We had to have know that this day was coming. Free marketing and advertisement to customers everyday? Surely, Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to get paid eventually. 

And that he did. 

According to CNBC, Instagram has over 2 billion monthly active users. It’s a marketer’s dream come true because it’s free and you can essentially sell directly to your followers. 

However, although the app may be free to use, the organic reach is not. 

It is now becoming pay to play. Take a look at your analytics and you will see that you are reaching about 10% of your followers. And if you want to reach the other 90%, guess what you have to do? 

Paid advertisement through boosted posts.

So unless you have the proper budget, you will not be able to compete. As a result, it is vital for marketers to create their own channels for companies to directly connect with their customers

• Channel 1 : Email

This is a proven method that works, but you will most likely only have 10% of your email list open those emails. (Same as Instagram)

• Channel 2: App

Companies can create an app where customers can shop and learn about new products. It will even send the customer notifications on their cell phone if they allow it. 

• Channel 3: Text

This is a new phenomenon. But in today’s world, we are all attached to our phone. As a result, text messages have a 98% open rate! 

Obviously, it would be best to use all 3 channels. But what is needed most is a shift in our thinking. We can no longer allow social media to do all the work for us us.

Instead, we should use social media as a tool to get customers into OUR channels so that we can directly connect with them.

We may have to pay to reach our customers on Instagram now. But let’s not continue to be solely dependent on them. Instead, let’s use boosted posts to direct customers to OUR CHANNELS where we have more control.

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