Instagram is certainly not just for personal use anymore. It's now a global platform that allows businesses to humanize their content, acquire fresh talent, display their products, and inspire their customers.
Instagram users are also not just active, but also engaged. Approximately 59 percent of the platform's active users log on at least seven times each week to browse content and communicate with friends and brands.
The Instagram marketing strategy may also help you promote new items and raise brand awareness.130 million Instagram users engage with commerce posts each month. Instagram allows you to market your business and goods in a nice, actual way to your customers without being pushy. Even with these Instagram stats, you might still be unclear where to begin. We understand the platform can overwhelm at first, which is why we've produced this introduction.
Why Should You Market on Instagram?
Instagram stands out from other social media platforms because of its visual aspect. If you have a business that benefits from the design of your product or if you provide a service with a visible result, Instagram is the best place to market your content.
Video, images, and illustrations are all excellent content options for this social media site, but your marketing plan will ultimately determine what type of content to share and how frequently. Establishing an Instagram marketing strategy before launching a new social media platform will keep you focused on your goals and, more crucially, your target audience, regardless of how well it works for everyone else's business.
How to Create an Instagram Marketing Strategy?
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Instagram is a hotspot for brands, with over 8 million business profiles, and Instagram marketing is a must-have in every social media plan. But how can you be sure your company will be noticed amidst all the noise? With a brilliant Instagram marketing approach, that is the answer!
This article will walk you through the steps of creating successful Instagram marketing strategies and ensuring that you achieve your company goals using the app.
1. Identify Your Target Market
First, who are you attempting to target through Instagram marketing? Are you confident that your target audience is using the app? It's useful to know, for example, that women make up 68 percent of Instagram users, and that most of them are under 30. Before you create content, conduct market research on your target demographic. Determine your desired audience's age, gender, location, hobbies (even diets) so that you can tailor your material correctly!
Once you've identified that demographic, you can move on to determining other behaviors:
• What hashtags are they employing?
• Where do they like to hang out?
• Do they have any other brands in mind?
• What Instagram accounts do they follow?
This audience research is quick and easy, and it's a crucial first step in narrowing down your Instagram marketing approach.
2. Make a List of Your Goals
What do you hope to achieve with marketing on Instagram?
To prevent wasting time and resources, it's critical to put tangible business objectives at the center of your Instagram marketing strategy. Make a list of the goals you want to achieve with Instagram marketing. These can undoubtedly vary based on the business and industry, but they could include anything from improving brand recognition to generating conversions!
Each of these goals will have its own set of KPIs and metrics to track, as well as distinct types of content. If you can limit these down early in your Instagram marketing strategies, it will help you and your team stay on target — especially because it's easy to get carried away with content creation! There are a plethora of tools available to help you with every stage of your Instagram marketing campaign.
3. Examine the Content of Competitors
Market research is essential not only for establishing your target audience but also for analyzing your competition! Identify key players in your business on Instagram and see what they're doing well, as well as what you think you could do better while developing an Instagram marketing strategy. Keep in mind that their target audience is the same as yours, so here are some things to think about:
• What is their level of engagement? (number of likes + comments x 100)
• Do they respond to feedback?
• What type of inquiries do their fans have for them?
• What hashtags are they employing?
• What kind of stuff do they like to watch?
• How do they want others to respond?
Performing an audit check on your main competitors may help you learn more about the industry, figure out what works best, and get to know your Instagram audience better!
4. Come Up With a Content Strategy
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Choosing what to publish in order to best promote your brand and achieve your business goals is potentially the most important component of your Instagram marketing approach. In a business, content development consumes a significant amount of resources, therefore you want to get it properly. This part of your Instagram marketing strategy entails evaluating the following types of material for your target audience:
- User-Generated Content
- User-Generated Photos
- User-Generated Videos
- User-Generated Stories
Then think about alternative Instagram marketing strategies like:
- Contests/Giveaways
- Influencer marketing
- Carousel posts
- Collaborations/Takeovers
While doing so, make sure your Instagram feed is consistent and appealing to the eye!
