Social media is undoubtedly the best way to market market your brand. One platform that does exceptionally well in this space is Instagram.
With over 2 billion viewership potential monthly, focusing your marketing programs on Instagram would be something other than a trial-and-error thing. You need to know how to leverage the power of this massive audience, and you’re good to go.
Today, this piece explores everything you need to know about Instagram marketing. How can you use Instagram to grow your brand? What are the dos and don’ts of marketing on this platform? Learn, implement, and see your brand growing.
What Is Instagram Marketing?
Starting with the basics is the best way to unravel the intricacies of Instagram Marketing. As the name suggests, Instagram marketing refers to using Instagram to promote your products, company, or brand. You use Instagram to create awareness about a brand or business, grow your customer or followers list, or increase traffic to your business.
Instagram offers different options for showcasing your brand out there. For instance, you can use Instagram Ads, partnerships, and sponsored posts. You can also go the organic way, where you market your brand through Instagram posts, stories, or reels.
With its huge audience base, Instagram offers an excellent platform for increasing traffic to your website, online store, or brand. This can easily lead to more sales or subscriptions, which is the ultimate goal for any business.
Is Instagram Marketing Effective?
Like most other social media marketing, Instagram can bring incredible results. However, every social media platform or marketing channel is effective to a certain level based on the audience type.
For instance, Instagram is ideal for targeting Millennials and Gen Z customers. These are consumers between the ages of 18 and 34.
Statistics show that more than 50% of Instagram’s audience is within this age group.
While the Alpha generation (teens) is adopting Instagram, the numbers are still low.
Only some businesses, products, or brands will do well on Instagram. You must first understand your audience and see if they are on the platform. Otherwise, your marketing efforts will yield minimal results.
If done right, Instagram can help create that loyal customer base for which every business yearns.
All you have to do is ensure your content is creative, entertaining, and informative. If the audience can find value in your content, converting them into customers for your business is easy.
Setting Up Your Business Profile
Instagram marketing starts with the creation of an Instagram business profile. The Instagram profile allows businesses, brands, and creators to leverage the power of the platform’s massive audience base to market. It helps unlock crucial features on Instagram that make promoting your brand or business easy.
Setting up a business profile helps legitimize your brand or business. With over 90% of Instagram users following at least one business, you have a better chance of attracting more followers.
Usually, there are two types of Instagram business profiles. These include the business and creator account profiles. While they are similar in most ways, they are also unique in some other ways.
Let’s take a closer look at each;
How to Set Up Your Business Profile
The first step is to log in to your Instagram account. From here, go to the profile and click the menu. When the options appear, select “Settings and Privacy.”
This leads you to another set of options where you should select “Account type and tools.” When you tap this option, you will be offered the option to “Switch to a Professional Account.” Select one category that matches your business and tap on “Business.”
After those simple steps, you’ll have switched to a business account. This account comes with better insights, e-commerce tools for selling on Instagram, and an option to add contact info to your profile.
Note: As mentioned earlier, a business profile is one way of showing your business’s legitimacy. However, if you want to make it even more solid, get a “Blue Check.” This is Instagram’s verification badge and adds another layer of trust.
How to Set Up Your Creators Account
If you are a content creator, this is a better account profile. It offers features similar to the business profile, but you get the Creator Studio instead of the e-commerce tools. This content management tool enables you to create and post compelling content.
Follow these steps to switch to a Creators Account Profile:
- Log in to your account and go to your profile
- Go to “Settings and Privacy” and tap” account.”
- Select “Switch to Professional Account”
- Select Creator
- Pick the best category for your content
- You are all set to market your content on Instagram
Types of Content to Post on Instagram
While doing Instagram marketing, you are allowed to post your content in any of these formats:
- Posts
- Reels
- Stories
Each one is unique and comes with its benefits. What does this mean?
Posts
Instagram posts are the traditional way of posting on Instagram. They include square images and videos that appear on the followers’ feeds.
Usually, an Instagram post should contain between 138 and 150 characters. However, it can take up to 2,200 characters.
Instagram posts are the most basic way of marketing on Instagram.
Reels
The second content option is Instagram reels. These vertical-format videos are usually in your profile’s reel section, primary grid, and user’s feed.
Generally, they are short videos that creators post on Instagram. They are an easy way of connecting with and entertaining your community.
Stories
Instagram stories are videos and photos on your stories section that disappear within 24 hours. They allow you to post everyday moments, which helps you grow closer to your audience and followers.
You can add your stories to your profile as highlights. You can also share Instagram stories with all followers or just a section of close friends. Adding the stories as highlights allows your followers to enjoy them beyond 24 hours.
How to Create an Instagram Marketing Strategy: Best Tips
If you want to come up with an effective Instagram marketing strategy, follow the following tips:
Understanding Your Audience
You have to have a target audience. Your products or content is only for some.
Therefore, start by defining your audience. For instance, who are they? What are their habits? And what kind of content appeals to them?
Understanding your audience helps you determine the kind of content or posts that will be effective or that your audience will interact with. This way, you can put in a little effort for a marketing strategy that won’t work.
For example, around 50.3% of Gen Z prefer Instagram and TikTok for product discovery and shopping. This information helps you understand the age bracket of your target audience on Instagram. Your marketing campaigns should be tailored to appeal to such an audience.
Optimize Your Instagram Profile
First impressions matter a lot, and your profile is the first thing that your target audience interacts with. Therefore, optimize it as much as possible—make it appealing, precise, and comprehensive.
Design it as you would your business card. First, there is limited space, with so much that needs to fit in. So, ensure you include the most essential things defining your business.
Start shopify Free Trial Today
For instance, include a catchy bio with as many keywords as possible. This will help your target audience locate your profile.
