While all of the most popular social media apps started their lives as places for socializing and finding new people to link up with, they are now among the best places for all kinds of marketing, be it for a large conglomerate company or an individual artist.
Perhaps the best example of this is Instagram, an app now owned by Facebook, which was once just a place to post photos from your life and share them with the people that follow you. Simple mechanics, an interesting user-interface, and its famous layout gave the app a lot of success.
Fast forward several years and Instagram changed completely. Although the core idea is still largely the same in the sense that one has to post photos and videos, the platform is now used for much more than just posting stuff from the user’s private lives. It changed so much that it is now a lucrative marketing opportunity for anyone who manages to utilizes its benefits.
In this article, we will help you take advantage of everything Instagram has to offer to its users when marketing is concerned. To find out more and learn how you can share more than one link in your Instagram bio section, visit Sharemyinsights.
1. Make your Profile Business
The first step you should take is to let everyone else know that you mean business, literally in this case. Instagram has a neat little option that can make a profile private or business. Since you wish to use it for marketing, choose the “Switch to Business Profile” option in the settings. Many doors will open up for you after this, one being that your followers can click on your contact button and get in touch with you quickly. In addition, business profiles allow you to make and publish ads on your Instagram stories, and you get detailed information about your reach and other statistics.
2. Using the Free Tools
Now that your Instagram profile is ready for business, you should use the tools that you unlocked the right way. In the “Insights” section, you are able to see stats like engagement data, impressions, and a lot more. For example, you will get pie charts and bars showing the dominant genders, locations, and average age of your followers. Moreover, you see the most active hours and when you gain the most followers. These are not generalized, as you can pick and narrow down a lot of it, like specific days and your top posts. Such data is priceless for your future marketing endeavors because you will know when you can do the most, and when it makes no sense to share and update.
3. Product Teasers
Now the real marketing fun begins. To advertise your products and services, you have to post them continuously without annoying your followers. If they are bored or fed up with your posts, they will surely unfollow you. Therefore, you have to play your cards right and not be pushy. A simple and good way to promote your thing is through product teasers, an amazing way to talk about what you offer and invoke excitement and intrigue in your potential customers. Try to be concise and to the point with what you are offering. Post a high-res quality picture of what you are marketing, pair it with a short caption that describes it, and that is it! Best ads are those that do not behave like ads. They must be laid back and without too much fuss. Without constantly pushing the buyers, they will appreciate it and be more willing to give your product a shot.
4. Sponsored Ads
Among the most useful business profile features are business ads, a very commonplace thing on this social media platform. And do not worry about your funds, because you are able to control how much money you wish to spend on this kind of marketing. For example, you can only choose to show one sponsored ad. The ads give brands the chance to gain a larger audience, even people who do not follow them, which was not possible in the early days of the platform. Similarly to product teasers, you should use engaging posts and quality content that is going to target a specific audience you want as your customers. For the best engagement with the largest possible reach, share different posts including photos, videos, carousels and dynamic ads, stories, and story canvases.
5. Instagram Stories
Speaking of the stories, they are among the best features the platform has ever introduced. They are live for 24 hours from the moment they are shared, after which they are removed from your profile but still saved in the archives. From there you can create story highlights and make libraries with different themes on your profiles. For example, if you are selling clothes, one highlight can be devoted to shirts and another to jeans. Stories also have a separate little area above the main feed, meaning your followers can view them easier and faster than your regular posts. They are also neat because they are always considered new and fresh content. Therefore, the benefits and opportunities for marketing are endless. You can edit them in various ways, tag people and places, and use a plethora of third-party Instagram-friendly apps that make them even more special.
6. Partnering with Influencers
The last tip we have for you on this list is to try to partner up with some of the local Instagram influencers. This is arguably the fastest way to gain a larger audience and more followers since influencers often have tens or hundreds of times more followers than brands and services. Usually, those who are selling a product or a service round up several influencers and send them their products for free, which the influencer tries and reviews on their platform. Their audience then sees your product on their profile and becomes inclined to try it, because it must be good if their favorite influencer likes it, right? This is a smart marketing strategy that fully utilizes everything Instagram has to offer. It could be potentially challenging to strike a collaboration with the desired influencer because not all of them endorse every product or service, and they could already be in business with a competitor. This often contractually prevents them from endorsing anyone else with the same type of service or product. Instagram is a vast network, and there will always be someone ready to try your thing out!
