Instagram is a photo and video sharing social media platform with 1 billion monthly active users. There are over 25 million business profiles on Instagram. Millions of people rely on Instagram to reach their target audience. But why is that? Why is Instagram such a popular marketing platform? Have you started a business and looking for the best option for flourishing your brand? Then you’re in the right place! Let us help you through that!
So Many Options, But Why Choose Instagram?
Who wouldn’t like a good headstart for their business? Well, Instagram is the perfect fit for you to do that.
Instagram marketing is a way for businesses and brands to promote and expand their businesses and reach their target audience through intriguing visual contents. So, if used properly, you might get the chance to showcase your products to millions of people even if you don’t have that many followers!
Want the right people to see your posts? With the help of Instagram, you can easily reach your targeted audience. You can post contents according to your desired schedule, track your activities, stats, and more!
So why choose Instagram? Still not convinced? Don’t worry, we’ve got more reasons for you to put your trust in Instagram for marketing!
A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words!
With the feed full of photos and videos, people are most likely to scroll past your posts if those are not compelling or attractive enough. Visual contents are the best way to attract people and communicate with your target audience.
So first thing’s first! You’ve got to create intriguing visual contents. That can be perfectly taken photos of your products, a behind the scene video of how you make them, a teaser of the upcoming products, an interactive post, or any kind of post that might compel your audience to stop and drool over your posts or maybe check out the whole profile!
Another thing is, setting up your desired schedule for posts might make things even easier for you!
Last but not least, don’t forget to add the right hashtags because that will make it easier for people to find your posts by searching for specific products!
Captions Matter Too!
Even a great photo is incomplete without a nice, and catchy caption! No matter how good and attractive your photo is, you should always add a line or two about the product. A nice caption does the job of a call to action. That doesn’t mean it has to be about buying your products. It can be about the behind the scene story or something engaging or interactive like asking for feedback.
Most people tend to skip extended captions. So it’s better to avoid the longer ones, but that doesn’t mean you can’t post longer captions. A thoughtful yet not so long caption can increase engagement rates on your posts! And more importantly, the first sentence will matter the most! That will decide if the person will read the whole caption or not.
Stephanie Cartin, CEO at Socialfly says,
On Instagram, strong imagery is what stops users in their feed. However, captions are what drive engagement.
Now, I believe you are convinced how important it is to write a perfect caption.
Advertisements
Instagram advertising is basically business posts sponsored contents to reach more people. Instagram ads can be a great way to expand your business and promote your brand. Without them you can only reach your followers, but what about the other millions of people who might be your potential customers?
According to Instagram, 60% of people say they discover new products on the platform, while 75% of Instagrammers take action after being inspired by a post. Spending some money on ads can save you a great deal of struggle to reach the right people. Not just that, you can decide how much you want to spend on ads.
With the help of Instagram, you can reach the right people along with specific location, gender, age, and more! Your post will also reach people who are similar to your existing customers or followers. Through ads, you can get them to visit your website or even make them buy directly from the shop option.
Your ads will be frequently shown to your potential customers. You can even track how many people are interacting with or seeing your posts. All these features will send more traffic to your website and increase website conversion rates.
In case you’re a busy person, you can get help from agencies to manage your ads and more!
If you don’t spend on Instagram ads with some really eye-catching contents, you’ll miss out on a great deal of money along with thousands of customers! Learn more about why content marketing is so important for a business.
Influencers!!
Influencer marketing is a tactic that businesses and brands use by partnering with celebrities or popular social media icons. Influencers usually have a huge number of followers. Partnering with a social media influencer can drive sales and traffics to a great extent! You can also build trust for your brand through them.
People like doing the same as their favorite icons or celebrities. So when they see them wearing or using something, they are most likely to do the same. This is also a good chance for brands and businesses to increase their number of followers. You don’t really have to be a popular brand or a huge company to do that. You just have to pay some good money to the influencers and they should handle the rest!
When looking for an influencer to partner with, don’t just look for the number of followers they have. Instead, look for higher engagement rates. Also, don’t just rely on one influencer. You’ve got to find a good number of influencers to do the same thing.
But how to find the right influencer?
Well, if you want to sell a cosmetic product you have to find a beauty blogger. For fitness and health-related products, find a fitness influencer. You’ve got to target the right kind of influencers for the right kind of products.
Influencer marketing can make your business quite a hyped one! If you haven’t given it a thought yet, it’s time when you should!
