When it comes to social media marketing channels, Instagram has been a dominant force for quite some time. This is especially evident for ecommerce businesses, as they are able to utilize a platform that prioritizes visuals and boasts passionate followers, resulting in substantial engagement.
Over the past few years, Instagram has experienced substantial growth and advancement, similar to Facebook. It has quickly embraced and implemented various new features, making it increasingly valuable for both merchants and users.
What is Instagram marketing
Instagram marketing involves utilizing Instagram to increase brand awareness, audience, leads, and sales. With Instagram being the preferred social media platform among individuals aged 16-34, it is an exceptionally powerful marketing platform for brands, entrepreneurs, and creators.
Some of the strategies for marketing on Instagram include:
- Organic content: Photo, video, or carousel posts, Reels, Stories
- Paid content: Instagram ads, including Stories ads, Shopping ads, and more
- Influencer marketing
- Shopping tools: Shop tab, Product tags and catalog, Live shopping, Instagram Checkout, Shopping ads
Why use Instagram for marketing
Instagram is widely used by small businesses for their marketing campaigns due to its extensive and varied audience which actively interacts with brands, resulting in overall high engagement.
The benefits have been clearly demonstrated through research and case studies, showing that they can directly result in sales and leads.
Please consider the following:
- 80% of users follow at least one brand on Instagram, with 60% of these users saying they’ve discovered new products or services through the platform.
- At least 30% of Instagram users have purchased products they discovered on Instagram.
- 65% of top-performing Instagram posts clearly feature products.
It is a significant achievement that individuals are content with following brands on Instagram and actively exploring and buying products on the platform.
It is important to note that Instagram is consistently making efforts to embrace commerce.
Instagram ads yield great outcomes and provide significant involvement. When using Instagram for shopping, the process of selling on the platform becomes more efficient. Additionally, business profiles that have accumulated more than 10,000 followers on Instagram are granted the ability to include “Swipe Up” links in their Instagram Stories, enabling them to generate direct traffic to their website which would have otherwise been quite challenging.
The platform’s continuous expansion enhances its value for merchants and ecommerce businesses, particularly those offering visually appealing products.
Optimizing your Instagram profile
Setting up an online profile involves basic tasks that most merchants are familiar with, such as providing contact information, creating a description optimized with keywords, and selecting a recognizable profile picture, such as a logo. It is an excellent beginning.
To optimize your limited Instagram profile space, it is advisable to incorporate the following, considering the various modifications implemented by Instagram that impact business accounts.
- Clickable hashtags. These can now be added to your profile description just by entering # and then the desired phrase, just as you would on a post. Focusing on your branded hashtag is a good choice for most businesses and can help you work with the Instagram algorithm.
- Clickable profile links. There’s several options for how to use this, but you can now also add clickable links to other user profiles in your own Instagram bio. If you have two different profiles for a sister company, you can use this to direct traffic there. If you’re hosting a contest with another merchant, link to them when discussing the contest in your bio. You can also use this feature to send people to your personal profile if that fits with your branding.
- Story Highlights. We’ll talk more about Story Highlights a few sections down, but this relatively new feature lets you add “expired” Stories to different featured categories, which will be listed above your Instagram feed on your profile. This helps your profile to look fleshed out and allows you to showcase certain key Instagram content like UGC or posts that highlight your brand’s story.
What images and videos work best on Instagram
In order to achieve results on Instagram, it is necessary to have an understanding of the kinds of posts that are most effective. Although every audience differs, fortunately there is a considerable amount of compiled data that can provide us with some guidance on where to begin.
Users are generally open to various types of posts. They enjoy promotional content, motivational quotes, product photos, DIY or tutorial content, and images shared by other users. However, it is important to provide diversity in the types of posts, as they may become bored or annoyed if only one type is consistently used.
Although videos can provide users with more information and are considered valuable, high-quality photos typically receive an average of 36% more engagement. If you decide to use video content on Instagram, it is important to keep it brief, even on IGTV. Since Instagram users are mainly mobile users, they are unlikely to remain engaged for longer than ten to fifteen seconds at a time.
It is important to vary the camera effects used on Instagram so that users do not feel overwhelmed by seeing Boomerang in every post. The aesthetic appeal of the images and videos holds greater significance on this visually-focused platform.
This is the information we have about the content that achieves the highest performance on Instagram, mostly due to a study conducted by Curalate.
- Lighter images performed better than darker ones
- More background or white space is preferred
- Images with bluer dominant colors performed over red dominant colors, and images with a single dominant color did better than those with multiple dominant colors
- Images that feature contrasting textures tend to generate more likes
How to set up Instagram for marketing
If you are at the beginning stages, these are the necessary steps to establish your company’s Instagram account in order to achieve success.
Set up an Instagram business profile
To make use of the majority of the marketing tips provided here, you will require an Instagram Business account. This account is available at no cost and can be created afresh or converted from your current Personal account.
If you already have a Personal account, proceed directly to Step 3.
