How to Run a Promotion on Instagram for Your Health Practice [Episode 96]

[00:00:00] Hello! Welcome back. I hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday if you're here in the States. And I am laughing at myself because if I had really planned the topic of this episode better, I would have posted it before Thanksgiving. So it was more like a Black Friday, like it would have come before Black Friday.

[00:00:19] But alas, I hope that my, uh, imperfection in business is inspirational that you just keep moving forward anyway. Not exactly how my brain works, thinking about things like that in like a calendar format as it should. But anyway, here we go. Today I'm going to talk about running a promotion on Instagram.

[00:00:41] And what do I mean by promotion? It can be something as like typical as like 20 percent off, you know, supplements. Like if you're trying to move product off your shelves. Or maybe you've got like a new patient special, or maybe you're doing like online group coaching and you're trying to fill your next cohort.

[00:01:01] That's like the more like traditional types of promotions. But I also want you to think about, say you just got a new massage therapist in your office, you want to fill her schedule, or you've got a new coaching offering. Or maybe you have a new associate, you want to help with their schedule, or even you just started offering shockwave, or hydro massage, or cupping, or whatever, and you want to do a push on that.

[00:01:27] It could also be something like, okay, I've noticed we haven't had as many pregnant patients as usual, so I'm going to do a push on trying to get more pregnant patients in, or maybe the family members of current patients, that could be a cool little promotion, I just thought about that. Like a family member addition.

[00:01:45] Because what are the stats? It's like 60%, six, 60%, is that the right word? 60% cheaper to like retain. So I don't know what the stats would be on like, yeah, I'm just trying to think. So I go to my chiropractor, my daughter goes, but like my husband doesn't go. So it's like trying to do a push on getting family members to come in.

[00:02:02] would be cool. There are all different things, whether, I mean, even if this is like a Google review push or you have an event as your office that you're trying to fill or an online event that you're trying to fill, all of these different things could be things that you use to do a push on Instagram. So that's what we're going to dive into today.

[00:02:21] So I'm getting very close to my 100th episode and I have this goal of getting 100 reviews on Apple podcasts before my 100th episode. So if you're an Apple podcast listener, could you please leave me a rating and review? It's kind of hard. It's not like super intuitive. You have to like go to the show and then scroll down past the episodes and then you'll see like a little star button and you should be able to rate it there.

[00:02:48] But if you listen on like Google podcast or Spotify, you can also just leave a rating there. I would be so grateful to you if you do. So if you want to just send me a screenshot and DM it to me, I'd be happy to give you like a free little profile audit or anything like that. So I appreciate you so much.

[00:03:05] Also, if you want to be featured in the listener shout out that comes on, DM me and all you have to do is do like a little voice memo. I can tell you what to do. I would love to feature you on my listener shout outs. So without further ado, here we go. Let's dive into running a promotion on Instagram.

[00:03:30] 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 holistic. Full time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day every day.

[00:03:49] So let's come hang out while we chat all things, even 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. Yes, please. Hi, I'm Melissa Birdsell. And I'm a chiropractor in Moline, Illinois, and I listen to the Holistic Marketing Simplified Podcast.

[00:04:13] So I highly doubt that any of you listening have never either bought a product that you saw on Instagram or hired a service provider, coach, anyway, something you saw on Instagram. Like sure, surely you have. I just yesterday bought these like CBD gummies and then like I got like the best ad. I was trying to save the ad because the ad was so good that I was like, Ooh, I need to use this to teach my students how to do face to camera reels.

[00:04:43] I just saw this like candlelight Christmas concert thing that's come to Cincinnati and I'm like, Ooh, we should go to that. So people are definitely going to to find out about things like this, whether you think they are or not. In fact, 200 million users visit at least one Instagram business profile a day, which is humongous.

[00:05:07] And, um, 81 percent of people say that they use Instagram to help them research products and services. So if you do, like I said, I mean, if you have extra services in your office, That aren't necessarily tight, like say you sell elderberry, like what a great way to get people into your door who maybe aren't current patients, but just to know, like, once they get in your door and they're like, Oh, this, this place is cool.

[00:05:32] So, um, and I know I gave you a bunch of different examples of ways you can use this. Actually, this one others, I hate like talking about stats because I typically find them boring just to be honest, but I did find this stat interesting. One in 10 users are using the platform specifically to shop or find new products.

