Most people are wrong about how to "Sell" on Instagram (do this instead)

There’s a reason your social media posts aren’t converting—and it’s not because you’re bad at content. It’s because somewhere along the way, we were taught to turn everything into a sneaky sales pitch.

Link To The Free Event I Mention: https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/live-webinar-invite-2025

In this episode of Shiny New Clients, Jenna pulls back the curtain on a trap most entrepreneurs fall into: trying to sell in every post. You'll hear why that doesn’t work (even if it feels “strategic”), what to do instead, and how to create a content strategy that’s actually designed to get clients.

This one is for you if:

• You're tired of shouting into the Instagram void
• You’re overwhelmed by what to post for your business
• You feel like you’re constantly convincing people to want what you sell

Jenna shares her simple 3-part content strategy (growth, nurture, sales), a powerful exercise to map your audience’s awareness levels, and a clip from inside Magic Marketing Machine that will change how you write sales content forever.

Whether you're a social media manager, small business owner, or entrepreneur looking to grow, this episode is a must-listen. It’s packed with insights around marketing psychology, business strategy, content clarity, and what really works on social media right now.

💻 Jenna’s free Instagram Strategy Session is on September 19, 2025—and it’s live on Zoom. She’ll be reviewing content in real time and teaching how to make Instagram work for you in 15 minutes a day.

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/live-webinar-invite-2025

✨Tap here to watch a FREE masterclass on “How To Get Clients From Instagram (without wasting hours glued to your phone)"

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/evergreen-webinar-registration/

Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/10-sales-calls-new

🎉 Tap here to work with Jenna inside Magic Marketing Machine (or MMM+)!

