The number of marketers using Instagram has skyrocketed in recent years. Everyone is on there, from small business start-ups to multi-billion-pound companies. It is a hugely effective method of gaining followers, engaging your audience, and stretching your brand as widely as possible. Here are some top tips when marketing a business on Instagram.
Create Competitions
Creating competitions on your Instagram account has proven to be a very successful marketing method on the social. Not only does it work as a method of content creation, and therefore keep your page active but it also prompts a large number of interactions with customers wanting to get involved. Competitions also give back to the consumer. The idea of winning a prize or playing a game is very appealing. It can be used as a great marketing tool by cantering the competition around your brand. Perhaps getting people to ‘open a door to find out if they have won on a grid. The front of each door should have your logo on it to boost brand recognition.
Brand Your Instagram
Using your logo and your branding well on Instagram is a great way to market yourself. Ensure that your handle, hashtags, and posts contain clear and simple references to your business name and branding. Logos should be direct, showing clearly what your business sells and stands for. Your branding should be directly aimed at your target audience.
Hashtags
Users on Instagram can follow hashtags. This is a fairly new feature that has changed the landscape of Instagram marketing somewhat. When a user follows a hashtag, it starts to post on their newsfeed. The main change is that users, therefore, do not need to follow a specific person or brand to see the relevant content appear on their wall. A user can follow a hashtag and receive a wealth of content from all the people and businesses that have included that tag in their post. The nature of this allows companies to grow their organic outreach but does mean that smaller businesses with less of a following might have a harder time getting noticed. Consider if a well-known fizzy drink company creates a new lemon flavour #lemonfizzydrink. People all over the world would be posting about it and using the hashtag. Now think if there is a small business that sells its own lemon flavour drink under the same hashtag. It would almost certainly be unlikely to be noticed by the majority of the consumer audience on Instagram.
Instagram Business Profile
The Instagram Business Profile can be a little time-consuming to set up but once you have it is entirely worth it. Instagram Business Profile allows the user to access a whole load of features that normal Instagram just doesn’t have. This includes but is not limited to; an impressions tracker, view impressions, track demographics including age, country, and the times of day that your posts are the most popular. Some people have reported that their engagement went down after switching to an Instagram Business Profile; some said it stayed the same. It allows for a lot more options with how to market yourself, however, some small business owners say it makes their business seem impersonal and lose its grip on relationships with customers.
Whatever you decide to do when creating your marketing plan for Instagram. Ensure that you have a plan of action – be confident and brave. Enjoy what you are doing and always interact kindly and with confidence when speaking to customers. These top tips should help you well on your way to achieving the success you want and deserve from your business marketing on Instagram.
