Instagram is the most popular social media platform for marketers. However, when Instagram first came out, there were no rules to help businesses succeed on this platform, so people struggled with marketing strategy and engagement. Today, these 18 tips will teach you how to get over your limits and have a successful experience on Instagram that leads to more conversions. To thrive, companies must maintain an active social media presence. Without Instagram, no social media marketing plan is complete. As a result, it has risen to the top of the platform rankings for companies, marketers, and consumers alike.
There are 800 million monthly active users on this site. Daily, 500 million Instagram accounts are active. Here’s something more that could catch you off guard: 70% of hashtags on Instagram are branded. What does this imply? Your rivals are almost certainly on Instagram if you aren’t. You’re on the right road if you’ve already created an account. However, just having an Instagram account does not guarantee purchases. You’ll need to develop a credible approach to boost sales and make real money from Instagram. Let’s get started.
Tips to improve your Instagram marketing approach:
1. Develop a more significant following.
Growing your Instagram follower base is one of the first stages to building a successful Instagram marketing plan. You’ll have a hard time getting your posts viewed if you don’t have many followers. Likewise, it would be difficult to make sales if you don’t have any followers. Starting with zero might be scary for individuals who have just started their Instagram presence. However, unless you’re a start-up, you’ll already have consumers. That’s the most excellent spot to begin your search for new followers. The following are the most common reasons why people follow companies on social media:
As you can see from the data, over 73 percent of users claim they follow businesses on social media because they are interested in the product or service they provide. Your current consumers are curious about your company. Inform them about your profile and request that they follow you. Begin by sending emails to your list of email subscribers. Just make sure they have a reason to follow you. You may only send emails a few times each month, for example. Tell your followers that they may discover more frequent discounts and promotions on Instagram if they wish to see them. If you employ this method, be sure that you keep your word. You may have an Instagram badge on your website in addition to reaching out to your email subscribers. Next, use your other social media accounts to promote your Instagram account. Following other individuals is a terrific approach to obtain additional followers once you’ve completed these steps. Don’t, however, follow random people. Find followers that are a good match for your target demographic. When it comes to producing new leads and increasing revenue, this is your best chance. How do you locate folks that suit your target demographic? It’s a little complicated, and you’ll have to work hard at it. To begin, look for accounts that are comparable to yours. I’m not suggesting that you steal followers from your competition, but that may be a viable option. Instead, look for Instagram accounts that share stuff relevant to your field. For example, let’s imagine you run a business that offers hiking and camping gear. Take a look at this profile. The account’s name is Adventure Enthusiasts:
They have around 132,000 followers on Twitter. Their whole material revolves on outdoor locales all around the globe. It’s reasonable to presume that those who follow this account like camping and trekking. It will take some time, but it will work. Once you’ve found such an account, go through its followers and begin following individuals. Users will get a notice and visit your page. They’ll likely follow you back if they like what they see on your profile, which we’ll go over momentarily. It will be much simpler to increase sales with your Instagram approach after you have many new followers.
2. Concentrate on your page’s initial impression.
First impressions are crucial. This remark holds true both in the physical and virtual worlds. As a marketer, you must be aware of this. For the same reason, a compelling blog post opening is critical to your content strategy. What’s the first thing an Instagram user sees when they click on your profile? Your profile photo, biography, and most recent posts are all visible to them. When a person clicks on your profile, they shouldn’t have any questions, which brings us back to our previous point about following people to develop your follower base. This is what I mean by that. Your profile should include information about who you are and what you do. Therefore, it makes the most sense to use your logo as your profile image. It’s much more recognized than a random photograph of a person or a product. Take a look at the Dollar Shave Club’s Instagram feed for an example:
What’s your first reaction to this profile? It’s obvious who they are to me from the start. Their profile image is their emblem, and their bio goes into more profound information about what they do. To encourage consumers to sign up for the service, they even add a link to a landing page on their website. If your brand’s Instagram page doesn’t catch people’s attention, you’re not going to attract many followers. It’s better to keep things brief, to-the-point, and professional for the most part. You’ll have more opportunities to market your items and, as a result, improve sales.
3. Create and publish material regularly.
It’s not an excellent plan to update your profile with a photo or video just once a month. That isn’t an active profile, in my opinion. You want your brand to be fresh in your followers’ thoughts at all times. At the same time, you don’t want to upset them by flooding their timelines. You must strike a balance in this situation. I wouldn’t advocate making more than one post every day. It’s best to post to your Instagram story if you have a lot of stuff to offer each day. Check out my complete guide to utilizing Instagram stories to advertise your company if you’re unsure how it works. When it comes to Instagram, how often should you post? According to research, top Instagram companies post 1.5 times each day on average. This equates to roughly ten or eleven postings every week. The timing of these postings is also critical. During a standard workweek, top companies often publish content during office hours.
