Episode 80: Are Instagram & Email Working for You? Let’s Look at Your ROI

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to another Summer Shorts podcast episode. Today, I'm going to be talking about a hot topic that is ROI, return on investment. This is something that It's just really, I don't know, misunderstood by a lot of people. So I'm going to talk a little bit about return on investment when it comes to Instagram marketing and about email marketing.

So here we go.

Hey, welcome to holistic marketing simplified. This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions and you didn't go to school to learn how to be a. Full time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day every day.

So let's come hang out while we chat all things easy in your marketing. And my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote should to a, I get to more dream patients and clients. And Yes, please. My name is Dr. Kimmy and I'm a pediatric and prenatal chiropractor in Virginia and I listen to Holistic Marketing Simplified.

I completely understand if you're going to be taking the time to do something yourself and like upscale and actually like take the time to post on Instagram, take the time to put together an email. I say the word newsletter, even though like don't actually call it a newsletter. I talk about email marketing best practices a few times a week.

In a couple of different podcast episodes, if you want to go back there, but like I said, I totally get it. If you're going to either like pay someone to do your Instagram and email marketing for you, or if you're going to take the time to do it yourself, you want to see a return on your investment, right?

Well, the thing about it is, is it's not always as black and white X equals Y. And I know that our brains want it to be right. But if you even think about this podcast, for example. I am the outsourcing queen. I am not someone who is going to sit down, record a podcast, edit it all myself, try to write the blog post, get it up on all of the players and make the graphics and post it.

Like, I'm just not going to do that. Um, I actually had someone ask me. About she's like, do you think I can just do it all myself? I'm like, I mean, there's no way I would be on it. There's a reason that most pod, I mean, she probably could. I'm just saying, I, there's a reason that most podcast episodes don't make it past.

Haley, my producer would know. I think it's like 20 episodes. It's because it's a lot of work. So by the time I pay my producer, And my copywriter, who helps make sure that I get the associated blog post and email out about my episode, as well as my VA, who kind of coordinates all of that stuff. I, you know, the cost per episode, it, I can't necessarily say, Oh, I've seen X amount of sales cover my cost per episode, and I'm getting, Like an exact ROI because podcasting, Instagram marketing, all of these things are more indirect and they're more about brand awareness and building authority.

When it comes to Instagram ads, sometimes or Facebook ads, right? It's easier to say, I spent this dollar amount and I got this many clicks and this many people converted. But even then it's still not straightforward. So let me just give you an example outside of the online business world. I'll give you two examples.

So we were, we have a, our house was built in 1987 and we were looking for someone to inspect our chimney before we had a first like a fire. We have a real wood burning fireplace. And we, you know how you get like all the direct mail and um, from like different like local businesses, like all those direct mailers and stuff.

Well, we got direct mail, uh, around the fall from the same chimney company, but it came in two different, like one was like a. Do y'all get those mailers at your house? That's like a, they're like wrapped in plastic and they're all like, just a little bigger than business cards rather than like all of the local businesses, like, you know, it's like, you know, window washing and kitchen remodeling and all of that.

Uh, so I got it, like the little packs, like I said, they're just a little bit bigger than a business card and they're wrapped in plastic. So I got a card for this chimney company out of that pack and just like put it in our junk shore , of course. And then I was looking through the like local flavor or whatever magazine that has like the similar stuff in there and I saw an ad for them again.

So it reminded me that I had the little card from the other direct mail company. So clearly these people are advertising with more than one direct mail company. And I saw, I remember that I had like the more card size version and the card size version is the one I kept because the one in the magazine is like, I would have had to tear it out or whatever.

And each of them had their own corresponding coupon. When we call to. Make the appointment, of course, the coupon we're going to give them is of the card we kept. That doesn't mean that their direct mail from the magazine didn't work. It means that they're just showing up in multiple places and reminding me to book with them.

