12: 7 Instagram Story Ideas That Actually Make Sales

Stop wasting time on Instagram content that doesn't sell.

Today I want to talk about 7 of my mist lucrative Instagram, Story Ideas that actually make sales. 

I'm breaking down the exact Instagram Story formats that have generated the most leads, DMs, and revenue in my business. Not theories. Not trends. Actual story content that gets people to raise their hand, start conversations, and buy.

And before anyone says they don't have time? Five minutes a day, five days a week is 25 minutes. I'd bet good money those 25 minutes will make you more sales than most of the content you're currently creating.

Let's get into it.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

• Why face-to-camera Instagram Stories outperform endless B-roll
• The biggest mistake business owners make with Instagram Stories
• How to create educational content that leads directly to sales
• The Instagram Story strategy that generated some of my highest-performing content
• Why your personal story matters more than you think
• How to turn DM questions into endless content ideas
• The power of showing your differentiators instead of blending in
• What to post when you need more leads this month

Resources & Ways to Work Together

Want more qualified leads coming from Instagram?

Send me a DM on Instagram @alyssalmoorhead and tell me which of these seven story ideas you're going to implement first.

Need help turning Instagram conversations into actual sales?

That's exactly what we do.

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Instagram Stories for Business, Instagram Story Ideas, Instagram Sales Strategy, Instagram Lead Generation, DM Sales, Instagram Marketing for Coaches, Social Media Sales, Sales Through Instagram, Instagram Story Marketing, Lead Generation Strategies, Online Busin