[00:05:49] Like it's bananas. So I gave you a whole bunch of ideas of what you could do with the platform. different types of promotions that you can run in the intro. So for whatever reason you skipped the intro, I would go back to that because the first step in this, um, running a promotion is, you know, figuring out what the offer is.

[00:06:10] So are you going to be making a push on something that you currently do or offer? So maybe it's like not necessarily a time sensitive thing, but you're almost like doing what I call like a simulated launch. So, you know, the example I gave is like, Hey, we noticed we need more pregnant patients right now.

[00:06:27] So you're doing like, um, you know, maybe just like a little push, like I said, on current things are like, Ooh, we haven't had anybody add on cupping to their service anytime lately. So we're just gonna do a push on that. Or is it some type of deal or sale that you're having, which I gave you a whole bunch of different examples there.

[00:06:43] Or are you just going to craft a brand new, like short fuse offer maybe like that could be cool. Uh, maybe every new patient in the month of January also gets a 25 supplement credit or gets a, to bring a family member for 50 percent off or something like that. So when you're thinking about what you want this promotion to be, lean heavily on your like ideal client.

[00:07:07] And then, like I said, kind of reverse engineer like what's their problem and then do you have something currently that can fix or remove the barriers to like solving that problem? And or like I said, like, look at your books if you're like, Ooh, you know what a quick easy thing would be, Hey, let's try to add for the month of January.

[00:07:24] Let's get more family members added on who are coming in with their spouse or their kids or whatever. The first thing I call this phase one is you're going to pick some dates on your calendar. So whether it's going to be like a week, I would say anything longer than a week is really hard to do a promotion on.

[00:07:42] So whether it's like one week that you're going to have something on sale or on promotion, or if you're, you know, trying to drive traffic to a specific event, it's like a one day event. Obviously it'll just be that event, right? And then you brainstorm what that, uh, this offer, like what problem is this offer solving?

[00:08:03] And then on top, so for example, if the offer was like, we're trying to get in more, this isn't necessarily an offer, but the goal let's say is to get more pregnant patients into the office, then the problem that it's solving is not the problem it's solving for you. It's the problem it's solving for the patient.

[00:08:20] So that's when you're going back and mining Google reviews or mining. intake forms from previous pregnant patients and taking all of the language from that and using that in your offer as you craft the marketing for it. And then another great thing to do is if you have them for this specific thing is to gather some testimonials or reviews.

[00:08:39] So say, like I said, you added, you want to add like dry needling on, do you have any reviews or testimonials you can get specifically on dry needling? And if you don't, This could be a good chance to do some direct outreach to some patients who you know have used that part of your service and mine some reviews or testimonials that way.

[00:08:59] All right, now moving into phase two, we want to actually plan out our posts and I'm also going to talk about some emails as well. So the first type of posts that are good to plan for your Instagram are what you can pin to the top of your Instagram profile. So if you haven't seen the pinned posts before, you can like go look at my profile and you'll just see the little push pin emblem at the top.

[00:09:24] I think it's top left of the post and you can pin up to three posts at the top of your Instagram profile. That just means anytime you post something new, those top three pinned or any pinned posts, you could just have one pin post if you want. It's not like any new post is going to go behind that pin, pinned post, it's pinned in place.

[00:09:42] It's going to always look like the newest post. So I, for example, just hosted a free masterclass with my friend, Dr. Christy Wick. And so my post talking about that masterclass, I pinned to my profile until the masterclass was over. And then I unpinned it and took it off. To pin a post, all you do is tap the three little dots at the top right of your post and hit Pin to Profile.

[00:10:08] And you'll have to play around with the order. So whatever you pin, say you're going to pin up to three posts about this promotion that you're running, whichever one you go to pin first, and then second, and then third, the one you have pinned third is going to be the one that shows up Like on the top left as first on your grid.

[00:10:29] If you're a visual person, you're just going to have to play around with it. If it messes up the order, just unpin it. Like you'll, you'll figure it out. It's not that hard. So ideas for these pin posts, like I said, it could be just one, if like, for example, like I said, I had that masterclass, so I just did one pinned post, but let's say, let's use the example that you're trying to move some supplements off your shelf and you're like, okay, I'm going to do a big sale on supplements.