Why? Approximately 90% of workers confess to using social media as a source of distraction at work. You should be aware of this and schedule your postings properly. Regularly posting boosts your visibility and the probability that as many people will see your work as possible.
4. Don’t be too “salsey” with your words.
So, we’ve established that you must publish every day. However, we haven’t discussed the substance of those postings. You want to increase sales. That isn’t to say that everything you publish should be a product advertisement. This will irritate your followers and negatively impact what you want. Your material should be varied. Make a joke. Photographs of your staff should be shown. Just make sure you don’t wander too far from your business identity. While it’s ok to submit the information that isn’t marketing a product, you should avoid anything contentious. I’m talking about topics like religion, politics, and race. Offending your fans isn’t going to help you sell anything. Simply avoid making too many promotional posts. According to consumers, the most frustrating thing companies do on social media is post too many promotions:
Furthermore, 46% of users said they would unfollow a firm on social media if it makes too many promotional posts. If you must publish a promotion, do it in a lighthearted manner. There’s no need to use all capital letters and a slew of stars and quote marks all over the place. That’s inconvenient. Make it concise and to the point.
5. Go live with it.
Instagram includes a function that allows you to stream live. If you read my list of the top marketing trends for 2018, you’ll see that live video streaming is at the top. Users adore it, and companies are capitalizing on the knowledge. You may communicate with your audience in real-time through live video. They may make comments while you’re broadcasting. Make a point of responding to these comments and making an effort to thank individuals who have left them. This will aid in the improvement of engagement metrics. With your live feeds, the possibilities are unlimited. You may show off new items, provide a tour of your facilities, or even introduce some of your staff members. Hosting a Q&A part to give you a more genuine relationship with your audience appeals to me. Collaboration with other companies is another way to use Instagram’s life stories. Instagram is the most popular social media channel for brand partnerships throughout the world:
To market your brand, you might aim to be featured on a live broadcast of another profile. Consequently, this sort of marketing may help you reach a new audience, grow your following, and eventually improve sales.
6. Include images and videos in your tale.
As I said briefly before, your narrative is an excellent location to provide daily information. Because it won’t overwhelm the timelines of those that follow you, you may upload material to your story many times each day. But it doesn’t mean you should bombard your tale with 20 different photos and videos every day. People aren’t looking at each one; therefore, it wastes time and money. With each new post to your story, your engagement and views will decrease. You must also ensure that the bar on your article is appropriate since it will be deleted 24 hours after it is published. I’d suggest utilizing your narrative to provide discounts, hold competitions, or share what you’re doing at work that day. The main point is to keep your brand in their thoughts. They are more inclined to purchase if they are thinking about your brand. You may utilize your Instagram story to collaborate with another company for a takeover, similar to how you use live video. You may take over their account and have them post to yours as well. Again, this will simplify you to reach a larger audience with your brand.
7. Collaborate with social media influencers.
The use of social influencers to promote your brand, goods, and services is a very effective strategy. Ninety-four percent of marketers believe their company’s social influencer strategy was successful. This is because followers of social influencers have faith in them. We know that 82 percent of individuals are inclined to heed micro influencers’ suggestions. Moreover, 94 percent of customers feel these influencers are well-informed. Therefore, you will gain sales if you find an influencer to promote your company. Instagram is the most popular social media network for influencers worldwide.
This is a low-cost marketing approach. The majority of influencers will simply charge a few hundred bucks for a post. If you want to work with famous influencers, though, be prepared to invest a lot more money. But, for the most part, this isn’t required. Instead, look for influencers with a following of between 10,000 and 50,000 people. These folks connect with their audience more genuinely and have more excellent engagement rates. Furthermore, the cost per post will be lower. Review the top 10 platforms for efficiently managing social influencers if you’re having trouble finding the ideal influencer to promote your company.
8. Incorporate hashtags into your captions.
Captions are equally as crucial as the photographs and videos you publish, if not more so. You must master the art of writing engaging Instagram captions. Hashtags are an absolute must. There are a variety of methods to this. You may start by using one that already exists so that others can see it. You may, for example, use a hashtag that promotes a national event. Creating your hashtag is another option. This would be considerably more specialized to a particular brand. You may create a hashtag that includes both your brand name and the name of your campaign. If you want to host Instagram competitions, you may give each hashtag.