Also, ensure that your URL is functional and includes the contact info. A profile image will also add to the appeal of your page.
Come Up with a Concrete Instagram Strategy
You understand your audience and have an Instagram profile; the next step is to create a strategy. Even after understanding the audience, you don’t just post.
A content plan helps you handle the more significant concerns—who the content is for and its goal.
Set goals for the marketing campaigns. With that, you can create content geared towards achieving those goals.
Also, have a content calendar. This should consider special events, shopping seasons, and holidays relevant to the business or content you are promoting.
Schedule Your Posts
Scheduling your posts ensures constant content on your account and that you get to post.
Incorporating a scheduling tool like EcommerceBot can help make things even more accessible. With its AI ads automation and social media manager features, you can automate ads and post creation and schedule automatic posting.
With that, you create relevant content and get it out to your audience at the right time. The platform analyzes the audience behavior, giving you insights about the best time to post your content.
Engage with the Audience
More than posting appealing stories, posts, or reels is required. It would help if you kept interacting with the audience. This means you are there to answer or respond when someone raises a question or concern. In other words, ensure that you get all the mentions.
Luckily, there are apps like Hootsuite Streams to help track these mentions. It also helps track search terms and keywords that match your business. This way, every query or concern is answered.
Share Your Brand Values
The audience is currently more aware of what’s happening politically and socially. They want to support a brand that shares what they believe in. Therefore, sharing your values helps attract loyal followers.
For example, be transparent about your brand’s stand on sustainability or ethical business practices. This way, you can appeal to those who value what your business stands for. Never shy from having a stand.
Understand Instagram’s Algorithm
Some Instagram posts and stories will make it to people’s feeds or the Explore page, while others won’t. The Instagram algorithm is the main reason for this. It determines what goes where and what doesn’t.
They understand how the algorithm works and can make your content postings more visible to the target audience.
The working mechanism is usually simple. It compares the content and the audience interests to match the right content to the right audience. This means you must understand your audience and create content that matches its interests and behavior.
Only this way can the algorithm pick your posts, reels, and stories to feature in people’s feeds or the explore page.
Leverage on User-Generated Content
Promoting your brand or products is not enough. User-generated content (USG) is even more compelling. What does this mean?
People want proof of your claims. For example, your audience will be more convinced that your products or services are top-notch if they see testimonials from past or current clients. The testimonials help to add a layer of confidence about your claims.
But how do you get these testimonials? Ask your loyal followers to post pictures or videos of themselves using the products or write testimonials. You can achieve this by offering discount perks for those who agree.
You can then compile these testimonials and post them on your website. They give potential customers more confidence that what you are advertising is solid.
Try Different Posting Formats
When Instagram started, it was a basic photo-sharing app. However, this has significantly changed, with more options being offered today, including reels and stories.
Instagram stories are compelling. They take the top position on people’s feeds and garner millions of views despite being displayed for only 24 hours.
On the other hand, Instagram reels allow you to explore short-form videos. You can mix these formats to create a unique marketing campaign depending on your business needs.
Open an Instagram Shop
If your Instagram marketing goal is to make sales, why not start right from your Instagram account? The Instagram Shop option allows you to sell to interested customers from your Instagram account, reducing the hassle of converting followers into buyers.
With the Instagram Shop, you can customize your offerings to create collections or feature products in a way that appeals to the audience. As such, you can kill two birds with one stone. You market and sell your products on the same platform.
Go Live
Did you know that Instagram has a live-streaming feature? Well, it does.
It is an incredibly interactive feature that allows account holders to livestream and interact with their followers. It is a great way to gain their trust and confidence.
All you need is to have well-planned content during your livestream. Plus, you can livestream about anything, including:
- Product updates
- Behind the scene tours
- Interview with a brand ambassador
- Taking questions
- Selling specific products
A live stream allows followers to interact more with their favorite brands and can be the best way to build confidence in your offerings.
Boost Your Performing Posts
If you want more interactions on your Instagram posts, boosting them would be a practical option. This allows the best-performing ads to reach even more people and bring more traffic to your content.
However, you must define your audience, select the type of results you want, and then pay to get the posts boosted. One crucial tip here is to stay within your budget.
Monitor Your Instagram Marketing Strategy
The first months of implementing your Instagram marketing strategy may need more results. This is because it’s mostly a trial-and-error period when everything goes wrong.
However, over time, insights start coming in, and you can now monitor the effectiveness of your strategy. These Instagram insights can show you which posts are doing well and which ones aren’t. This way, you can move from those not doing well and focus on content that promises results.
Offer Customer Support
Questions, complaints, and observations will emerge as you market and interact with your audience. This means that your DM and comments section will be flooded.
The best way to keep the interaction alive is to ensure that every question is answered and any concern is handled. This builds confidence in your brand or products.
Therefore, refrain from assuming those DMs or the comments section. Always be sure to check them out and respond.
Luckily, there is an easy way to do this: social media AI automation tools. One effective tool for this is EcommerceBot’s AI social media manager. This feature not only helps to automate post creation and scheduling, but it can also automate DM responses and comment engagement.
As a result, your audience queries are well-responded to, and customers remain satisfied. Sign up today for the EcommerceBot and experience the power of AI social media automation tools.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is currently among the most effective marketing platforms.
Why?
It offers some of the largest audiences, with a combined user base of around 10 billion for just the first four platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Whatsapp, and Instagram).
You can try Ecommercebot for free; no credit card is required. You agree to turn your E-commerce business into a success story by clicking the image below.
Instagram has over 2 billion monthly users, among the most prominent platforms. Therefore, running successful marketing campaigns here can bring incredible results to your business. Follow the above-listed tips and see how effective your Instagram marketing strategy can be.
