Admittedly, an Insta profile is quick to set up and costs nothing. But the possibilities that open up to you with your own website are worth the work and the money. Because if it is set up correctly and consistently responsive, it works like your own studio app.
Your studio app with its own look
You can certainly design your Insta profile according to your own ideas, but you don’t have any real freedom of design: feeds, stories, highlights, done. The formats are predefined and then always post three feeds at once so that the picture arrangement fits.
With your own website, you are much more flexible and can really give it your own look: Color scheme (including background), fonts, page layout, image formats, everything is completely customizable. For desktops, tablets and smartphones.
More than just DM
You can also customize your contact form and ask for specific tattoo requests, offer direct online appointments and vouchers, even a chat channel. You also collect valuable customer data (email, cell phone number, date of birth, etc.). Because: Data is worth money (see our article “Customer data? What for?”)
Blogs are popular again
Who hasn’t seen those posts on Insta with tons of text in a small picture? Not really appealing and it usually gets lost in the flood of other posts. The alternative: Post a suitable image on FB/Insta as a pushed post with a link to your blog specifically on this topic (Halloween special, competition, anniversary, corona update, …). Your customers will then find everything they need right there: Picture galleries, virtual tour of the studio, contact form, online booking, …
Not really expensive
Of course, having your own website initially costs money, which is why many people shy away from it, especially at the beginning of their career. However, the costs can be compared to a new tattoo machine and, if you do it right, the positive effects of having your own website will quickly pay for themselves:
- Your own studio/studio immediately looks more professional.
- You will be found much better with general searches such as “tattoo studio in the area” (see below).
- Newsletters and blogs increase your reachability in organic searches many times over.
If you also integrate your galleries and the news feed from other sources (Google Drive, FB/Insta, …), the page almost maintains itself. Absolutely important: The site must be responsive, i.e. also suitable for smartphones.
The standard these days is certainly WordPress. It also offers the necessary tools for your newsletter/blogs as well as countless plugins for every conceivable thing.
Tip: Look for a web designer, either via corresponding platforms on the Internet (e.g. Twago job exchange) or even better regionally in your area and ask for a quote. I promise: It’s worth it!
Google – The No. 1 search engine
However, one of the crucial points is that you will be found much better if you have your own website. A few thousand views per month on FB/Insta are already great, but if we hold the view number of your own profile Into The Light on Google next to it (30-40 thousand per month), it quickly becomes clear how important Google is compared to SM channels in online marketing: It’s still the number 1 search engine even for tattoos and piercings, and that doesn’t even have to cost money.
We were surprised ourselves that we have significantly more visitors to our website through organic search than through paid search ads. However, this confirms what is repeatedly emphasized in many marketing blogs: The position in Google search among the ads counts.
Consistent SEO optimization of your own website is essential for this. Before many people roll their eyes and turn away: WordPress naturally also has suitable plugins for this and Google itself also offers a good tool for keyword optimization. However, a good web designer will usually take care of all the details for you. They will also show you how to write your newsletter so that it increases your reachability in organic searches.
Yours