[00:10:54] Then maybe one of the pin post is an actual really blunt to the point graphic that's like 25 percent off all supplements in the month of January or whatever, and it can be super simple and then you can use the caption to talk about the different types of supplements you offer and then like the call to action for people to buy them from you because it might be that you actually physically have them in your office or maybe you have like a full script that you want to drive people to.

[00:11:19] Another idea would be a video or like a carousel post of you highlighting your favorites. So, for example, one of our clients also sells Young Living. And I don't know if you've ever gone, like you've been on the Young Living website recently, but holy cow, they have So many options. So rather than just saying, like, sale on Young Living and then someone going to that website and being like, holy cow, like, what do I want, what do I need, then highlighting like your top favorite products.

[00:11:55] And yeah. Promoting them that way is another great post. And then another idea for a good pin post, like if you're going to do three is to go back to, as I said, in phase one and talking about some good reviews and testimonials for, you know, like I said, whatever's applicable to the promotion that you are running.

[00:12:13] So those can be done first. You can post those over three days if you want and just pin them one at a time. Some people design them so it's like one cohesive graph, graphic across all three. That's a definitely more advanced, don't feel like you have to do that. But if you do that, then you do, you would probably want to post them all kind of at the same time.

[00:12:36] So you can just get that up. Yeah. I would also kind of think about, okay, how many times do I need to talk about this? Because I'm telling you the majority of the time you're not talking about it enough. And I mean, I'm guilty of this too. Like even I am like, Ooh, I should have posted about that more funny side story.

[00:12:50] We just, um, as I'm recording this, it's not quite Thanksgiving yet, but we already decorated for Christmas and we love listening to, um, I'm sure you do this too. Tell me if you have a favorite station. Like the Christmas fireplace or like Christmas coffee shop, you know, where it plays the music on YouTube.

[00:13:08] Um, we also love listening to like Pentatonix Christmas. And so when we were putting up the Christmas tree, we were like, there were so many ads. You know how YouTube asks you every single time you log in, do you wanna upgrade to YouTube Premium? Do you wanna upgrade to YouTube Premium ? So my husband and I were joking and on the 798th time they asked, we did upgrade to YouTube Premium.

[00:13:32] Now we won't keep it forever. We'll, we'll just have it for the holidays just 'cause we almost always have that little fireplace thing on in the background, just 'cause we both work from home. But, um, you have to just, like I said, think like these big companies and how often they ask you to upgrade to these things.

[00:13:48] It's like constant. When I get so many of, um, students will ask me like, Oh, I held this, I have this class, but nobody's signed up. And I'm like, okay, great. How did you promote it? And they're like, well, I posted about it one time. I'm like, well, that's not enough. We're going to have to do however many times you think you need to post about it, double it.

[00:14:07] And then you're probably still not enough, but it's close. The other thing is the price point, kind of the more expensive the thing is that you're trying to sell, the more lead time and like warmup time and the more posts you're going to need likely to move it. I just typically, I like to do the three pin posts, three reels, three carousels, and then stories every day.

[00:14:32] And then I also like to add in something else like email campaign, or if you're really big on Facebook, I mean, I just post. Push all my Instagram posts to Facebook. But if you're someone who maybe you are, if you're like a brick and mortar acupuncturist operating in the town that you grew up in, so like your personal Facebook is relevant to what you do, then like maybe you think of something like that, that's extra.

[00:14:57] Also, think about how you can put things up in signage, like inside your office and just having signs up is not always enough. Like, can you train your front desk to be like, Hey, make sure you bring this up to every single patient who comes in. And then also the other thing about Facebook that I meant to say, I've skipped over this is local Facebook groups are like.

[00:15:21] amazing for this. If you're someone who draws, even if you don't just draw a local audience, I still think this is a great place to find, like, to promote this because so what? Like, if a lot of groups I know don't allow promotion, but what if it's, what if you just asked a patient to post about it on your behalf?

[00:15:36] Like, You're not promoting yourself. So um, like your patient could be like, Hey, I know that, you know, with the new year coming up, a lot of people are trying to get healthier and just want to let y'all know my chiropractor's office is running a special on XYZ. Like that's totally innocent. And I know if my chiropractor or if my acupuncturist asked me to do that for them, I would be more than happy to do it.