9. Encourage user-generated content.
User-generated content is abbreviated as UGC. This goes hand in hand with my last suggestion about utilizing hashtags to promote competitions. This kind of promotion encourages users to upload photographs and videos to their accounts linked to your business. As a consequence, all of the followers who are friends with that specific individual are exposed to your brand. This form of material serves as a suggestion, which we recently mentioned as an excellent way to promote anything. Aside from competitions, displaying user images on your profile is the most excellent approach to promoting user-generated content. Take a look at this photo from Thule’s Instagram page:
As you can see, this was posted by one of their fans. Other people will be inspired to share it and submit their images for a chance to be featured on the website if they see it.
10. Run advertising that is specifically targeted.
How do you reach out to folks who don’t follow your Instagram account? Location tagging, hosting competitions, and engaging with social influencers are some techniques that might help with this. On the other hand, those techniques do not necessarily expose your brand to individuals in your target market. This may be accomplished by running targeted adverts. The social media platform Instagram has been bought by Facebook. On both networks, you may set up your adverts in the same manner. You may target your ad audience based on factors like age, gender, and geography. You may even go a step further and target people depending on their preferences. Here’s an example of a Tentree tailored Instagram ad:
As you can see, this post seems to be identical to any other on Instagram. The only change is that instead of a location tag, it reads “sponsored,” and there is a CTA button at the bottom. When a person scrolls through their feed, though, this article blends in with the rest of what they’re seeing. It’s neither intrusive nor bothersome. If you want to run Instagram advertisements, you will have to pay. Those who don’t have the necessary dollars in your marketing budget right now should stick to the free techniques on this list. If you can afford it, though, I suggest at least giving it a try to see how it works for you. This is a terrific approach to reach a new audience and increase sales.
11. Hold freebies and competitions.
Two of my favorite techniques for companies to interact with their followers on social media are promotional competitions and giveaways. Your efforts will result in more sales if you can figure out how to execute a lucrative giveaway. I understand what some of you would be thinking. How can you generate money just by giving your things away? Let’s look at an example to see what I’m talking about. Here’s how Lander used this method in a recent Instagram post:
A bright lantern, power bank, phone cover, and lightning cable are all being given away by the firm. This boosts the visibility of its page. In addition, it provides customers an incentive to follow the brand’s profile and interact with it. As you can see, this giveaway is a little different from others you’ve seen before. This prize was sponsored by Lander in collaboration with other sponsors. This method will, once again, increase the number of visitors to its website. These different accounts will promote the contest and drive viewers to Lander’s profile for a chance to win. Here’s a screenshot of one of the other accounts it collaborated with:
There are plenty of additional ways to be inventive with this marketing strategy. Rather than randomly giving away stuff to your followers for a post and following your account, you might have a more organized contest that takes talent. The most successful games are those that stimulate user-generated material. To enter, ask your followers to post a photo with your brand’s logo and tag you in it. Anyone who follows the people who enter will be exposed to your organization due to this method. If they see a buddy supporting a business, they’ll be more likely to follow your profile and maybe join the contest as well. You may utilize different techniques to persuade these people to purchase now that they’re interested in your offerings. Even if they didn’t win the contest, they’re still thinking about the thing you were giving away.
12. Make use of the “swipe up” option.
For companies, the swipe-up function is a game-changer. You’ve undoubtedly struggled to convince Instagram followers to visit your website from a particular link for years. You’d create content and then send them to your bio’s link. However, there are several flaws with such a method. For starters, it requires the user to take an additional step. They must first go to your profile page and then click again. People do not want to deal with such a nuisance. What if you’re going to advertise two separate landing pages simultaneously? Or how about three or four? There will be no more than one link in your bio. That’s a little perplexing. This issue is solved by using the swipe-up function. You may now send visitors to specific landing sites from your Instagram story. Here are a few instances of what I mean:
You’ll be able to use this function if your company profile achieves 10,000 followers. Simply advertise a product or service on your story and use the swipe-up feature to connect to a promotion landing page. For example, if you’re promoting a particular product, the product description on your website would be a sensible landing page. The consumer may then look at more photographs and add the item to their shopping basket. These lead magnets are an excellent approach to attract traffic to your website and, as a result, conversions.