This podcast was produced by Your Girl Media. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you do five minutes of Instagram stories during each weekday, that's 25 minutes. I bet you you're gonna make a fuckload more money than your cute little Instagram reels of you doing the dishes or walking the dogs. If your Instagram stories and your Instagram DMs aren't bringing you 16k hot and skinny leads, and you're not exactly at the sales level you want to be at for this quarter, I've got you. Hey sales friends, I'm Alyssa, your cheap sales gal. I've been in business for 11 years, and I currently run a Done For You lead generation and lead management agency with Instagram DMs. I'm about to show you guys all of the juicy sales things on Instagram, Instagram stories to get new leads, and closing sales in the DMs and with sales calls. So let's get into all of the juicy details. Hey all, welcome back again to the DM Sales Gal podcast. I hope you all will be proud. This is my first time recording a double episode. So episode 11 and this one at the same time. It was not my choice, but here we go. No, I'm glad to do it. We have so many more episodes lined up, like I think I've got like 15 plus, so I'm gonna just try to start cranking them out. Okay, so we're gonna go over seven of my most lucrative Instagram stories ideas. Before we go into those, real quick, just a little Instagram stories refresher. Um, a couple of colleagues of mine and I were talking about this when I gave a masterclass a couple weeks ago inside of Marie Walker's Cocktails and Clothes membership, and we were talking about Instagram stories to DMs, and Megan Wall was talking about how like her Instagram stories performed the best, like the most views, but also like response rates and DMs and leads coming in when she has a picture or video of her at the beginning. And she and I both do the same thing there. So if you notice my Instagram stories, like this is this is not as fucking strategic as like this is my Instagram stories formula. It's like it's my Instagram, I have a personal brand with my LLC underneath it. Of course you're gonna see my fucking face. Like, what else am I gonna post? And like obviously it's gonna be me and my flannel pajamas that I wear far too much. I need to replace them. But that's one of the first things that we we both have in common regarding like how we open our Instagram stories. I do mine each morning with shit that comes up that I'm thinking about in the morning. Usually that before any like ideas I plan to talk about. Um, but I'll do both. But whatever I'm doing, it either has my face, like a photo of me with text on it about what I want to talk about that day, or it has a video of me talking face to camera. I know y'all love a b-roll. You all love fucking b-roll of you like doing the dishes. Like me too. I do dishes too, so do I. But you cannot supplant face to camera Instagram stories with b-roll. It's not it's not cutting it. My my clients will make reels and will say, I'll say, like, we need you in your reels. Like, we need you talking in your reels. And they're like, Oh yeah, well, did you see that one where like I'm walking the dog? I'm like, you weren't talking face to camera. You have to watch your dog and make sure he doesn't like eat a bug. Like, you're that's not you talking face to camera. So, anyways, in your reels, but also your Instagram stories, we need you talking face to camera. You can use b-roll sometimes, like, life is life, we have to live a life, but also it's not in place of you doing face-to-camera Instagram stories. So, I would put a picture of you or talking head face to camera Instagram stories first. For my women in here that really care what their hair looks like. Y'all gotta give it up. You got you gotta let it go. If um in the morning, when you wake up, like my my hair looks fucking nuts in the morning. I don't know what I'm doing when I'm sleeping, but like I look like in orangutan. Like, I don't even, it's wild. I like actually try well, I wake up before my husband, so I'm like, Wait, like, where is my hair? It's a little crazy just because I kind of scare myself in the mirror. I'm not joking. I'm like, who is that woman? But, anyways, for your Instagram stories and giving a shit about what you look like, like just do it the way that you look. And this really gets you all because we're women and we care about other people. This is a really good reason to not let yourself off the hook to do your Instagram stories and do face-to-camera video. This shit ain't for you. It doesn't fucking matter what you look like. It it matters that you show up to help the people that you say you want to help. There's no excuses for that. On an ongoing basis, shit happens. People go to the hospital, kids your kids may need you. I don't have kids, for those of you that don't know that, but I think we all do. Your kids might need you, your elderly family might need you, you might be sick, there's shit to do, I get it, but it's not an ongoing excuse. If you're in business and you're making time to do other things, you can make five minutes to do your Instagram stories. Like, what's our excuse? If we need to do five minutes to show up to help the women that we say we want to help, I don't have a good solid excuse to not do that. But again, just like weed tracking, if you guys have a really good excuse, then like I love to hear those. It's so much fun for me. Just for reference, also, if you do five minutes of Instagram stories during each weekday, that's 25 minutes. I bet you you're gonna make a fuckload more money than your cute little Instagram reels of you doing the dishes or walking the dog. But like those can be a part of it too. But 25 minutes of all the time we spend in business, if you're working four hours, six hours, eight hour days, like 25 minutes in a week is not that long, guys. But that's not the reason you're not doing it. But I I don't have good reasons why you guys aren't doing it, so let me know. Okay, and then so I'll do face-to-camera video first, even if I do a photo of me before that. Then I'll usually do some kind of educational something that leads people to buying from me. I do not tell people everything to do to get their own leads, much as you all think that I do. I promise Legion is much more in-depth than one podcast episode. If that was all there was to it, then you could watch this episode 12 and make a hundred thousand dollars and you'd be done with me. But it's not. It's not. So I can keep sharing my expertise in an educational way that tells people we would do this, that, and the other. If you want to know how we do it, you can come pay me and then we'll do it for you. See the difference. And then I'll usually talk about my offer