Instagram Advertising
Over a billion people use Instagram on a monthly base, this has never declined but increasing making Instagram the second largest social media channel. With these great numbers on the platform, marketing opportunities have been on the increase. There are a lot of things marketers can accomplish with Instagram advertising – starting with building brand image, creating brand awareness and engaging their customers. To effectively tap into the wonders that can be done using the Instagram platform as a marketing or advertising tool is why these 9 tips are released for marketers’ benefit.
Read More on Instagram Advertising:
Instagram Ads Guide | Grow Your Business With The Right Instagram Ads
Instagram Ad Cost | What Marketers should Know (A Detailed Ad Cost)
Instagram Stats | Marketers Insights (Detailed Stats No One Ever Told You)
Instagram Links | 5 New Tools to Promote Up to Five Instagram Bio Links (Free & Paid)
Tracking Instagram Followers | 5 Great Instagram Analytics Tools
Instagram Advertising: Marketing Tips to grow your business using Instagram Advertising
Here are 9 marketing tips on Instagram that you can use to grow your brand on the Instagram platform:
Create a Business Profile
Before you start thinking about your Instagram marketing plan, be sure that you have an Instagram Business Account. It’s easy to switch your current profile to a business account – just head to your settings and click on “Switch to Business Profile” to get started.
Benefits that come with having a Business Profile
For example, followers can click on your contact button to get in touch with you right from your Instagram page just like they would from your website.
- A business profile allows you to create and publish Instagram ads without needing to use Facebook’s advertising tools.
- You can also access Instagram analytics tools, called Insights that provide stats about the impressions and reach of your posts.
- Once you’ve unlocked the free perks that come along with a business profile, you need to start using them to track metrics and understand your audience.
Leverage Tools
Business profiles on Instagram aren’t all that different from Facebook business profiles. Through Insights, you can view statistics like impressions, engagement data, and more.
You can even get a breakdown of the demographics of your followers, including information on their age, gender, location, and most active hours. You can raise your followers automatically with some good and assured Instagram automation tools helping you in managing your account, post, followers and even helping you schedule your posts.
Create a Teaser Product
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 posts are a simple way to talk about your product and increase excitement without looking like you’re trying too hard.
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 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.
Go for Paid 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.
Tips: Use content that is engaging while also appealing to the target demographic you want to put the ad in front of. 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. Keep in mind that there are many different forms of sponsored ads that you can post, such as:
- Photo
- Video
- Carousel/Dynamic Ads
- Stories
- Stories Canvas
Instagram Stories, sponsored or not, are another great way to connect with followers.
Take Advantage of 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.
This feature is very similar to Snapchat Stories (and is even a direct competitor). 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.
Benefits of Instagram Stories
- For starters, Stories are displayed at the top of 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 also tag other accounts in Stories, which is great if you’re collaborating with another brand or influencer.
- Face filters, text, or stickers make it easy to edit images or create fun, eye-catching visuals.
- 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.
Note: Stories are only available on the mobile Instagram app, and it’s not currently possible to send Instagram Stories as direct messages. But since most Instagram users access the site via the smartphone app rather than the website, this isn’t something to worry about.
Network with influencers
If you want to reach potential customers on Instagram, the fastest way to do that is through influencers who have already built an audience with a large following. More and more people are buying services or products based on what they see in their feed from the influential people they follow. They trust them. If you partner with the right industry influencer, you can get your brand out in front of those users.
How to Network with influencers
- The first step is to try and identify a few influencers that have an audience that is relevant to your product or service.
- Build a relationship with each influencer, that way – you’ll build lasting brand awareness with a new audience.
Tips: If you play your cards right, you could even work with a top influencer in the future to gain millions of likes. Your existing customers might not be influencers, but you can still use their posts to influence people to buy your products by collecting user-submitted photos.
Use Branded Hashtag
If you’re looking to create instant engagement, interactive hashtags are a great way to get it. Red Bull has racked up over 299,612 posts featuring their tag, #itgivesyouwings. Customers can then use the tag to post user-generated content. This allows users to search through all posts relating to your brand.
It also lets you easily search through images that you might want to consider re-posting on your page. Creating a hashtag that your company (and other users) can search for is essentially free advertising. Every time someone posts a photo using the tag, they’re exposing your company to their followers.
If you already have a popular brand slogan or phrase, consider making that your branded hashtag. Coca-Cola accomplished this with their hashtag, #ShareACoke.
Target Posting at the Right Time
Over-posting on Instagram is a surefire way to turn off your existing followers. If all they see is your brand on their news feed, they’re probably going to unfollow you as fast as possible. But you want to post consistently so that you stay in their news feed regularly.
One of the best ways to do this is to only post during peak days and hours when your followers are online. According to SimplyMeasured, the worst days to post on Instagram are Wednesdays and Sundays, while Mondays and Thursdays are the best days to post.
Tips: The best times of day to post are between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM, as well as 2:00 AM. The hour between 8:00 and 9:00 AM correlates with the time of day when people are getting ready for work or commuting to their jobs (and checking social media for the day). And 2:00 AM is the time of day when most folks are up scrolling through Instagram when they should be sleeping, so this makes sense as a second most popular time to post. You can easily schedule your posts at their best time with Instagram automation tools like Instagram bots.
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