the very first instance.

When you are trying to build your professional network, you don’t want to come across as too salesy and pushy at the very beginning. Times have changed and all of us are now resistant to sales people.

We all hate being sold, remember?

Our co-founder Sandhya Valecha spoke at length about how people hate being sold to on our previous podcast :“how to increase your sales using digital marketing”

So yes, the #1 Digital Marketing Tip to Success on Social media is as simple as that, “always build genuine connections with your target audience”

Do not sell without even knowing if the audience actually needs it, never assume that everyone who connects to you has the same needs and wants.

Everyone might be fighting different pain points or may be looking for different solutions. So take the efforts to understand their needs, segment them and later offer them the right solutions. This would definitely lead to higher conversion rates and happier audience for your business.

So, here’s the summary for the #1 Digital Marketing Tip For Success on Social Media:

• Do not blindly sell or build connections for the sake of it
• Understand and study what your customers want, segment them accordingly
• Customize and personalize all your communication with your target audience

Using automated message is completely alright in this digital age, but frame your communication in such a way that the opposite person would willingly want to build a connection and take forward the relationship with you. People value customisation and personalisation over automated messages.

Gone are the day’s of generic automated responses!

By building genuine connection, your customers will value you and this is the only way to you can turn your customers into fans.

So, care genuinely and build the business of your dreams!

In this episode of “The Marketing Nerdz Podcast”, “Karan Dharamsi”, CEO of The Marketing Nerdz will be speaking about his personal experience in the field of eCommerce and he shares one of the “E-Commerce Business Mistakes” to be avoided.

According to Karan, every mistake that you make, is a great learning experience and for what most of the people think, not every mistake is a failure. Mistakes are in fact a great way to learn and keep moving ahead!

So, without further ado, here is Karan’s personal experience of starting an eCommerce business and the “eCommerce Business Mistake” to avoid:

Having started a new eCommerce partnership business with the drop-shipping model, Karan and his Partner had managed to scale and grow the company from zero to a good six figures per month in just 5 months!
Even with the net profit margin as low as 15%, the business managed to grow at such a rapid pace and this called for a change, a change to enhance the end customer experience.

With an aim to enhance the end user experience and to start private labelling instead of the drop-shipping model, they invested all the profits earned so far to get in more inventory, found warehouses locally to stock up the inventory and reduce the delivery time, changed the packaging and increased the marketing budget to promote the product and get even more sales!

To anyone, it looked like the absolute right plan of action, the right procedure to go about to expand your Business and increase the number of sales. However, the sales dropped down instead of the expected growth and for a couple of weeks together, there we no sales at all.

From 6 figures a months to no sales…

If you too are wondering what could have possibly gone wrong, here is the eCommerce Business Mistake that led to the drop in sales:

The mistake was that the product which sold so well initially and dropped to almost no sales, was a seasonal product. There was a huge demand for it in the marketing for a good 6-7 months and that’s when the Business was started and it hit the right cords.

But not considering the nature of the product and it’s demand in the market place was the reason that led the Business to a standstill. It wasn’t a product that the consumers needed throughout the year and hence, until the next time when it would be back in demand, there were hardly any purchases.

Thus, putting in all the investment to stock up a huge inventory, to have warehouses and to have private labelling was a good idea from the growth point of view but not considering the nature of the product and it’s demand was the biggest mistake!

The only reason to share this mistake is to make sure everyone out there who is looking to start their own eCommerce business does not have to go through the same and they too get to learn from it, just the way he did.

So, here’s the summary on the “eCommerce Business Mistake”:

• Every product and service has a season, a time when it’s at the highest peak of demand in the market place. It is highly important to recognise the “on season” and “off season” of the products before getting into it’s marketing and promotion.
• Strategic Inventory Planning is a very crucial part of the eCommerce Business Model.

And to conclude, Karan and his partner did sell away all the inventory eventually, when the product was back in season. It did take some waiting for the same. And yes, unfortunately, the Business went from 6 figures a month to practically no profits by the end because of the mistake.

However, the drive home point through this entire experience is to learn from your mistakes and never give up!
Momentarily, it may look like a bad thing, but if you are willing to take it as a learning experience, you will learn from the mistakes and remember not repeat the same in future and move ahead in the right direction.

So, Grow from your mistakes. Mistakes are a sign that you are growing and moving towards your goal, they will make you a smarter person.

And, if you too are looking at starting or growing your business, but wondering where to start from, drop a comment below to get in touch with someone from the team and we would be glad to help you out with the details.