https://www.magicmarketingmachine.com

Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

There is a knowing among social media managers this knowing frustration when I was a social media manager and now when people come to me because they're pursuing that career for themselves, we get to whisper about this thing that we know that a lot of our clients don't know. And the thing is often when you are a social media manager and you start working for a company, the people running that company are justifying the investment in you. And this is going to be relevant to your business. So just stay with me, but the people are justifying their investment in social media by knowing it's going to result in sales, right? That's the ultimate goal. That's why you're on social media for your business is because you want to get clients help more people, right? Build your brand. so because of that, people in management will often try and make every post be about selling or circle every post back to a sales pitch of some sort. And I totally understand because you're like, well, social media is meant to sell, right? The whole point here is we're meant to get clients, we're meant to make money. So every post should be about selling. But anybody who's worked in social media or someone like me who has now taught it to over a thousand business owners, we know that that is not how the game is played. That's not how the strategy works. bought a magazine, and every article in it ended up selling you something and there was no value in there. There were no pretty pictures just for you to admire with no product placement. There were no articles that just dissect an issue or tell a story without somehow selling to you. You would resent that you had paid $7 for that magazine, right? Even if the magazine was free, you wouldn't pick it up again because you don't want to feel like you're being sold to all the time. If every time you watched your favorite celebrity on a late night TV show, they dropped a product name or turned to the camera and pitched Gillette razors, you would be annoyed that you didn't get to actually spend that time connecting with them and enjoying their presence and that all they seem to care about is getting you to spend money, right? So this happens and social media managers come to me and tell me about their experience. And I tell them, totally get it because when I have worked, I've worked for so many different businesses. And you know what? A lot of years ago, This happened to me a lot. I don't know if it's because I was new and didn't know how to explain my strategies to clients. Like that could be part of it. Or it's because people didn't understand social media like they do today. But anyway, you've probably heard me explain my very high level, simplistic way of explaining a strategy. The strategy is growth content, nurture content and sales content. And that's just a very simple, high level way of explaining what a social media strategy should be. And if you're paying attention, you realize that all I'm ultimately saying is no like and trust, right? You know what, actually this is interesting. someone came to me recently, a business owner, and they were like, I'm so confused. because I worked with one coach and they said, I need to do no like and trust. And then I worked with another coach who said I needed top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel. And then I work with you when you say growth, sell. And I'm like, here's the thing. Those are all right. We're just giving you a high level overview of what a strategy is, but those are all right. And then it's up to you to find somebody to work with who's going to show you how to implement that for your business. with all the nuts and bolts and all the marketing psychology and all the puzzle pieces. And, saying it because it's a simple way of saying what you're ultimately doing. But of course, when I work with my clients, we make very advanced content strategies that have a lot of different ingredients in them. We want people to trust you. we want to position you as an expert. We want to provide some social proof. We want to entertain your audience. We want to find your unique brand of growth content, your unique style entertainment, you know? So I think I'm kind of rambling here because that's something that's been on my mind lately. I lay it out for you step by step in Magic Marketing Machine and that brings me to my next point. So I am going to play for you a clip right now from a Magic Marketing Machine group call, which is my program, because I noticed a pattern in the content that was being submitted wherein I was seeing this habit of like turning everything into a sales pitch and I think it's such an easy mistake for folks to make for the same reasons I mentioned earlier, right? You're like well I'm not here to make money and if this post doesn't sell then I'll have wasted time creating a post that doesn't sell but when the strategy works together like the inside of a clock with all your different ingredients ticking away together as a unit, that's how the strategy takes action, right? If you try and make a growth post, but you put a sales pitch on it, you don't get as many views typically, right? If you try and nurture someone and teach them something, but the only action step you ever give them is to work with you, then they didn't actually learn anything. Do you see what I'm saying? I be getting too deep here, but we're going to give it a go. And I'm going to share this clip with you from a call. It was just this, it was just this afternoon and I'm going to teach this subject, give you a little exercise to take home and play with. And I hope it helps you rethink sneaky selling. That's what I used to call this sneaky selling where you like sneakily turn everything into a sales pitch. But I hope this helps you rethink what it means to sell to your audience. And if you want to be on calls like this, come work with me in Magic Marketing Machine. We have a huge promotion about to happen. I'm gonna be an Instagram strategy session that is live on Zoom. I'm going to be reviewing the posts of some of the people who come. I'm gonna be telling you more about the content strategy my clients use, how to get engagement, what works on Instagram right now. how to manage your account faster, ideally in 15 minutes a day, all of that. And actually below this episode, I'll put the invite link because that is a free event on September 19th, 2025. So if it is before that date, click the link, get yourself an invite and come join us for that. I shared a clip from a call recently and I already gave this disclaimer, but ⁓ I sometimes make up jingles for segments that I'm like teaching. And this one, the joke is it doesn't have a jingle. So I just make up a flat song every time. So welcome to Jenna's Marketing Minute. Jenna Warriner (06:46) heads up. I noticed a theme on some of the posts that were submitted today and because it's a theme, I thought I should address it for the room. So, the theme that I noticed is selling people on wanting what you offer. Okay, so I'm reading posts where... business owners