It’s clear that Instagram isn’t just for personal use anymore. It’s now a global platform that allows brands to humanize their content, recruit new talent, showcase products, and inspire their audience.
Moreover, Instagram users aren’t just active — they’re engaged. About 59% of the platform’s active users visit the site daily, and spend at least 7 hours per week browsing content and interacting with friends and brands.
Instagram can also help you grow your brand awareness and introduce new products. Every month, 130 million Instagram users engage with shopping content. Instagram allows you to promote your brand and market your product in a friendly, authentic way without hard selling to your customers. Its algorithms are designed to automatically expose your brand to new prospects every time you manage to grow your Instagram likes and other important metrics.
Even with all these Instagram statistics, you may still be unsure of how to get started. We know the platform can be a little intimidating at first, and that’s why we’ve created this guide.
What is Instagram Marketing?
Instagram Marketing refers to the orchestration of integrated actions on the Instagram app and outside of it, aiming at promoting a product, service, brand, or cause.
You could use it as a standalone marketing practice but did you know it has the potential to encompass and complement your on-going marketing activities?
Instagram is the fastest way for you to start building your community with people who have previously purchased your product, not just potential customers.
Another case in point is partnering up with an influencer on Instagram or using SMM panel Getting a thumbs up from a reliable, trusted source is one of the fastest, most genuine ways to grow your account on Instagram while watching your sales rocket.
How instagram can be used for marketing?
Instagram’s primary advantage over other enterprise social media platforms is its visual nature. If you have a business that benefits from the design of your product or if you have a service that has a visibly noticeable end result, Instagram is the best platform to showcase that content.
Video, imagery, and illustration are all great content fits for this social media platform while also being a big part of your video marketing campaigns but your marketing strategy will ultimately determine what type of content to publish and how often to post it. Establishing a strategy before diving right into a new social media platform, no matter how well it works for everyone else’s business, will keep you focused on your goals and — most importantly — your audience.
The formula for Instagram success
Success for businesses on Instagram relies on more than simply publishing a few nice-looking images. You need to also have these elements:
- Clear vision and strategy
- Consistent frequency
- Familiarity with your audience
- Clear visual style
When you combine together these ingredients, Instagram can deliver huge results for your business.
How to nail Instagram Marketing?
1. Use a business account
Just in case you skipped over the section above and plan to dive into the rest of the Instagram marketing tips while using a personal account, here’s why you should reconsider.
A business account gives you access to features you can’t use with a personal account, including:
- Instagram Insights
- Instagram ads
- Instagram Shopping
- Primary and secondary messaging inboxes
- Contact information and a call-to-action button on your profile
A creator account has its own set of benefits for for influencers, key opinion leaders, and content creators. But for most marketers, a business account is where it’s at. Hop back up to the top of this post and convert your account if you haven’t already done so.
2. Clearly define your goals
All social platforms are tools. But you can’t use those tools effectively unless you know what it is you’re trying to build.
Instagram marketing can mean different things to different marketers. Are you looking to:
- Create an online presence for your business?
- Increase brand awareness?
- Get new leads?
- Establish your brand as an industry leader?
- Sell products directly from the app?
You might even want to combine several different outcomes. You might even want to combine several different outcomes and analyze all key Instagram statistics.
3. Know your audience
A little preliminary research can help you figure out who you can best reach when you’re thinking about how to market on Instagram.
Currently:
- The most active Instagrammers are between 18 and 29.
- The United States is the largest Instagram market.
- More urban residents use Instagram than their suburban peers.
But that doesn’t mean you should only use Instagram to try to reach urban Americans in their 20s. Instead, you need to define your target market so you can create content that speaks directly to that audience. Why not consider using an Instagram growth service to help your brand reach its maximum potential.
4. Optimize your profile
In just 150 characters, your Instagram bio needs to make a great first impression, convey your brand personality, and tell people why they should bother following your Instagram account.
That’s a lot to ask from a small space.
Fortunately, you also get a few other fields on your Instagram profile to showcase what your brand is all about and make it easier for people to find you. These include:
- Your name: 30 characters, included in search.
- Your username: AKA your handle. Up to 30 characters, included in search.
- Your logo: Instagram logos should be visually appealing, legible, and simple.
- Your website: A clickable URL you can change as often as you like.
- Category: A business feature that tells people what you’re all about without using up bio characters.
- Contact info: Tell people where to find you.
- Call-to-action buttons: Give Instagrammers a way to interact with you directly from your profile page.
5. Post Product Teasers That Will (Gently) Urge People to Buy
What if you could sell more products just by posting product teasers on Instagram?
Well, you can.
Instagram is a great place to advertise your products. And if you play your cards right, you won’t annoy users or scare them off with advertisements, either.
If you’re too pushy, followers will drop like flies. But product teaser video posts are a simple way to talk about your product and increase excitement without looking like you’re trying too hard.
The ads work because they aren’t pushy. They’re laid back. They tease users with the discount and product image to download the app and shop around.
This works for almost any industry. Starbucks teases its audience by announcing seasonal drinks with sharp imagery and without trying to force people to buy them.
