What is Instagram Marketing ?
Instagram marketing is a type of social media marketing in which marketers use the Instagram platform to promote their business. If “promote their business” sounds broad, that’s because it is: Instagram marketing can involve a number of different strategies and tactics, used to accomplish all kinds of goals a business might have.
When looking at various ways to use Instagram for marketing, you can split the activity into two main categories:
- Paid tactics like advertising and influencer marketing
- Unpaid tactics like creating organic content, such as posts, Instagram Stories, and comments, as well as engaging with other users’ content
Typical business goals might include selling your products or services, getting more followers and engagement, building relationships with potential customers and other brands, and generally boosting a brand’s reputation.
A little later, we’ll get into the specifics of how to set goals, and how to use certain tactics to accomplish them.
What You Need to Start Marketing on Instagram – Instagram Marketing
Before you dive into Instagram marketing, make sure you have a proper business profile – not just a regular personal profile. This way, you can reap the benefits of Instagram business marketing features and Instagram Insights, which we’ll discuss later in this post. Plus, it’s more credible in the eyes of your audience.
Let’s take a look at how to create a business profile and some best practices that can turn a good profile into an awesome one.
How to Market on Instagram: Creating Your Strategy
Just like any other type of strategy, your Instagram marketing strategy will work best if you have a clear goal, choose individual tactics that will gradually build toward that goal, and keep track of your progress along the way so you can tweak where needed.
And that’s exactly what we’ll discuss now.
Identify Goals and Objectives
Your goals and objectives are the pillars of your marketing plan. We like to follow the SMART acronym for goal setting:
- Specific: Give exact numbers and milestones instead of a vague goal.
- Measurable: Choose goals that are trackable and measurable with analytics and insights.
- Attainable: Be realistic. A million followers in a week is probably not going to happen.
- Relevant: Stay aligned with your industry, business, and outlook.
- Time-bound: Give yourself a timeframe to accomplish the goal.
Build Your Instagram Content Strategy
As we discussed earlier, you have several posting options for building your Instagram content strategy. Choosing the right ones depends largely on knowing your audience.
Ask yourself: What are the key demographics of my audience? What do they like to do, see, and experience? What entices and entertains them? How do brands generate trust and motivate them to make a purchase?
You probably won’t know all these answers right away, which is perfectly normal. It’s a learning process that you’ll get the hang of as you go. But you’ll find that as you get a laser-focused understanding of your audience and what makes them tick, your Instagram marketing strategy will perform better and better.
Here are some pointers for building a strong Instagram content strategy:
- Make sure every post is aligned with your branding and aesthetic.
Keep a consistent “vibe.” For example, if your brand is high-fashion, ensure that all of your images are high-quality, conjuring feelings of elegance and sophistication. If your brand is quirky or funny, Instagram is a great place to let your true colors shine.
Shoe company Allbirds knows that their audience loves animals and memes, so they incorporate these regularly into their content strategy.
- Use Instagram Insights to track your performance.
Instagram Insights is a free tool that’s available for everyone with a business profile. It gives you a valuable look at key performance metrics of your account, like how much attention your posts are getting and how engaged users are.
You can also see demographic info on your followers, giving you better intel on finding your target audience on Instagram. While this built-in analytics tool isn’t mind-blowingly comprehensive, it’s a fantastic tool for starters.
The Most Powerful Instagram Features For Business
- Instagram Hashtags
- Instagram Stories
- Instagram LIVE
- IGTV
Steps for an effective Instagram marketing strategy in 2021
- Create an eye-catching Instagram profile and optimize your bio
- Make your business easy to find by tagging your location
- Build an aesthetic Instagram feed in line with your brand identity
- Get creative with captions
- Focus on the target audience
- Research your competitors’ strategies
- Use strategic hashtags
- Create more carousel posts
- Create awesome Instagram Stories
- Be aware of your most engaging Instagram posts
Final thoughts
Finally, think outside the box! Don’t hesitate to try out new things, but be mindful and aware of your audience’s needs..
The newsfeed algorithm of all social media platforms keeps changing. So, whatever worked for you last week will probably not work for you the following week. Make sure you’re up to date.
You need to keep in mind some things, such as on-brand content, top-quality images, user-generated content, friendly and engaging posts, and trending topics.