Step 1: Download Instagram
To create an account, it is necessary to use a mobile device.
- Get it for iOS
- Get it for Android
Step 2: Create a Personal account
To begin, tap on “Create new account” and then proceed by following the prompts to input your email, phone number, and select a username and password. The remaining sections of your profile can be left blank for now, as we will provide guidance on how to optimize it at a later stage.
Step 3: Switch your new account to a Business one
Begin by accessing your profile and opening the menu. Proceed to navigate to the Settings option, then locate and select the “Switch to professional account” option located near the bottom. From there, choose “Business” as the type of account and carefully follow the provided instructions to successfully convert your account.
Get verified
According to research, the majority of companies are not verified. The study reveals that 73.4% of creators or brands with over a million followers have been verified, while only 0.87% of those with 1,000-5,000 followers hold verification. While success on Instagram does not solely rely on the presence of the blue checkmark, obtaining it can enhance trustworthiness and make one more noticeable.
By incorporating advertisements into your marketing strategy, you can generate significant outcomes. Even basic advertisements, such as the coffee retailer Country Bean’s 3-week campaign, proved to be effective by causing a 16% increase in sales.
There exist two methods to initiate Instagram ads.
The easy way: Boost a post
To transform any existing Instagram post into an advertisement, simply click on the Boost Post button. However, it is essential to possess either a Business or Creator account. It is worth mentioning that this feature is identical to Facebook’s “boost” functionality. Moreover, now that Meta owns both Instagram and Facebook, it is necessary to link your Instagram account to Meta Business Suite.
After clicking Boost Post, follow the quick prompts to set your budget, narrow your target audience, set a duration, and boom—you now have an Instagram ad.
You have the option to customize the targeting options or let Instagram automatically target your ads. If you’re new to advertising, stick with auto mode as boosted posts are a good way to start.
Go big: Launch a full Instagram ad campaign
Step 1: Access the Meta Business Suite by logging in.
To proceed, first click on the Ads option located in the left menu, then select the Create ad option positioned at the top right corner.
Step 2: Select an objective.
Do you remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? Well, marketing works in a similar way.
Automated Ads are a suitable option for a first campaign. Instagram aims to achieve the maximum results with minimal budget by automatically adapting your targeting and bidding strategy based on your audience’s responses. It can be likened to having a constant robotic assistant at your disposal.
If you have a specific goal or want to experiment with ad targeting, you can try one of the other options such as focusing on leads or traffic.
Step number three: Generate your advertisements.
The next step, generally speaking, after selecting a goal is to generate the ad creative. This step may involve different prompts depending on the goal chosen. For instance, if you choose the “Build your business” goal, creating the ad creative is the subsequent step.
To ensure a comprehensive campaign, it is advisable to include a minimum of 2-3 ad groups, each comprising 3 or more ads.
You can take advantage of Instagram’s built-in A/B testing process by adding multiple creative assets for each ad. This allows the platform to automatically switch out your creative assets to optimize ad performance in real-time.
When planning your advertising strategy, it is important to consider using a variety of ad formats such as photo, video, Stories ads, Reels ads, and Catalog and Shopping ads if you have an online store. It is recommended to experiment with different ad copy and calls to action. Additionally, make sure to create ads that cater to every stage of your customer’s journey, starting from consideration to the final conversion.
Step 4: Clearly identify the target audience for your message or product.
Meta Business Suite offers you five options to define your audience, which is crucial for the success of your ad.
Please rephrase the text below step by step while keeping the same meaning. Do not add or remove information. Text: “Due to the ongoing pandemic, it is necessary for everyone to wear face masks in public places in order to protect themselves and others from the spread of the virus.” 1. It is necessary for everyone to wear face masks in public places. 2. This is due to the ongoing pandemic. 3. The purpose is to protect themselves and others from the spread of the virus.
- An Advantage Audience (Recommended for newbies!): This is Meta’s AI-optimized audience based on your existing account audience, and updates itself automatically as your audience grows or changes. It analyzes what interests and demographics your followers share.
- People you choose: Create your own audience from scratch, including location, demographics, interests, and more.
- People who’ve previously engaged with posts or ads: Create a retargeting campaign to remind people who already know you about your offer.
- Page Likes: Targets your existing Facebook Page and Instagram followers.
- Page Likes and similar: In addition to your existing audience, this will also expand to target people the algorithm thinks are similar to them to bring in new leads.
If you have little experience with ads, choose the Advantage audience option. If you want more information on improving your ad targeting, our Facebook ad targeting guide is also applicable to your Instagram ads.
Step number five involves establishing your budget.
No matter which targeting option you choose, you must establish a budget and duration. The estimated reach and clicks resulting from your decisions will be displayed on the right side.
Step 6: Commence or initiate.
After careful consideration, please decide whether you want your advertisement to appear exclusively on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger, or if you prefer it to be displayed on all three platforms. Our suggestion is to run the advertisement across all of them. To finalize and initiate your Instagram ad campaign, just click on Promote Now. Exciting stuff!
