“You cannot buy engagement. You have to build engagement.” –Tara-Nicholle Nelson, CEO of Transformational Customer Insights.
And this is what Instagram marketing is about. Instagram is the social media platform which gives the maximum opportunity to build engagement. According to market statistics, Instagram can generate over 4X more engagement for brands as compared to Facebook. Moreover, 80% of people on Instagram follow a business. It’s literally a goldmine for brands and marketers to promote their products and services.
Instagram has more than 1 billion users currently. Just imagine how many of them are brand accounts. Instagram is very popular now among local businesses.
The power of Instagram is just huge. It’s a very big visual network, which can be used to build brand awareness, drive traffic towards your business, and generate leads.
The very thing that sets Instagram apart from other social media platforms is that its visual nature. Thus, it offers the right kind of opportunities to businesses to showcase their products. You got images, videos, Instagram Stories, live videos, IGTV and even Reels to spread your message around. By leveraging them, marketers and entrepreneurs can reach out to their target audience to maximize their reach and engagement. Thus, more traffic can be brought to their website and sales can be generated.
Let me be your guide. So, just bear with me for a few minutes.
To begin with, your brand needs a face, so you need to have a great profile and bio highlighting the different aspects of your business. Focus on creating a stunning feed with high quality photos and videos of your team, promotional events and offers, product highlights, and of course, happy customers and their video testimonials.
To get a good reach for your business, you need to provide value and show appreciation to your followers who engage to your content. Post high-quality photos and video content to engage with your followers. Offer handy tips and motivate them, to turn them into paying customers. To maintain a base of highly engaging audience, make sure to post daily, to provide value. Use hashtags smartly while posting; and try to use 11-15 hashtags for every post to build instant engagement, provide instant visibility, and get discovered by your target audience with ease. The hashtag could be the name of your brand or company, tagline of your company, or any of your products or campaigns’ name.
Data collection through feedback is very important. Utilize the “Poll” feature in the “Stories” section, to stimulate conversation. You can collect data to gain insight into customer opinion, just by simply asking a question. Business profile have an added advantage of access to analytics that displays important statistics such as impressions and demographics of followers.
To bring in more engagement, you need to spark a Call-To-Action. To drive traffic to your website, blog posts and other social media handles, you can add the links to your “Stories” and posts. All these links can provide more and more value to your target audience, and they will have huge amount of content to consume. You can increase your visibility and track user-generated content, by encouraging them to use your branded hashtag in one or more of their posts relevant to your business or product.
Instagram Ads are a good and a proven way to boost sales. You can curate and launch a promotional ad campaign to gain attention from your followers, about a special giveaway, discounts or contests, and drive more traffic towards your website. You can also showcase your new products and services through specific targeted ads. Create unique promo codes for offers, for different campaigns to track conversions. Be as imaginative as a designer with ad creatives and messages you want to deliver, try out a mix of different targeting options, and categorize your audience for our own convenience.
One of the main aspects of Social Media Marketing is live interaction sessions with your audience. Instagram live stream is one of the best ways to connect with your followers and communicate directly and explicitly. Live interactions can be used to build more customer loyalty, by laying out the more human side of your brand. Instagram Live enables you to strengthen your bond with potential customers as the audience come up with comments and queries in real time and you reply to them. Through Insta Live, the probability of getting discovered increases manifold, since once you go live, your followers receive an in-app notification, and your Live also gets showcased on the front of your followers’ feed. You can also invite special guests or influencers to your live podcasts, for a split-screen broadcast.
You can help your brand to spread its wings wider in the digital world by developing connections with like-minded people. Collaborate with other businesses and entrepreneurs, who values and interest in common with you. Influencer Marketing is the new big thing in the field of Digital Marketing. Trust me, it works like charm for small and mid-sized brands. Statistics indicate a growth up to $22.3 billion market cap by 2024, for the international influencer market. These influencers are proficient in connecting with their audience at an intimate level and evoke genuine trust. When it comes to trusting brands and their products, consumers find their favorite influencers’ words about a specific brand or product, more authentic. The premier way is to collaborate with influencers who already have a huge trusted and loyal fan base. This in term helps your brand to get enough exposure to an extensive audience and it increases your search ranking by gaining quality back links from their respective blogs. Since the posts of the influencers get huge engagement, you can use that an advantage by driving traffic to your website, through their posts. While choosing your influencers you should keep one thing in your mind, that is, the influencers must be from your niche or somehow relevant to your niche and must have values similar to your brand. Also, considering the quality of their content is very vital.
While strategizing for Instagram marketing, you must stay up to date with current consumer trends. Post content on a specific holiday or raise awareness for a noble cause to showcase your interest in specific trends. Following trends can help to attract new customers and it shows your engagement with the community.
As Instagram proceeds to develop and advance as a marketing platform, it’s more vital than ever for businesses to come up with successful Instagram Marketing campaigns and strategies. Which implies having a meticulous understanding of the Instagram marketing scene and quantifiable bits of knowledge into what works and what doesn’t.
At the end of the day, brands and businesses of all sizes benefit hugely from having an Instagram presence, whether it's for establishing an engaged community, attracting new customers, or even selling products online. All it takes is a little time and effort!
Leverage the power of Instagram, strategize diligently and gain maximum ROI.
Happy Marketing!!
Commentaires