[00:15:59] So sometimes you got to think outside the box. I call it my scrappy. If you go back to, I have an episode on like scrappy ways to increase your engagement. I talk about that kind of stuff. Let's go back to the, I said three rules, three carousels and stories daily. What does that look like? So I like to do a mix of the more, I call it like a more like direct or like blunt pitch where you're not hiding anything.

[00:16:21] It's literally like, Like I said about the 25 percent off all supplements or like bring your family member for 50 percent off. And like I said, don't feel like you have to offer a discount. I'm just using discounts as examples or like add cupping therapy on for just, you know, X dollars. Or like I said, if you're trying to do the push on pregnant patients, it would be like now accepting new pregnant patients.

[00:16:44] So like I said, like very direct type pitches. We have three new patient appointments. spots available next week for pregnant patients. Like I said, very specific blunt, you know, don't have to hide it. Then I do some other types of posts that are kind of more educational in nature that can stand alone as a useful piece of content.

[00:17:03] But then you use that to show like, Oh, you know what you're talking about? And then you talk about your offer. So for example, going back to the masterclass that I just had, I did one reel that was like a B roll of me Um, doing my talk to the women chiropractors group and I put like a trending audio over it and then, uh, the text on screen was just like chiropractors new free masterclass.

[00:17:27] It just had the date and the time and how to register. Like it was very blunt at the point. Then I did another reel of me talking to the camera, teaching a tidbit of something that I'm was going to be teaching in the masterclass. And so the call to action was like, if you liked this and you want to learn more type thing, here's how you sign up for this class.

[00:17:48] So I, like I said, I like to have a mix of both. And then the third type that I didn't do, but I should have was like, again, some type of like social proof or testimonial. Like if you have a client that, say you're a health coach, you have a client that texted you, Oh my gosh, ever since I started taking that beef liver, I've had so much more energy.

[00:18:09] And you're screenshotting that, putting that up as your post or reel. And then maybe you're like educating about why beef liver helps. And then, and now we're having a 25 percent off sale or something, even if it's not a sale, like Did you know you can buy supplements from us on Fullscript and blah, blah, blah.

[00:18:25] Like most of you probably get like a 20 percent off thing if you're on Fullscript, so that's something to promote there. As for the call to action, I'm not going to go into many chat too much in this episode just because I just want you taking action and I don't want you to think, well, if I can't do this, then I can't do it.

[00:18:46] But minichat, M A N Y, is the, it's like the automatic trigger that when people say like, comment the word. So, for example, if you're adding, you know, you're trying to do like a Push on like a masterclass that you might be hosting a comment, the word class two, and it's where it like automatically sends them the link.

[00:19:06] You can simulate that and just do things manually. Just make sure you're actually keeping an eye on your Instagram account. I do that all the time. So before I. Like took the time to, well, I didn't set up my va, set up MiniChat for me, but before I took the time to actually set up MiniChat, I wanted to road test.

[00:19:25] Are people actually gonna comment the word? And so, um, and I do that with a lot of my free downloads, so I'll do it manually the first time. So for example. I, when I had my new like email scripts freebie, it was a comment, the word email to get the freeze freebie. And I didn't have a mini chat trigger set up for that.

[00:19:40] And I just manually direct messaged anybody who commented the link, but that's like a good way to kind of get like, okay, people are going to actually do this. Now I can set up the mini chat trigger. There is a free version of ManyChat that works. It's just I find the paid version so much easier because on the free version, you have to set up your triggers for individual posts, whereas on the paid version, which is 15 a month, you can set up the trigger to be on any post, so it's like, it's just like less time consuming.

[00:20:13] So for example, let's say you're having a breathwork class in your office, comment the word breath. You would have to go anytime you wanted that trigger to work on a post, you'd have to go set it up for that post, whereas on the paid version, you can set it up to like anytime somebody comments the word breath, it sends them the class link, if that makes sense.

[00:20:34] But like I said, you can totally just do that manually in the beginning. As for stories, I would be doing a lot of polls, like, hey, we're, we're hosting this free breathwork class in our office. Even before you have the exact dates locked in, you could be like, let us know if you're interested in anybody who votes.