Content Strategy
If you don’t create great contents, even advertising won’t help you much. The perfect eye-catching contents will help you achieve your desired goals and stay on track. But before creating the perfect strategy, you have to have a clear concept of how everything works on Instagram. For high engagement rates, you have to be consistent with your posts. If you don’t post that often, people won’t notice your posts much, which will result in fewer engagement rates.
For the perfect strategy, you have to keep a few things in mind. You might want to maintain a content calendar or jot down your post schedules, details like how frequently you want to post, and more. This will help you keep track of your work.
Keep in mind, posting too many contents is as much bad as posting fewer contents. You can also check out stats to figure out what time works better to post your contents. You have to know when to post which one.
But is that all? Will only posting contents do the job?
Well, no. You’ve got to set up interactive things like giveaways, contests, quizzes, feedback, or the like. This increases engagement rates as well as make people more interested in your business profile.
It’s good for you to measure your performance regularly. You should measure your input-output ratio. Finding your weak points even if you are doing just fine can also prove to be a good decision. You should fix them as early as possible. Another thing that you should really consider is a verification badge. The blue tick can make people put their trust in you. So, make sure to apply for a verification badge.
The Perfect Business Profile
A perfect business profile can help people grow interest and scroll through your posts. And for that, you must have a really good username or more like your brand name. Your brand name itself should attract people to some extent.
Then comes the bio! Make sure to write the perfect killer bio and do mention the contact information and address ( if applicable). You should also include the link to your website in the bio. You can also add links to your latest products at the top of your bio. You must have a nice and relevant profile picture. It is a good thing to include all the necessary information about your business.
For a great profile, you must have some great posts! So make sure to use all your creativity to bring out the best contents.
Insta or Facebook or Both?
Facebook has undoubtedly far more users than Instagram. But according to Statista, Instagram is the fastest growing social media around the world. Alongside that, Instagram has a mobile-friendly interface that is easy to use!
According to stats, even if a Facebook page has many followers, the engagement rate is only 32%. But the rate is a lot higher on Instagram. On Insta, 80% of people follow a business or brand and 68% of them engage with the brands regularly.
Higher engagement rates mean more views, likes, and popularity. But that doesn’t mean Facebook is any less in terms of marketing. In fact, you can use both at the same time. You can link the two platforms so that you can reach people from both Facebook and Instagram. You can have the same ad on Facebook and Insta at the same time and automatically post the same contents on both platforms. So make sure that you link your Instagram account with Facebook to save a good amount of time.
Mobile Friendliness!
Instagram is basically a mobile platform. With 500 million users on a regular basis, you’re getting a huge number of targeted audiences for your products. Being a mobile-friendly social media platform, people tend to spend a lot of time on it. According to Oberlo, an average person spends at least 53 minutes on Instagram on a daily basis.
Using a mobile phone is quick and convenient. Most people tend to look up products using phones. So using Instagram to showcase your products might be the real game changer!
Stories and Highlights
Instagram stories have over 250 million daily active users. This feature has gained a lot of popularity since its release. Utilizing stories and highlights are great ways to increase the engagement rate on your posts! So why not use it to expand your business?
You can use stories to give a sneak peek of your upcoming products and many more! You can even create polls and questions for more interaction. Stories disappear after 24 hours, but if you wish, you can mark them as highlights. Unlike stories, highlights don’t disappear after 24 hours. You can have multiple highlights. Highlights are shown just under the bio.
Another thing is, you can even go live using stories and run ads.
Reach The Right People
Let’s say you want to sell something to people aged 30-40 in a specific region. You can easily do that with the help of Instagram. How? Well, Instagram helps you to reach your posts to specific groups of people in specific geographical locations. You can also use demographic data to reach your target audience.
Never forget to use the right hashtags as they can help the right people find your posts. Find out the trending hashtags and make sure to use them. You can also use location tags if you wish.
But What Are The Downsides?
Well, with so many benefits, it’s normal to have a few downsides. For instance, you can’t add hyperlinks in your posts on Instagram. But you sure can tag the products on your posts and make it easier for people to buy them.
Instagram has become very popular among brands and businesses for marketing. With thousands of businesses with the same products as yours, it will be a very tough competition. But you have to stand out and get out of the box to be one of the bests.
Now that you know why Instagram is such an important social media platform for marketing, have you decided how to beat your competitors? Well, Mad Monkey Media is always there for you to help your business reach your desired goals through the best digital marketing strategies!
To give your business a boost, book a FREE consultation with us!
Recommended Readings
You may also like these other articles from us.