And that's how most all marketing works and it can be infuriating, right? Because think about if you had a billboard, a lot of people aren't going to say, Oh, I saw your billboard. I mean, maybe they would, or maybe they wouldn't, but it's just the constant driving by and seeing it. Even if you have a really good, like if you're a brick and mortar clinic and you have like a really well pronounced sign on like a main road, you never know when maybe someone might your Instagram page.

And then associate the colors and the logo and go, Oh my gosh, I've been driving by your clinic for years and I never noticed. So while it is super amazing to always have a direct or to think we could always have that direct, I spent this amount of money and got this much out of it. It just doesn't always work that way.

Now, I do have, we do have Instagram management clients who get direct, literally they'll put on their, you know, intake form. I heard about you on Instagram. So I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but more times than not, it's kind of like a roundabout process. way of like, this is the classic example I always get when it comes to your Instagram.

My friends and I always communicate in Instagram accounts and I have been on the hunt for like a couple different services recently. And the ones that had Instagram pages are the ones that I booked right away. The ones that just kind of had these like outdated websites are the ones that I still have not booked with because I'm like, I just can't get a feel for who you are like this.

Seriously, ask any of your patients. I promise you the ones like my two best girlfriends and I, um, here locally, we're trying to go out to eat. And, um, instead of sending websites, like we were sending each other Instagram accounts of these restaurants that we'd never been to, to kind of like get a feel for what they're like, we're not going to walk into the restaurant and be like, we saw your Instagram page.

Like, no, we like probably like Google restaurants and XYZ and then you go to look at their Instagram page to like get a feel for it. Right. So I'll leave you with this, this example, which is my, my favorite. And because this has actually happened several times, well, two different examples. One is like, let's say my best friend keeps having migraines and I'm like, you should go see my chiropractor.

And she's like, no, I've seen all those scary tick tock videos and I'm not going to go see your chiropractor. I'm like, so she gets another migraine and she's like desperate. She's like, ah, fine. Send me the name of your chiropractor. So maybe I send her your website. Maybe I send her directly. If it's me, obviously I'm going to send her directly to your Instagram page.

Well, once she comes to your Instagram page and assuming it's done properly and not just full of, you know, happy July 4th graphics with a random quote and a random testimonial graphic and like, You know, no photos or videos of you to be seen of what you actually do, assuming you're doing it properly. And she can come to your page and get a feel for what your clinic is like.

And she can go, Oh, well, that's not so scary. That's not what I thought it was. I'll definitely book an appointment. Well, when she goes to on the intake form, she's going to list me as how she heard about you, right? Even though it was your Instagram page that ended up like being the deciding factor for, Oh, this is not what I thought it was.

Same thing if you're an online health coach, I was at a retreat in Savannah with the social squad society and one of the gals was having leftovers from the night before. It was just an incredible rich pasta and she goes, I'm so glad there's not any health coaches here. And I thought, Oh my gosh, I am committing this to memory for content for all of my health coaches.

Because. The perception is, well, I don't need a health coach. They're just going to tell me stuff I already know. They're just going to tell me to eat better. It's like, well, maybe, but also, you know what I mean? So it's like, there's a lot of misconceptions out there and they could come to your Instagram and see like, you know, one of my clients, Kate, where she'll say pleasure should be one of your macros.

Maybe, you know, this person who thinks, oh, I could never work with a health coach. They're just going to shame me for what I eat. And they come to your Instagram page and they're like, wow. This, I'm really resonating with this girl's messaging. That's what makes them become a client. Two more examples. So one of, um, our longest running Instagram management clients, she, um, texted me, was like, Hey, just got a new patient.

She said she saw that Chick fil A reel and knew that we were the right people for her. And it was this really, um, it was that audio of crash my car into a bridge. I don't care that one. And so it was like, Yes, I'm a chiropractor. But yes, I also eat Chick fil A or something like that. And this potential patient saw that and was like, Oh my gosh, she's for me.

