How to Run a Promotion on Instagram, Inspired by Buc-ee’s Marketing [Episode 129]

Hi. Welcome back to another episode of the Holistic Marketing Simplified Podcast. That sounded so weird. I feel like I sounded really creepy when I said that this is gonna be another really short episode and like for real short, not a, I said it's gonna be short and then it's not. We're going to talk about.

Promotions, whether you're promoting an event or you know you're running a new patient special, new client special, trying to fill your books, or maybe having a sale on supplements, or you've added a new service offering to your office, like maybe you just got shockwave. Maybe you just got a shockwave machine or soft wave, or you know, you've added cupping or you've brought in a new massage therapist.

We are going to dive into one of the biggest mistakes I see when it comes to trying to promote that. 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 hanging 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 board Dream patients and clients. Yes, please. Hi, I am Dr. Carly and I am a mentor for other chiropractors from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I listen to holistic marketing simplified podcasts.

Okay, so this episode was inspired by a recent road trip to Birmingham, Alabama, where I am from. The majority of my listeners are in the States, but if you're not, I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is a pretty much straight shot, seven and a half hour drive from Cincinnati where we live now, which is near my husband's family, down to Birmingham, Alabama, where I am from, and there are no direct flights, so we always just drive because it's the easiest way to go.

So if you are in my part of the world or I can't, I need to look where all they are. This episode was inspired by Bucky's. And if you know, you know, if you don't know what Bucky's is, I need you to Google it immediately, and that is spelled B-U-C-C-E-E-S. You can also look it up on Instagram. I feel like Bucky's, so Bucky's, for those of you who don't know, is a gas station.

And when I say gas station, whatever you're thinking in your head. It's not that there are usually over 200 gas pumps. They are often put in very small towns and they are always, and I mean always packed when you get in there, they are full. I need you to just go look this up. Like I can't ex I my words, even though I feel like I'm a good storyteller, cannot properly do Bucky's justice.

Okay. There's an entire wall of beef jerky. There is tons of Bucky's merchandise. There's other merchandise, like nice stuff, like nice brands, not like designer brands, but like nicer brands. There is tons of food drinks, tons of bathroom stalls, the bathroom stalls and the uh, the bathrooms themselves are always immaculately clean.

There is this whole fresh barbecue and brisket station where anytime they pull out a new, like a fresh piece of meat, somebody yells fresh brisket on the board, and then all 10 employees who are in the other, like in the meat section are like fresh brisket on the board. Anyway, it's hilarious. You just, it's always packed.

I literally have to hold mjs hand the whole way through. There's a Bucky's mascot. People are taking pictures with it. There's a car wash. Guys, I'm telling you, this place is legit insane. We also took a picture of like they were hiring for a general manager and their GM makes anywhere from 1 75 to $225,000 a year.

It's that big of an operation, okay? It's like sweeping the nation. Here's what I need you to study when it comes to Bucky's. We passed two Bucky's on our drive home, or you know, either way to or from. They start putting billboards like over 150 miles away, and I lost count of how many billboards they do.

When you get down to like less than five miles, it's like Bucky's in five miles, Bucky's in four miles, Bucky's in three miles, like continuous billboards. And then it'll be like Bucky's in one mile. Exit now. Exit now, and it'll be like both side of the interstate. Okay. I bet you a lo I started counting, but I, I lost track of count.

'cause I had, I had Matt. I try to be a passenger princess who can like actually get some work done while we're on the car. I just can't, I, I just really prefer to drive. I get car sick and so sometimes I'm okay on the interstate if I'm just like watching, but I like to put in a really good audio book and drive and I'm happy to literally drive the entire seven and a half hours.

Matt's always like, please, can I drive? And I'm like, I don't want you to. So I, I enjoy doing the driving. And, um, sidebar, I did not mean to talk about this, but if y'all have not yet read Taylor Jenkins read New Novel Atmosphere. It is my favorite book of all time now. Like it is my number one favorite book I've ever read and I've read a lot.

So I did the audio book. Um, a lot of you who are big audio book listeners too will know the narrator's Julia Whelan, who's like Whelan. She is the best narrator. So please DM me if you've read it or add it to your library holds. I know the hold right now in libraries is like 20 deep. I used one of my audible credits 'cause I knew we were gonna be in the car forever, so, okay.

So anyway, so like I said, there are billboard after bill. I mean they are gonna make sure and they're all really funny. And like starting about 70 miles away, the billboards will say like, you can hold it. Like, it's just like I'm telling you, it's this marketing freaking phenomenon. Okay? And that's the type of energy that I want you to take into your promotions.

I do these one-off calls, pick my brain calls, DM me if you wanna book it. I can't remember what my pretty link is. I, we'll link it in the show notes if you wanna book a one hour pick my brain call with me on Zoom, and almost every time we get on one of these calls, it's someone's like, Hey, I hosted this free.

Like, for example, I had one that was like, we just hosted a, um, breastfeeding workshop and nobody showed up. Okay, let's troubleshoot. How many times did you post about it on Instagram? Once and then we put it on our stories one time. Did you email your patient database about it? No. Uh, we also had a sign sitting up at our checkout.