[00:20:51] You can go back, most people don't know this, but anytime you post a, a poll or anything like that in your stories, you can see the answers to it way after the story is no longer up. All you have to do is go to your profile, go to those three horizontal lines at the top right of your profile, and then tap archive, and that's going to show you your story's archive.

[00:21:12] Go find where you posted the story and tap on it and kind of swipe up. You can see the answers like you can see everybody who responded. So I do that a lot with like anything I'm planning, like, Hey, I'm creating a new reels freebie. It's not done yet, but let me know if you want to know when it's complete and I'll go back and find the old story and like manually DM everybody who answered.

[00:21:36] Yes. So you can do that. Like I said, But if you do know the dates and times already, like I said, like, let us know if you're interested in the breathwork class, then you can manually DM people or now you have working hyperlinks in Instagram. I see a lot of people still not using that feature. It's so simple.

[00:21:50] All you do is go to the little square smiley man at the top tap link, and then people can click the link directly from your stories. And I would make sure I was posting that daily. The other thing I would do is I don't often talk about new Instagram features because I find that I just want to make sure they're going to stick around.

[00:22:12] Instagram is always changing things and adding things. And so I don't like to teach about new things until I'm like, okay, I know this is here to stay. Like there's plenty of accounts you could follow for new Instagram features. If you're, if you're. If you're interested in it. But one new feature that I do like is the almost like, um, like the status that you can leave over your profile now.

[00:22:34] So you've probably seen it where like, if you, if you go to someone's profile and they have a little status bubble above their profile picture, you can see it. Or if you go to your DMS and people have statuses up, you can see it. So I would, um, say for example, I had my status status, like for the class I'd had Kairos DM me the word class.

[00:22:55] And that was it because you obviously can't have it be too long. And then after that, I had like Black Friday sale live early DM me or something like that. You have to keep it short. So I would also, like I said, utilize that to let people know about the promotion. And then the last thing is, like I said, making sure that you are emailing your current patient database to let them know about the promotion if, if that's applicable, applicable to your current patient database.

[00:23:26] Okay, so like I said, that is everything I would do. And before I wrap up this episode, I do want to say, I teach this in full with examples. There's a template of the pin posts, all of that type of jazz inside of Holistic Marketing Hub. So if you are not yet a student, I would love to chat with you. Like if you're like, Ooh, I'm not sure it's right for me or like I've had some reservations.

[00:23:50] I genuinely love to hear from you. I know a lot of people say that, but for me, it's like, I think of it anytime that you DM me and ask me a question, it's like great market research, right? Cause it shows me the holes that I have in my marketing. So I would love to have you inside the hub. Like I said, I teach this in more detail inside the hub with examples.

[00:24:08] And then the other little, I should have said this in the intro, but the other caveat to this is don't be discouraged if you don't get the results you were hoping for. If you don't, like if you haven't laid really good, um, foundations with your Instagram marketing, it's going to be a heck of a lot harder to sell and run a promotion.

[00:24:31] So if you're consistently laying the right foundations. When you are in promote and sell mode, then it just works so much more effectively than like, Oh, I've ghosted my entire Instagram for three months, but now I want to sell something. So I'm going to show up. So that's why the cashflow, I call it a cashflow plan.

[00:24:51] What I just taught inside of the hub. That's why this is one of the last classrooms in the hub, because I'm teaching you how to lay the like solid foundations first. I'm not saying you can't try it. Hey, you never know. Don't, like this episode, like I said, like this episode, it should have aired a couple of weeks ago before Black Friday and taught you how to run a Black Friday offer, but it didn't.

[00:25:11] So like I said, even if you have ghosted it, you know, try it anyway. And because you never know, but yeah, that was just my two cents on that. Okay. I hope you all have an amazing holiday. And like I said, please go leave me a review or testimony and follow the show. And screenshot. If you do DM me, I'll give you a free little audit and I just appreciate y'all so friggin much.

[00:25:34] I feel like I have the best community and everybody says that, but I don't know. I love y'all. You're amazing. Have a fantastic day. 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.

[00:25:50] 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.

[00:26:08] To leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly A. Cahill, that's 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.