13. Make postings that can be purchased.
If you run an ecommerce business, you should use shoppable articles. This method enables you to sell things directly via Instagram. This feature is one of my favorites since it enhances the likelihood of existing and potential consumers purchasing anything. This is why. You’re now reliant on customers visiting your website to purchase your goods. Organic traffic, sponsored advertisements, or direct navigation may contribute to this. The issue is that this isn’t something that people will do every day. They are, nevertheless, active on Instagram regularly. In reality, Instagram is used by 500 million individuals every day. As a result, there’s a good possibility your target market fits this description. Patara Shoes has an example of a shoppable post:
It’s straightforward. This is simply a typical photograph with one of the brand’s items in it. You’ll also notice a tag with the product’s name, price, and a link to buy it. All that is required is for someone to click on the title, and they will be sent to the website. This is much more convenient than opening a web browser and manually searching for the product. Conversions are higher when articles are shippable. Pay attention to the caption. It’s causing FOMO (fear of missing out) or the dread of missing out. I’ve already addressed this method. Users are urged to purchase immediately by telling them there are just a few pairs of these shoes remaining. If you’ve never sold items on Instagram before and aren’t sure where to begin, read my comprehensive guide to increasing ecommerce product sales on Instagram with shoppable posts.
14. Publish the same thing many times.
People may forget about a product if you publish it once and never promote it again. Consider how Instagram users interact with one another. They skim over their feeds fast. They may not perceive a cause to purchase your goods the first time they view it. However, if they consider it many times, it may begin to pique their curiosity. More than 60% of individuals need to consider something on social media between two and four times before they purchase it, according to a Sprout Social study:
I’m not suggesting that you duplicate a photograph and upload it four times on Instagram. That’s tedious, and people may unfollow you as a result. Instead, make an effort to be inventive. Begin with a post that focuses only on the product. You may publish another snapshot of the merchandise on your Instagram story a few days later. Run a contest the next week to advertise the same goods. You may post a video of the identical item being used in a demonstration weeks later. Multiple postings of the same product improve the likelihood of people purchasing it.
15. Respond to messages and comments.
I understand that responding to your Instagram followers may seem to be a time-consuming and unpleasant chore, but it is necessary. You will give a human factor and a personal feel to your business by reacting immediately to comments on your article, which consumers enjoy. This method is particularly critical if customers or clients have queries or complaints about your company. Respond as quickly as possible to these remarks to develop a solution. It demonstrates to other people who see your social media answers that your company appreciates customer service. Consumers are prepared to pay a higher price for excellent service. By actively connecting with your clients on social media, you may expect to see an increase in sales.
16. Make use of your tale to promote things.
I gave some examples of uploading material to your Instagram story before. However, with shoppable posts, you can now utilize your Instagram story to sell your stuff. Instagram added the shopping function to stories on June 12, 2018. Take a look at this Madewell example:
The post, as you can see, is marketing a silk button-down cami. Because the shopping function on Instagram Stories is new, the center includes extra wording to inform people that the post is clickable. You’ll be routed to the brand’s website if you press the button as indicated. You’ll be able to purchase the goods featured in the article from here:
If you own an online store, you should use this method. As I previously said, people need to view a product numerous times on social media before deciding to purchase it. So add shoppable stories to your range of product display options.
17. Invite your Facebook fans to like your page.
If your business has an Instagram account, it certainly also has a Facebook page. Since Facebook bought Instagram, the two platforms now share several features. When I spoke about running targeted advertising, I highlighted this. Your Instagram followers may now be synced with your Facebook business page. After completing the procedure, you may employ messenger bots to nurture those users. On Facebook Messenger, there are around 300,000 monthly active bots. Other firms are already using this method. Now is the time to get on board before your rivals’ bots steal your clients.
18. Provide discounts to your fans.
Everyone enjoys a good bargain. Offer discounts to your Instagram followers to entice them to purchase. Instagram is a fantastic place to host flash discounts. You may utilize that post to provide a discount coupon since your story vanishes after 24 hours. This will give your followers the impression that they receive an exclusive deal that only a few other people are aware of. They will be more likely to purchase if they have a sense of exclusivity. Take a look at how J. Crew used this article to give a discount:
Is there anything unique about this post? I chose this as an example because it employs an approach that I mentioned earlier in this article. This is a highly targeted ad. Your promo coupons shouldn’t be confined to simply your profile updates and reports, in my opinion. Combining that offer with a well-targeted advertisement may be pretty successful. Because your advertising will have CTA buttons that link viewers to your website, this is the case. Anyone who clicks on the “shop now” button in the J. Crew advertisement will be able to utilize the coupon code straight immediately. This is far more convenient than having to open a new window.
Conclusion
To sell things, you can’t depend just on internet visitors. Make use of other methods of dissemination as well. Consumers’ shopping choices are influenced by social media. Because Instagram is developing quickly, it makes sense to leverage it as your primary sales channel. In addition, as you can see from this list, Instagram provides capabilities that enable companies to sell products directly on the site. This advice might help you enhance your Instagram marketing approach. All of these tactics will help you improve your Instagram profile and, as a consequence, boost sales. Do you want more visitors to your website? Improve your traffic, leads, and income with the aid of a professional.
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