such as yourselves are selling people on wanting something. Think about it this way. We do so much work on ideal client. Like who is this person? What do they want? What words do they use? Right? When we do our messaging homework, like what words are they using? What do they want? What's in their way? And if we're supposed to be writing our content exactly for that ideal person, Is that ideal person someone who needs to be sold on what you offer or are they possibly already solution aware? Maybe they've already dipped their toe in it. And that's not the thing that they need to see right now, right? If every post should be designed specifically for that ideal client. So quick little exercise. We'll all have different answers. Meredith, can already clock you're going to be a bit of an outlier. That's fine. I want you to take a piece of paper if you feel like playing. on the left, right, problem aware, as I point to this blank page, this is what paper looks like. problem aware, solution aware, and let's say desired results aware. Okay. Problem aware, solution aware, desired results. aware. And under each of these, not only are we going to be saying yes or no about their level of awareness, but you're also going to be putting what the problem, the solution and the desired result is. Okay. So let's, go first. And I haven't done this exercise for myself. I was just, it was a shower thought to be perfectly honest when I was thinking about the best way to possibly address this this morning. So problem. And are they aware? So the problem my clients are experiencing they're posting a bunch of stuff and it's not getting them clients. they're posting and it's not working, there's a bunch of other things going on there. Speed mindset, yada yada. But like the main problem is they're posting and it's not bringing in clients. Are they aware of that problem? Yes, they are aware. They're stressed about it. Solution aware. Solution. So the solution here is gonna be your offer, right? So solution is work with a marketing coach, gain your messaging skills. They're not super aware of messaging, but figure out a content strategy. People come to me all the time saying they know they need a content strategy. So that's the solution. at the end of the day, if we're gonna sum it up, and yes, they are aware of that. And then desired result outcome, have clients have money, spend time serving people instead of working on your marketing and have more people to serve and make more money. Yes, they're aware that they want that, okay? Do that for yourself. There's no wrong answers. It really is an exercise and an opportunity to ask yourself these questions. And then make sure that when you're creating your content, you're speaking to that perfect person. So like Megan today with the branding photography, I was reading that going like, and I could be wrong and you're going to know better than me, but do they need to be sold on the idea of getting branding photography? Okay, cool. If we know that about them, let's lean into that. Or is your idle client someone? who knows they need a branding photographer already, they already have this problem, right? The problem is their pictures stink. They're embarrassed to show people their pictures. Like they're already aware of that problem and they already know the solution is to get new photos. If that's the person, okay, well, what do they need to hear? Right? Not to be sold on getting branding photos, but there's something else they need to hear to be moved along the next step. If we're not using our sales content to convince someone they need us. what might be the purpose of it? what should we lean into instead in that sales content? If the job isn't to convince them they need this service because they already know they need the service. then what should the sales content do? I see thinking faces, I see typing faces. Now is the time to get the service? Yep. Now is the time. Tell them why they should choose now and what they get out of choosing now. Sometimes it's gonna be a logic deadline. Like We've got a launch coming up in September. And I think it was Marissa was like, let's be real with the way that people's lives go. If they don't do it now in September, they're not doing it until January, right? We're into the fall season and then we're in the holiday season and then it's the new year, new me. So that's a good logic deadline. Could also be something that you create, like a discount, promo, a bonus. Tell them that they're ready for it, yes. Helping people recognize that they're ready for it. Helping people qualify themselves as the perfect customer. I don't know, is that for me? What if I'm not good enough? What if I'm not smart enough? What if I'm not capable enough? Stay front of mind, 100%. So sometimes if we post a sales post and it doesn't Somebody who saw it this time is going to pounce next time. So staying front of mind and making people offer aware, huge value to that. And that's also why we just post it, right? Just post the thing. If it doesn't work, fine. It still has so much value. Make them choose you. Yeah. Why are you different than other people? How are you different than your competitors? How are you better? How are you best suited? for the experiment, you said, you're not sure what to write. Are we writing where we think our idle client is? Yes, and once you get to the messaging section of MMM, then you're gonna know, you're not gonna be guessing anymore, you're gonna know where they are, and then you can fill in that info. always a bit of a dance at first. Show them the desired results. That's what I really wanted to hear, the results, right? Result, transformation, out. come, how's my life different than it was before, before they were here, but now they're here. Case studies are a great example of how to do this in a sales post. Like, hey, look how possible this is for you. Look at this amazing outcome. Look at this amazing result that you could be living, right? kind of tricky to wrap your head around. ⁓ And especially if you find that you have a hard time with nurture content and you're always turning a nurture post into a sales post. then definitely challenge yourself to this exercise. If you get stressed, just write it down, put it away. These are answers that we're trying to think of for ourselves all the time. And you're never gonna stop no matter how big your business goes, returning to questions like these, okay? So you don't need to have the answer by the time you go to bed. It's a practice. Jenna Harding (14:30) That is that. If you have questions, please comment them. please come join Content Kate in the comments. Content Kate, thank you for all of your comments. You sweetie, love seeing your name pop up there. But seriously, if you have questions, I know that this topic was a little bit deeper and I wanna make sure that you understand it if this is something you wanna start applying in your sales content. So comment your questions, I can respond. You can always DM me on Instagram. I'm at Jenna's page, page with an I. and hopefully I will see you on September 19th at the free Instagram strategy session.