Instagram has evolved from being a simple, photo-sharing platform into an efficient content marketing tool. It’s constantly helping brands to reach their target audience and increase sales. The social platform has more than 800 million monthly active users and over 25 million business accounts. Also, around 60 percent of online adult users are enjoying it. About 50 percent of users follow a business or have learned about a service or a product via Instagram.
So, Instagram isn’t being used exclusively by individuals. It’s become a global social platform, which humanizes brands’ content. And it helps companies recruit great talent or showcase their products. Instagram users are not only sharing photos, but they’re also actively engaging with brands.
As a business owner, you can leverage on Instagram’s capabilities to highlight new product releases, to promote your existing product inventory, and to expand brand awareness in a friendly and trustworthy way. Because hard-selling only drives your prospects away, use Instagram’s features to present your products authentically. So, here’s a list with five amazing tips for the best Instagram marketing strategy.
The Powerful Benefits of a Business Account
Don’t draft your Instagram marketing strategy before you open a Business Instagram Account. And if you already have a personal profile, switch to a business account. Instagram will tell you if your account is eligible for a business profile when you open the app and click on your profile icon.
To begin, click the Learn More button and check out the features such as adding a phone number to your account, insights, and promotions. Next, you can connect your Instagram account to your Facebook business page or your profile. Update the contact information and include details such as your business’ email address, the physical address, and telephone number. Switching to a business account offers a wide variety of benefits such as getting found, access to analytics, Instagram ads, and the Call to Action button, which you can customize.
Use Instagram’s Free Tools
The Insights tool shows you statistics about engagement levels, impression rates, and a breakdown of demographics. Also, you can discover your best performing posts during a specific period.
You can track the level of your audience’s engagement based on demographics such as location, active hours, age, and gender. These metrics allow you to understand better how your Instagram marketing strategy is performing and how users are engaging with your content. The more you learn about your users, the better you can adjust your posts to improve their engagement levels. A highly effective category of Instagram posts is the product teaser, which helps you showcase your products in an authentic and non-sales way.
Tease Your Audience
With product teasers, you can gently and gradually guide your prospects towards your products. You won’t be disturbing users with pitches or hard selling. Those techniques will only drive them away. Thanks to Instagram’s teaser sponsored content, you can create short teasers comprising relevant details about your product and highlight the benefits. For example, if you own a fashion brand, you can post photos of your products and offer a free app, which grants discounts to users. And, if you’re in the catering business, you can announce any seasonal dishes or special offers without forcing your prospects into buying.
Use a variety of contexts, which are suitable for your brand. When you’re not pushing people to purchase anything, it’s more likely that they’ll buy your product. And if they don’t buy, they’ll engage with your posts by commenting, liking, or sharing with friends. Don’t avoid advertising your products, but do it gently. Another effective strategy is to create sponsored ads.
The Secrets to Booming Sponsored Content
Instagram’s ads comprise a variety of benefits such as increasing brand awareness, generating new leads for your site, or increasing sales or downloads of a digital product such as e-books. The platform’s feed ads comprise photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, stories, and slideshow ads. And you can control how much money you want to spend on your ads by setting an ad budget.
Also, Instagram’s ads allow you to expand your posts’ outreach beyond your followers. Users who fit your buyer’s persona will see and engage with your posts. And you can also transform your existing high-performing posts into sponsored posts. But make sure that the content is engaging and attractive for your target demographic.
Instagram Stories Go Above and Beyond
Whether or not they’re ads, Instagram Stories are a great channel to connect with your prospects and generate new leads. They’re different from standard Instagram posts due to the innovative slideshow format and because they’re live for only 24 hours. But Instagram Stories can also be saved to mobile devices and used later. And, thanks to being strategically positioned above users’ feed, users can view them anytime during the day.
With Stories, brands can showcase behind-the-scenes posts, which are not always as top-quality as standard posts. Don’t worry about aligning your Stories to your brand, but make sure that you use a variety of content formats. In your Stories, you can include photos, videos, Boomerangs, rewind videos or live videos. And tag other accounts if you’re working with influencers or different brands. Also, to make your content more attractive, you can edit using face filters, add text or stickers, and other visuals.
Wrapping It Up
With more than 800 million active users, Instagram is undeniably one of the most effective social marketing channels. From being a straightforward photo-sharing platform, it’s become an attractive and engaging ecosystem for both individuals and brands. Businesses can now bring prospects closer to their products through authentic and soft selling methods. And, because Instagram values top-quality content, most of the visuals you’ll find while navigating your feed include interesting and unique products, which display engaging and entertaining captions. Promoting and creating your brand’s identity was once intimidating, but Instagram has found a way to streamline the process by making it easy and fun.