When you tease people about products they are interested in, and you don’t push them into buying anything, they’ll be more likely to pull the trigger and actually buy something. If not, they’ll at least engage with your post by liking it, commenting on it, or sharing it with a friend. So don’t be afraid to show off the goods by posting product photos. Just do it gently.
6. Create Sponsored Ads
Instagram ads have become commonplace on the platform. The best part? You can control exactly how much you want to spend on them by setting an ad budget. You can showcase just one sponsored ad or multiple ads with the carousel feature.
This gives brands the ability to target their audience in a whole new way. Before sponsored posts, only users following your account could see your updates and photos.
Now, brands can promote their photos to anyone that fits their target audience to increase their reach further than ever before. For sponsored ads, use content that is engaging while also appealing to the target demographic you want to put the ad in front of. For instance, if you have a fun animated commercial, make sure to run a sponsored ad, as in this way, many people will be able to see your content.
You can turn existing posts into sponsored ads, too, so keep an eye on your top posts. You can push these high-performing posts out later to potential customers in the form of sponsored ads.
Run multiple posts to different audiences simultaneously for even more engagement, and use the Instagram engagement calculator to evaluate how engaged your audience is, such as:
- Photo
- Video
- Carousel/Dynamic Ads
- Stories
7. Use Instagram Stories
If you want to generate leads, Instagram Stories are here to help. Instagram stories differ from regular Instagram posts because they come in a “slideshow” format.They’re only live for 24 hours, but Stories can be saved to any of your devices and reused at a later point. Here are some Instagram story templates to get you started.
Your video marketing strategy can even include adjusting the same videos from your Instagram stories for Facebook, Tik Tok, and Youtube.
Rather than appearing in the news feed, Instagram Stories appear in a small area above it. Once a user clicks on your photo at the top, a window will pop up where they can view your Story.
The benefits of Instagram Stories for brands are truly endless. For starters, Stories are displayed at the top of Instagram follower timelines where users already look daily. Brands can use stories to capture behind-the-scenes insider posts that may not be as “high-quality” as regular posts. And you don’t have to worry as much about posting content that aligns with the “aesthetic” of your brand or your Instagram page when it comes to Stories.
Instagram also makes it easy to experiment with different types of content in the Stories feature, like photos, short video, rewind video, live video, or Boomerangs. You can use tools like Canva or InVideo or Envato or Clipchamp to create amazing images and videos for your stories.
You can also tag other accounts in Stories, which is great if you’re collaborating with another brand or influencer. Face filters, Boomerangs, text, or stickers make it easy to edit images.
Every photo and video you add will play in the same sequence that you added it. The amount of posts that you can add to Stories at any given time is unlimited, and the feature is available to all businesses globally.
8. Engage with your audience
After following these steps, you'll surely have followers coming in and engaging with your posts and stories. Now, engaging with these followers might become a challenging as your following increases. So what do you do? Use an Instagram chatbot of course. You can reply to your followers' direct messages, answer their questions, and even close sales with an Instagram chatbot powered by Engati.
How Instagram chatbots help with Instagram marketing?
Instagram is actively used by over a billion people. It helps brands engage with their customers and customers engage with the brands they like. With Instagram, brands have been able to become more interactive with their customers.
- Higher Engagement - Over 90% of Instagram users engage with their favorite brands on the platform. Instagram gives them direct access to the brand and its content. Chatbots can automate these engagements and take care of customer queries and carry the conversations.
- Marketplace - Instagram has gone a step ahead from just being a social media channel. Instagram is the easiest way for users to communicate with their favorite brands. Brands have leveraged this and started selling through the app. This also helps provide customers with personalized service. You can use the chatbot to upsell, cross-sell and show product recommendations based on the user’s preferences.
- Accessibility - Your customers could be using their social media at any time of the day, especially after business hours! You may not have the bandwidth to attend to them during their time of convenience. The chatbot can take care of these conversations and take up questions instantly
- Lead generation - Chatbots can easily pick up and segment customers based on their preferences and behaviours. This helps in targetting customers indiviudally. Chatbots are equipped to push in promotional campaigns to those users who are inclined to use those offers.
- Live agent - Engati’s Instagram chatbot allows you transfet complicated queries to live agents, or if some customer prefers to speak to a human agent, they can just simply asked to be switched over to a human agent.
What are the benefits of using an Instagram chatbot?
- Cheaper - Chatbots are cheaper compared to hiring a live agent. You might need to hire multiple agents to take care of multiple customers at the same time. One chatbot can take care of all customers at the same time.
- Efficiency - Human’s are prone to error, chatbots are not. Chatbots will work with the same efficiecy throughout, irrespective of any variables.
- Speed- Chatbots can answer customer queries much faster than a human agent.
- Consistency - Chatbots are more consistent in terms of customer support and customer experience they provide
- Better engagement - Chatbots can easily retrieve previous conversations and continue the conversation forward from where it was left off, without having to ask the customers same questions again.
Finally, a way to slide into your customers' DMs
Getting started with an Instagram chatbot has never been easier. Simply register with Engati and you can get started today.
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