nearly daily. There are women that say sell daily, sell daily, sell daily. I mean, I am selling daily. I'm showing up daily for damn sure, but also my educational stories collab today on how I handled three different buyer types in the DMs this morning. Like, that's quote, educational, unquote. Here is how to do it. But y'all ain't gonna go do it, so instead people come pay me to do it. If they wanted to do it, they've been watching enough of my content that they could, but they're not as good at it, and they don't want to, and they won't keep doing it. Alright. Then usually in the afternoon, I'll share some like random notes at the park, like inspired by geese. No, I'm not joking. If you watch my Instagram stories, you're gonna see that. Like, I'm like studying now now. I'm about to take a nature class uh with my friend, Linnea. I'm stoked about it. Uh, we gotta find the class first, but then we're gonna take a Denver nature class, so I'm excited. But it does inspire me. Okay, so face a camera video first, some kind of like educational on how you do things that would benefit them, then maybe an offer and then notes. That's stuff that I mix up. Now let's go into the seven most lucrative Instagram stories ideas. I'm gonna try to be super efficient, aka like make this episode shorter. So they're gonna be rapid fire. So I looked through my Instagram stories data in my insights on Instagram, which I'd advise you all to also. That's part of the reason I procrastinated on this specific episode, because I knew I had to go like data analyze. But here we go. First of all, I know this, and so I've excluded some of these like data points. So anything where you tag somebody and they share it is gonna usually do better. So when I tag my clients and they share it, those stories are gonna get more views because they're on their audience too. When I do Instagram stories collabs and Dana, like this morning, shares it, those stories are gonna get more views. When I share my team members and they share it back, those stories are gonna get more views. If I shout out Aubriana, Tina, uh Tayley, and Abby's event and tag four women that are having Denver events in one story, those are gonna get a fuckload more views. Which that's not the reason, but they do. Uh that's not the reason I did it, but they do get more views. So I'm kind of excluding that data because it's obvious to me why it performs well. It got more audience because it got cross-marketed. Got more audience, like visibility. These ones are after that. There is some crossover. Some of these were like somebody else was tagged, like an Instagram stories collab, but even within that, these are the best performing of those. Okay. Number one was um Instagram stories on three steps to make money from your podcast. And it was really simple. It talked about making content on the podcast, looking at the likes, comments, views, DMing those people, adding qualified ones to a tracker, etc. That was an Instagram stories collab, so it got a little bit higher views, although not a lot, and I wasn't expecting it to get a lot because it wasn't a big audience on that person's feed on their on their Instagram. So that was one, and that's what I was just talking about before. That would be educational content that leads to you. So I can tell you all how to make Instagram stories. I can tell you all how what my five-step DM sales process is. I can tell you how to make a lead tracker, how to use a lead tracker, how to close in the DMs, how to make an offer that doesn't require sales calls. I can tell you everything I've ever learned. That doesn't mean you're not gonna do it. Doesn't mean you're going to do it or do it without me. So that's educational that leads to your offer. And no, I don't just mean you post your offer at the end. I mean it makes people think, oh shit, Alyssa has a process, unlike anyone else, this is exactly how she would do it for me. They're not thinking this is how I can go do it. I've had some people over the last six months of the year that watch the podcast or listen to the podcast and tell me, like, nah, I'm gonna make stories, or oh yeah, there are two past sales calls I could DM. They're taking tips and then they try it and they realize how much more I could give them and already did, and then come pay me anyway. But most of the people, like, how much I used to save so much fucking educational shit on Instagram. Five types of like this fucking podcast, seven most lucrative Instagram stories ideas, five ways to make a carousel, four reels hooks you haven't tried before to make you $73 million in six minutes. But do we do all of that? No, I don't. If you all do, you're way better like homework ladies than I am, because I ain't doing all the shit I see on social media, and I barely look at social media. Not many people know that. I don't know why you guys think that I'm like scrolling. I don't give a fuck. I like I make Instagram stories to speak to my buyers to get more information out to more people so I don't have to answer the same questions all the fucking time. And then I DM people. Everything else in between is like just I it literally just missed me with that. I really don't give a shit what people are posting on Instagram. Like I really don't. I'm not buying anything. I look at my friends' stuff, I look at my team stuff, I look at our client stuff when they ask me to. That's about it. I might look at two Instagram posts a day. That's being pretty like optimistic. Um, yeah. So, anyways, educational what leads to you. That's number one. Leads to your offer, sorry, you and your offer. Number two was also an Instagram stories collab, but again, this is one of the highest performing in that category. This one was so the first one to recap was an Instagram stories collab. So insta on Instagram stories, how to make money from podcast in three steps. That would be educational that leads to your offer. Number two was also an Instagram stories collab. It was called How I Closed 27K in Sales via Instagram Stories, and I broke down how I did it behind the scenes of my business, just for me, not for clients. So that's a behind the scenes of my business one. It's not just educational on like here's what we would do. It's here's what we would do because I'm doing it right now, or have done it. Number three was people love it when I share like vulnerable stuff, right? People love hearing about like my sobriety story and me like, you know, dying through withdrawals. People love that shit. People also love like when I got married, like the most Instagram story spews I ever got, like girls from middle school that bullied me and they're like, congrats! I'm like, you're a bitch. Thank you so much. I hope you're not a bitch anymore. Truly. We