You probably already have a solid notion of the type of material that would work best for your Instagram marketing strategy based on your audience and competitor analysis. If you sell a photographable product, for example, your product will automatically serve as the foundation for your content. If you sell an online or in-person service, you might use text posts to share important information or updates, or you might use behind-the-scenes insights to capture your company's lifestyle.
5. Creating A Content Calendar
A content calendar goes hand in hand with a content strategy. Now that you know what you're going to post, the next stage in your Instagram marketing strategy is to figure out when and how often you'll post it. You don't want to be scrambling for content at the last minute, so use an editorial calendar to stay organized and arrange your feed around forthcoming events, announcements, or social media holidays!
Using a schedule to organize your Instagram marketing will also help you spot any gaps in your content plan so you can post regularly. To help develop a trustworthy relationship with your audience on Instagram, consistency is more crucial than frequency! An account that posts twice a day every day will be favored by the Instagram algorithm over one that posts six times on Monday and then doesn't post again until the weekend.
6. Plan Your Content Ahead of Time
Turn your content calendar into a content timetable to make Instagram marketing easier! You may bulk upload your photos and videos for the month (or even farther in advance) and have them published straight to Instagram when you want them using automated scheduling service tools. Including scheduling in your Instagram marketing approach aids organization and frees up a significant amount of time for the bigger (and more fun) chores, such as content development.
Instagram scheduling is a fantastic basis for effective Instagram marketing, but it doesn't mean you can't post manually if something unexpected happens. It's there to aid your content strategy, not to stifle it!
7. Make a Schedule for Captions
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Captions are another crucial aspect of your Instagram marketing strategy. This is when you actually address your audience and tell a story about your company. Because your audience will learn about you through your captions, you must be confident in the brand voice you're presenting. You'll need to select and agree on the tone of voice for your captions, as well as smaller matters like whether or not to use emojis, depending on how many people manage your account.
Hashtags are also an important aspect of your Instagram marketing plan, and they'll appear in your captions or first comments. You should have gotten a sense of the trendiest hashtags for your business during analyzing your target audience and competition, but it's always worth doing extra research. You can gain stats for every hashtag using a tool like Hashtagify to ensure it will earn you the most reach.
8. Tell a Story
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With the photographs, videos, and stories you share, you can tell a tale. They must pique your audience's interest and establish a connection with them. Your captions can provide stories that humanize your brand and help you connect with your audience on a deeper level. Whatever content you create must meet the demands of your audience or address an issue they are experiencing.
9. Establishing Brand Guidelines
In developing an Instagram marketing strategy, brand rules are crucial, especially if you work in a large team. This level refers to your company's Instagram behavior and activities! You should write these little details in a shared document so that everyone on your team is on the same page in Instagram marketing.
Make this a reference for anybody who works on your Instagram marketing, so they may refer to it while uploading photos, writing captions, or chatting with customers. Recapping on all the information in this guide, here are some items to include:
- What type of content does your brand post?
- How often does your brand post?
- What hashtags are always used?
- What hashtags are never used?
- Is your company's tone informal or formal?
- Do you always respond as ‘the brand' or do you always sign off as yourself?
- Emojis usage
- Protocol for responding to tagged photographs and remarks in Stories
- Words and themes that are prohibited
10. Keep Track of Your Development
The most important thing to remember in Instagram marketing strategy is that you should always test, learn, and improve your material. It's pointless to invest time and resources in material that doesn't meet its goals. Make time to track vital indicators that will help you figure out what material works best while developing your Instagram marketing strategies.
Introducing Strikingly
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You can now build an exceptional feed for your business account for Instagram now that you've discovered plenty of Instagram ideas to investigate. Strikingly can help you create a company website that takes advantage of all of Instagram's features. If you're intrigued, sign up for an account on Strikingly and start sharing your Instagram ideas.
Conclusion
To sell things, you can't rely solely on internet traffic. Make use of other methods of distribution as well. Consumers' shopping decisions are influenced by social media. Because Instagram is developing at such a quick rate, it makes sense to leverage it as your primary sales channel.
In addition, as you can see from this list, Instagram provides capabilities that allow businesses to sell products directly on the site. This advice might help you improve your Instagram marketing strategy. These tactics will help you improve your Instagram profile and, as a result, increase sales.
