Warm-ups on Instagram Stories become an increasingly important part of marketing. Warming up is preparing a person for sale. Today, direct aggressive sales are not only ineffective but impossible. Stories that sell have always a low reach. Moreover, most people who are interested in buying, will not see it. So, the modern sales format has always two and more steps. First, it is important to create value, actualize issues, tasks related to the product, etc., and then make a specific offer. As a result, the offer will look organic.
In this article, we will consider the journey that a potential customer must go through in a series of Stories. This structure is based on the principles of perception of the human psyche, so it is one of the most harmonious for any interaction with the audience.
How to attract attention?
In the beginning, it is important to attract the user, keep his attention and make sure he doesn’t scroll through your Story to the next one.
There is a gradation of levels of human attention. The first is automatic attention, if someone claps their hands, then you are likely to turn around. The second level is short-term attention when you notice a friend and at that moment decide to come up and say “Hello”. Long attention is the third level, for instance when you decide to start a long conversation. A person passes through these stages in interaction with a post, a movie, another person, a natural phenomenon, etc., or loses interest and the cycle does not end. The first Story performs the function of automatic attention. It should be attractive in several ways. Use contrasting colors: black and white, red and black, etc. Write vivid teasers: definite prognosis and strong words that stop the attention, like, “2022 year will destroy many businesses”. Auto-attention is well attracted to pictures of people who look at the camera with emotion: surprise, euphoria, fear, etc.
When automatic attention has been attracted, you have to engage a short-term one. In the second Story, it’s important to give a powerful promise, such as “Give me three minutes to teach you how to buy real Instagram followers without risks”, “Give me a minute to tell you how not to be cheated when buying an apartment”.
How to actualize the problem?
The main mass of your target audience is people who need your product, but do not think about it all the time. So, it’s important to reinforce the importance of issues a person has, related to your product. For this, the pattern break is used. For example, you can run social networks according to the old rules, but in reality, everything has changed a lot and it will not be effective. In this case, we describe the ordinary world and then say that people don’t need to work like this anymore and need to change. Instead, you can provide an unexpected fact, for instance, “Do you know that VKontakte is still more popular than Instagram?”.
When you’ve broken the pattern, it’s important to corroborate the information with social proof, statistics, and research. You can reinforce it with the authority, when an expert, specialist, or professional confirms a definite fact.
When the person has understood the relevance of the problem, this sequence should end with the question “Do you want me to tell you how to work now? and pack it in the form of a survey. If you have done everything right up to that point, the person will answer “yes”. It’s a moral right for you to continue. For a person, it is a principle of logical consistency, and he will continue to listen to you.
How to create a climax and make an offer to buy?
In the following Stories, it’s important to give maximum value. It’s best to hold a mini master class or give important recommendations. For example, you’ve given legal advice on buying real estate, but it’s important to show that’s not all and there are other important aspects. The person should understand that he has received value, but he has not completely closed the question.
After this step, you can go to specifics and post a Story with your offer. If you’ve built your previous Stories well, most people will get to the moment of sale. It will be the motivated audience, as people got value from you, you destroyed some stereotypes, gave them a new direction of thought, etc. As a result, the number of targeted actions and sales conversion will be many times higher than if you had taken one selling post.
It’s worth posting the last Story: it can be a summary, a call for long-term action, such as “This topic I actively reveal in my account, sign up not to miss the latest information”. You can end a series of Stories with a summary question: “Is this topic interesting? Should I continue?” If people answer “yes,” you turn on their long attention.