were in middle school, but it baffles me why they look at my Instagram stories. Um, truly baffling. So that one number three, I was like trying and failing not to cry as I like write my sobriety story into this like speaker form, which I didn't get approved for, anyways. And I like wrote this whole form for an hour and a half and like cried over it, and I I hate a form. I hate a fucking form. So, anyways, but I was talking about getting sober, how I fought like hell through withdrawals. You guys might not know this. I haven't told this story publicly, I remember. Um, for those of you that don't know, and I might not have said this publicly on this podcast yet, so just know that this is about recovery um and substance abuse. So, just as a trigger warning softly. So, um, three and a half years ago, I got sober from one substance. And then over a year and a half ago, we're getting closer to like a year 0.75. My husband and I both got sober from alcohol. But the first time that I got sober from the first substance was opiates three and a half plus years ago, and then one and a half years ago, I got sober from alcohol also. But when I got sober from opiates, this is not funny except it is. Oh, funny rehab stories. When I got sober from opiates, uh, my dad came from Louisville, Kentucky to pick me up in New York City, where I lived for 12 years. I am from Louisville, Kentucky. I went to New York City and Brooklyn. I went to NYU. I ended up being in New York for 12 years. I lived in Madrid, Spain in the middle of that. My dad drove all the way up to New York City from Louisville, Kentucky. It was like 16 hours to come get me and drive me back. We got me into a rehab facility. I was an inpatient for one month. You go through withdrawals, it's excruciating. Uh it I can't, I mean, it's it just fucking excruciating. There's no way else to put it. So when I was going out of my mind, I actually uh I actually was still wearing the same Victoria's Secret Pink, like pink, the brand for teenagers, but like I'm not a teenager. But I was wearing the Victoria's Secret pink tie-dye sweatsuit, alright? So like a fucking loud outfit, real loud. And I made an escape from rehab. They don't stop you, but they'll strongly discourage you with every like personnel there. Uh, but they can't like block the doors or stop you, etc. So I jumped a metal fence with like spikes on the top and ran across a four plus lane highway to run home. Um, had a police officer pick me up and take me home, and then went back to rehab like three hours later. So fun story, but when I share shit like that on Instagram, it goes really well, but there like needs to be a point to it also. Um, and I mean there's a lot of points to it. For me, it's really starts with like business and sales ethos. Like, why do I do what I do? Why do I treat people the way that I do? Why do I give a fuck about their success? And and that's I mean, that's why. I do what I do because I believe selling is helping, because I've been a broke as fuck bitch who couldn't pay the bills, who like cried to daddy every month to give me more money. My dad gave me like 50 grand over the time that I was in active addiction and not sober. And I mean, I I get I know what it's like. I know what it's like to not be able to afford your life, even the life you have that isn't the one that you want to have. I know what it's like to live in panic and fear and anxiety and can't go to sleep and don't want to wake up. Like, I know, so anyone who's been there before, I mean, and it's not just money, like business can go be going well, and you still don't know how you're gonna keep it up. But I've gone through really fucking hard periods in my life, and I do believe that like financial freedom as long as well as many other things makes a really big difference. So, like, that's why I tell my story. But that would be origin story, right? That talks about where I came from, why I do what I do, as well as the business side of it too. That I've been through like every different sales iteration of my business, from a marketing freelancer to a marketing agency, to a sales coach, to a fractional chief sales officer, to a leads agency. We tried to scale and failed this agency twice before the third time when it's finally fucking working, thanks to my team and a million other decisions that I've made. But that would be origin story. Then this one was me talking about like if you want to make more leads for June, but I don't have any leads, or everyone keeps saying they can't afford me, or all my leads keep saying later, or I keep getting ghosted, that's what I would call direct from the DMs. So that was shit that I heard over, like, you know, one day, weeks plus of people telling me all the reasons why they are stuck, why they can't get leads, and that's directly handling objections and questions about your offer. Um, it doesn't even necessarily have to be like, here's what you asked about my offer, here's my answer, here's my offer. It doesn't have to be that way. You can just answer what people like expand on what people are talking about in your DMs and tell them to ask you more questions, or tell them that you have something to help with this, or share the fucking offer, share your offer post. So, to recap so far, number one would be educational that leads to your offer. So, not how they can do it, but how we do it together. Number two would be behind the scenes in my business. Speak on your topic of expertise of how you do it in your own business. You can also do client stories, of course. Uh, that's actually the last one in here. And then your origin story, and then objections and FAQs from the DMs. The next one would be your differentiator. So I did one with a Denver pal who's a fellow business owner, and it was like, how I break all the fucking rules and still make sales. And this is different. We had a debate about this in a like mastermind call the other day where people were saying, like, I want to show up in my Instagram stories, but I feel like I have to be polished. And we were talking about whether, like, putting a bra and a real shirt on makes you more money or not. And my differentiator in how I approach sales and integrate it into my lifestyle is I don't give a shit about what I look like. And I mean, I say that with a grain of salt. Like, I want to put like hot pink in my hair, but I'm not worried what any of you fucking think about it. I don't give a fuck. What I'm here for is to share my brain to help you. I know that there are 6,000 women out there that would tell you to rent or rent the runway outfit and get a lot of glitter on it and go stand on a stage and look down on everyone literally and wear four-inch heels. I know that, but I'm telling you in my