Do you run a small business? Are you looking for customers? Here’s a simple trick that will help you achieve three things:
- Increase your Instagram followers
- Increase your email subscribers
- Get you new customers
Yes, all three of them at once!
But before we proceed, let me take some time to explain a few marketing concepts.
If you have been reading up on email marketing, chances are that you have heard of the term “lead magnets”.
Lead magnets are essentially “baits” that marketers use to lure a website visitor into signing up to your newsletter or mailing list. This can be anything – an ebook, a free tool, an MP3 download, etc.
The objective here is to offer something very amazing so that your website visitors feel compelled to give away their email address to you. Once you have their email address, you can “nurture” them over time so that they become paying customers.
It’s essentially playing the long game.
Why Lead Magnets Fail
There are a couple of problems that small business owners typically face with lead magnets.
The first is that they do not find the right asset to give away. There are way too many ebooks and downloadables around the internet today that it is getting harder and harder to offer something that actually is valuable.
Not that it cannot be done – thousands of marketers do this successfully. But the average small business owner will struggle to find something compelling that they can give away for free.
The second problem that these business owners will struggle with is how to turn a lead into a paying customer.
Look, it is one thing to get someone to download an ebook about “10 Trending Haircuts for 2020”. But it’s a totally different ball game to get someone who downloaded this ebook to actually pay money and visit your salon for a haircut.
So, what’s the alternative, you ask?
Tripwire marketing
Tripwire marketing is a strategy where marketers offer a high value product or service at an unbelievably low price to push their customers to convert. The idea here is that once someone has paid you for a product or service, they are more comfortable paying you money for more expensive offerings.
Let’s get back to the hairdresser example. Instead of getting someone to download an ebook, how about you offer the first haircut for just $10? Yeah sure, there are going to be loads of people who are going to turn up for the $10 offer and never come back.
But what if you can get a good number of these people to sign up for your annual subscription plan (unlimited haircuts for $500 per year)? Now, that’s a win, right?
This is exactly what tripwire marketing is meant to achieve.
Now that we have explained the marketing terms, let us dive right into the tip that can get your small business dozens of new Instagram followers, email subscribers, and customers.
But before we proceed, I want you to know that it does not matter if your business does not have an Instagram account or an email marketing strategy in place. You can tweak this to only focus on customers in that case.
The reason we are also focusing on Instagram and email subscriber growth is because not everyone who you target with this strategy are going to convert right away. You can continue to nurture the others through these other channels so that they convert at a later stage.
So let’s jump right in.
Step 1: Creating Viral Assets For Instagram
The first step in the process is to create content for Instagram that can go viral. If you are a small business owner, you do not have to worry too much about what kind of content to produce.
You need to create very simple tutorials on services you offer. A hairdresser, for example, would create simple infographics on how to quickly do various popular haircuts. For example, you could do an infographic on how to get a ‘Penny Lane from Almost Famous’ haircut in ten minutes.
Why an infographic? Because, you could do the entire tutorial in one Instagram post. This has a greater viral potential than doing a series of posts on this topic. Besides, there are tools like Visme and Venngage that can help you create an infographic in a matter of minutes – you do not have to hire a designer for this.
But that’s not all. At the bottom of the infographic, you could showcase your tripwire:
“Get a Penny Lane haircut for just $5? Know how: https://RegalSalonNYC.com/PennyLane”
Now, this achieves a couple of things:
- You have created a marketing asset that will go viral. Penny Lane from Almost Famous may no longer be the buzz in 2024, but if you could create something similar from a recently popular movie, you have a better chance of gaining virality.
- You have introduced a call-to-action that people who see your infographic will now check out.
Please note that the tripwire you are offering (the Penny Lane haircut in this case) does not cost you a lot of time or money. In this case, it’s mostly just a curl job that you can get an intern to do.
Of course, it is going to cost you a lot more than $5 for this. But that’s the point of a tripwire – you offer it so low that the offer is irresistible. Yet the customer has to pay and does not get it for free.
Step 2: Push For Leads
At this point, people clicking through to your website are motivated to get a $5 deal. The landing page needs to be extremely crisp and “to the point”. Your page could look something like this
Some points to note here:
- Note that the copy is short with no fluff. The visitor is shown exactly what they are looking for.
- The “Only 2 of 15 spots” message creates a sense of urgency. This increases the chances of someone doing what you ask them to
- You do not really need their Instagram handle here. Nor do you want them to follow you on Instagram. But what’s the harm? You know the visitor is on Instagram because that is how they came across your message. So, it’s a good idea to get a follower when you get a chance.
- You could use an appointment booking software to make the booking. However, it is recommended that you use an email marketing form instead – this way, you can include all the different input fields we have here.
Besides, you do not really want the visitor to book a high demand spot on your calendar, do you? Using an email capture form, not only do you get their address directly to your mailing list, you could also push them for a slot when there is not really a lot of footfall.
Now that you have captured the lead, move on to the next step.
Step 3: Offer The Tripwire And The Upsell
I’m going to skip some details about you calling or emailing these leads up and scheduling the appointment. Now the next step here is when they arrive for the appointment.
As explained earlier, the objective of a tripwire is not to profit. It is to get authentic leads who do not mind paying you for a service. If you do not bother about getting Instagram followers or email subscribers, you could use a full-fledged booking system in Step 2 to make the customer pay for the tripwire online.
This creates an obligation and the customer is more likely to turn up at the mentioned time.
So what happens when they do turn up for the appointment. You provide them what you promised of course.
But in addition to this, offer them more value – a value that you don’t offer to everyone. One example I mentioned earlier was to offer an annual ‘unlimited haircuts’ package. You could further sweeten the deal and tell them that the regular package has only 10 bookings – but if they subscribe right away, they could enjoy unlimited haircuts.
Again, this creates a sense of urgency. Besides, you do not really lose much given that nobody is going to turn up for a haircut too often – and even if they do, you are at liberty to schedule them at a less frequented time.
How Good Is This Strategy
There are two reasons why this strategy is much better than traditional “marketing funnel” strategies. Firstly, you get more qualified leads. A customer who will pay $1 or $5 for a service is more likely to buy a regular priced offering from you than someone who gets something for free.
It’s an established fact that when customers are bestowed with a favor or offered something nice unsolicited, they are more than likely to return the favor by shopping with you.
Secondly, the time it takes to convert a visitor into a lead and further into a paying customer is much shorter than regular funnels.
While I have primarily used the example of a hairdresser in this article, this strategy can be used by almost every small business owner. A pet food store can offer a personalized dog food bowl for $1. A car servicing center could offer a ten minute car wash for the same price.
As long as you offer something that is directly relevant to your offering and you price it a sweet spot, your customer pipeline is never going to go dry ever again.