I'm like, Hmm, okay, there's our problem. So again, let's go with this Bucky's energy. And y'all think I'm like being hyperbolic? Like this is like, is that how you say, use that word? Did I use that properly? Do I sound smart? And look like I'm guilty of this myself. Like we in our heads think that every time we post something, like I said, this is not a, like me pointing my finger at you saying you're doing this is, like I said, this is something I need to hear, like I'm about.

I'm in launch mode right now and I need to hear this myself. People need to hear things over and over and over and over and over again. And on top of that, not everybody sees the content when you post it as such a small fraction of people actually see the posts. So you in your head probably think, oh, they're sick of hearing about it.

Listen, they're not. And if they are like whatever, that's a small subset. That can't be the thing that stops you. However often you are posting about trying to promote, like I said, whether it's an event, you've got a new patient special, you've got a new massage therapist in your office, you've got a new modality, whatever, you've got to talk about it.

Until you feel like you are blue in the face. There used to be something called the marketing Rule of seven, and it's been around since the 1930s and it said that people needed to hear, like, see something seven times in order to take action. Well, 2025 looks a whole lot different than a hundred years ago, right?

God, it's weird to think that was almost a hundred a hundred years ago because we are inundated with so much more content than people were in that time. Right? So I was just doing some Googling, actually using perplexity. I saw some things that said 21 times, but I also read an article in Forbes over a year ago.

I can't find it. I tried to find it before I recorded this podcast that said people now need to see things 75 times. I don't know, whatever. So let's just go with 21. And I think that's not hard and fast rule, right? Because it's like one, somebody who already knows who you are and is like a warm or hot lead is not gonna need to see things as many times as someone who's never heard of you, right?

Even if you're not trying to promote something and you're just trying to get the word out that hey, before you, you know, try that fourth round of antibiotics and tubes, try pediatric chiropractic, like even stuff like that, it needs to be said over and over and over and over and over again. My friend Mia FileMan, um, she's got campaign Delmar.

She's a brilliant marketer from Australia. She posted something that said, marketing is not saying one thing a hundred times. It's saying the same thing a hundred times. Did I say that right? Yeah. And it's so true. I have a full lesson inside of holistic marketing hub that goes into the nitty gritty of how to run a successful promotion.

But let me just give you the overview is however many times you think you need to post about it or talk about it, like quadruple quintuple, whatever it, things like posting about it multiple times in a real format, in a carousel. Pin it to the top of your Instagram profile. Make sure if it's something, you know, it goes in the link in your bio on Instagram.

If you're using MiniChat like I'm, which for a lot of you, I don't think ManyChat ISS necessary, so maybe we just won't talk about that. Post about it on your stories every freaking day, okay. Until leading up to this thing. Use polls to make it interactive. Anytime I'm about to, like I'm promoting something or teasing something leading up to promo, I will tease it in my stories with a poll.

Like, let me know if you wanna know more about this. And I individually reach out to every single person who votes. Don't just have a sign. Yes, have a sign at your front desk, but that's not all train. If you have a front desk staff, hey, make sure you're talking to every single person who walks in about this event.

If you don't have front desk staff, if you're just a one man or one woman, show you, make sure you're talking to every single staff member or, or pa, sorry, patient or client who walks in about this new thing. Especially if it's like an extra charge, you could be like, Hey, we just got in cupping. I'd love to do this first session with you for free because, uh, you've, you know, been complaining of X, Y, Z.

Just so you know, it's something you can always add on for any time at this, you know, ex ex additional charge. On top of that, make sure you're emailing if, if you don't know how to get started with email marketing, go back a couple episodes ago where I talked to my friend Kate Matheson about email marketing.

If you're a hub student, I have a full email marketing 1 0 1 training inside of your portal. Don't just send one email, send, I would say at least five at the bare minimum about what you've got going on. Anytime I'm running a promotion on Instagram, uh, or not running a promotion on Instagram, I'm running a promotion.

Just like on one of my products. I send at least five emails. It's very rare. I send fewer, with the exception of like I had a birthday flash sale and it was only one day, so I just did two emails that day. I'm just gonna end this episode by saying, please go look up Bucky's. I'm sure there have been some in-depth marketing case studies done on this, but my point is if you feel like what you're posting isn't converting, you probably just aren't posting it enough, and you can.

Literally use the same message if you want or you can tweak the message if you study some viral content creators, which is not what I'm trying to teach you to do. But for example, there's this one account that I really love and now I can't remember their name well enough to even pull them up on Instagram and I don't have one of their post sale, uh, say recently.

But all they do is if you remember their name, please DM me. 'cause I know you probably some of y'all have seen this. It's this husband and wife team who, uh, just react to like popular musicians, uh, music. A lot of times it's Taylor Swift. They literally use the same, like if you go to their profile, they'll be like the same hook every time.

Now we understand why people love Taylor Swift so much. Now we understand why people love Taylor Swift. This song made us understand why people love Taylor Swift, every single video because they found that that's what works for them. So yeah, if you're not finding something that's landing, don't be afraid to tweak it.

And once you do find something that's landing, dude, use that message over and over and over again. So I hope this was helpful. Please DM me. I need to know who else has been to Bucky's. All right, have a good day guys. 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, 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.