expertise of 11 years of experience, it don't fucking matter. Like, it really don't matter. If you are if like you feel in in your life, if you are like getting ready and putting on A B and C outfit, if you have cute like athletics outfits, or if you wear like an actual real outfit, I'm still in my flannel pajama bottoms and my husband's t shirt. Like, whatever is natural to you, do that. But like, I want you to be yourself. You know, if you think you have to be polished because you think you're not, why don't you just be you instead? So Abby and I were talking about in this Instagram stories collab. This was one of those two, how I am never Wearing a bra. If I go to the park, I put on like a loose sports bra. Um, yeah, mostly just to like contain them so they're not jiggling around, you know. Um, but I pretty much don't wear a bra. I'm always wearing a t-shirt. I don't do ads, I do lead gen outside. There aren't that many other Alyssa's. Like, if you know anyone else who does any of those things, I'd love to meet them. Most of them I feel like I already know, but talk about your differentiators as a business owner and how you approach it. I mean, like, the no-bra thing might not seem like it's directly pertinent to sales, but it actually is. And I was like, I told my husband this the other day when I had two quote discovery calls back to back. Let's all prepare to take like a deep gasp of surprise. Guess what? They wanted to fucking pick my brain. Did they fill out a discovery call, sales call form that said they knew my offers and they needed my offers and they could afford this and they wanted it this month? Yes, they did. And then we get on the call and they tell me, I just really like want to pick your brain about this. In those words, I like wanted to like moon them and run out of the office. And I like these women, but like please, I please don't waste my time. I'm sorry, I don't have it for you. People pay me for this shit, and I understand if you can or can't, and I make a fuckload of free content to help people. A fuckload. We have so many podcasts, so many carousels, so many Instagram stories, so many emails, so many masterclasses. Like, I'm there for you, and it's not fair for you to take advantage of my like one-on-one time for free after you said you wanted to like purchase a paid offer. But anyways, that does go towards part of my like sales approach about not wearing a bra because I like took a fucking shower for those two discovery calls, and like it don't take me that long to get ready, but it takes at least 20 to 25 minutes, and I ended up like you know, taking a shower, putting on a clean t-shirt and a sports bra under it, and like putting my hair up, whatever. And then I do these two discovery calls, my face is tight, I'm not comfortable, I'm annoyed because I got ready for people that don't give a fuck about me or respect my paid time and weren't buying and didn't care what I was wearing and just wanted to pick my brain, and I'm like, why do I do this shit? Like, no one cares. I no one cares if I get ready or not. I make a fuckload of money not getting ready, and when I like go through this fucking trade of taking a like shower and trying to pick out an outfit, when I do that, I don't actually even feel that much like me, which makes me worse at sales. So, in fact, really no bras allowed should be like, you know, a motto for my business. Truly. Um, the one that we didn't cover cover would be like, you know, talking about your offer in your stories. You know, it's weird when I look through all of these stories. I did talk about my clients, but I have more client stories to make, like full format ones, like telling the whole story. I just have had so many stories collapse, but I need to make more time for it. But of the last month, none of my top Instagram stories ideas are like best performing, most lucrative, were on the offer or on client stories, but you should do them. No one's doing client stories in their Instagram stories. Like I can share, I shared my client's post like yesterday, which is great, but I didn't tell their whole story. Why did they come to me? Why did they pick me? Why did they need me now? What did we do together? What was their progress? What do they say about it? What do I have to say about it? Like, I didn't follow my own formula. And to be fair, I don't really have to, but I'm trying to practice what I preach and make more time for it. And also, I have been doing it for 11 years, so I promise you it works. But none of my top ideas were talking about the offer or client stories. But it's also because like the tags where I've tagged four people on an event or tagged my team or tag my clients or my colleagues, like those performed the best, so they pushed down a lot of the other ones that would have performed well. Um, but this month they weren't on my offer client stories. But please hear me. That does not mean you don't need to make them because you do. I've just been doing this for a damn long time and have the freedom to explore, let's say. But if you haven't done these yet, you should and see how it works for you. Besides that, though, the top five, besides those two, you should be doing on your offer, on your client stories. Educational that leads to your offer is number one. Number two would be behind the scenes of your business. How do you utilize what you work with clients on for your own business? Number three would be your origin story. Number four is straight from the DMs, make content on what people are talking and asking you about. Number five would be your differentiator. Um the then, like what I would add to that is when you talk about your offer, I'd be talking about why now. When you talk about client stories, make sure you're talking about a client that you would want more of that client and tag them and ask them to fucking share the story. I'm like, I asked one of my colleagues to share like a mutual client we have in common, and she's like, oh man, I'm busy, I'll get to it when I can't. I know. But also, like if someone tags you in a story, you can share it back. It should take you about nine seconds to reshare it. And your client, Lord knows you've been helping that woman. If you make a whole story like shouting her out, she should share the first story, but she can't if you don't tag her, so you need to tag her. Alright, that's seven of my most lucrative Instagram stories ideas. For June, I'd be focused on educational that leads to your offer, behind the scenes of your business, why now for your offer, client stories, and DM questions. I mean, really, all of them. They're all good. Come ask me which one you think would be best for you. I'll help you formulate like your one next idea, and we'll go from there.