I'm going to book. So I was just curious. And I asked her, I was like, Hey, did that patient like actually comment or like that post? And she was like, Nope, I don't think so. So you have so many silent lurkers out there and these, and it's just so easy to assume that it's not working because you're not seeing this like direct, obvious.

way, but I can't tell you of all of the recent products I've been quote influenced to buy on Instagram. I haven't commented on their stuff. Like I drink these Ken, K I N, Ken euphorics drinks, actually heard about them from my friend Emily and I've never commented on any of their stuff on Instagram, but like I still see it and I'm like, Oh yeah, I need to like reorder my stuff.

When it comes to email marketing. I don't think I ever opened my chiropractor's emails, but seeing them in my inbox, even if I don't open it, reminds me to book my appointment. So again, I'm not saying that you should continue pouring money and time and effort into something that is clearly quote, not working, but just make sure that you really are clear about.

Okay. Thank you. How your ROI is being measured one, like pretty good metric that I like to always keep track of is if you're, um, well, this, this goes for if you're brick and mortar or if you're online is your reach and reach. If you just go to your professional dashboard on your profile. Reach is the number of unique people who are seeing your content.

So we like for the reach to be in the green or growing, meaning, yeah, it doesn't really matter. Like if people are actually commenting or not. Yes. If people comment, then you're going to get more reach. So it kind of is a double edged sword. I don't want to say they don't matter because the more engagement you do get, the more reach you're going to get.

But I'm just saying in general, I like to look at reach as, and if, if the reach is not growing and there's going to be months, it naturally like regresses and goes back and it's going to be in the red and that's totally fine. I would just say if it's like that for more than like three months in a row, then you really need to be rethinking your strategy.

And I have whole episodes on, there's one on like scrappy ways to increase engagement. I've got tons and tons of content around fixing the reach problem and putting some Injecting some CPR or some life into your account. If you're a hub student, then you're going to want to make sure you rewatch the community building and engagement classroom where I go in like deep detail about how to fix, um, or like, you know, turn your reach around.

Yeah. And then the other metric to look at if you're brick and mortar is to make sure that your followers are actually local to you and not, you know, in a different state, country, whatever. Same thing if you're, if you're, you know, Of course, they don't have to be in your same city, but just make sure they're like in places that you serve.

So like I said, reach and followers are like a really good way. And then if all of those look good and you're still, you still feel like people aren't booking with you, then we need to revisit my content ecosystem likely, which again is on another episode. If you just go to mollykahill. com slash content planner, I believe we'll link that in the show notes.

That's my approach to, hey, like reach and everything's looking great, but no one's actually booking. Usually you're missing like a key type of content for conversion. So I'll leave you with one final example. If you think about the companies that sponsor, I can't believe football season is going to be here in like a month.

I'm a huge, and as you don't know, I went to the university of Alabama from Birmingham and I'm a huge Alabama football fan. So if you think about the people that pay to have their logo. On a football field, right? Like Kroger, the grocery store here is on UK's football field. People don't see the Kroger logo and then walk into Kroger and go, Hey, I'm getting my groceries here because I saw your logo on the football field.

They, it just really, It's almost like a, I don't want to say subliminal messaging, but it kind of is. It's just kind of like planting that seed and reminding you, Oh, I needed to get groceries. So it's like kind of continuing to build that you are an authority in the area. And yes, like I said, I know it can be, you know, in closing, I know it can be tough.

When we're spending all of this money on different marketing channels, and it's really easy to try to make it be like an X for Y thing. And like I said, this does not go into all of the ways you can actually track a lot of, you know, trackable links and metrics and all of that. I'm, I'm not going into all that.

I just want you to consider that maybe Even if people aren't writing Instagram or email or whatever on their intake form, it's working better than you're giving it credit for. So stay the course. And like I said, continue building that brand awareness and authority. And yeah, I hope you have an amazing rest of your summer.

There's not much left. Thank you for listening to Holistic Marketing Simplified, and hey, you know how every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast. Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce, to bring you free information.

So in order for me to be able to continue doing that, we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly A. Cahill. C A H I L L. I would greatly, greatly appreciate your support.

I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.