Instagram Marketing: Note These Principles Down Before Starting

Business and marketing go hand in hand. These days, the best platforms to market products or services are social media platforms. Particularly, Instagram has risen to be a great app for all things business, advertising, and brand awareness. And if you know how to maximize the platform, you will get plenty of conversion benefits.

Instagram marketing is all about promoting your brand on Instagram to increase awareness and improve sales. It is the strategy by which businesses can reach their target audience.

Understanding how Instagram works will put you in a better position to run and market your small business successfully on the platform. Before you start your business on Instagram, you should acquaint yourself with some principles.

These principles will steer you in the right direction.

Instagram Marketing Principles To Note Before Starting Your Business

1. Research

It’s a jungle out there on the streets of Instagram and only the informed survive. Thankfully, all the information you need about your potential clients is readily available. You just have to do some research to find them out and channel them for your brand growth on Instagram.

Start by studying your industry, and then learn about your target audience. Figure out what people want from your brand. Running surveys is a good tactic to do this.

Ideally, you want your products and services to proffers solutions to the problems your customers face. But the only way to find out about your customers’ problems is by researching. Study the demographics that suit your brand. Also, the age range of your target audience, their gender, and their location matter, especially when you’re about to run targeted ads.

Another important tactic is to find out about your competitors and see the things they do differently. Make notes about the mistakes and positive actions taken by top brands. And make sure to use them while designing your own Instagram marketing campaigns.

2. Listen

After proper research and survey, you need to listen to your target audience. It’s useless to research only to ignore all your findings, especially those you can use to help your audience. Remember that you are there for your followers, not just for yourself or your personal gain.

From the notes, you make while researching, see how you can implement steps to cater to your audience. For example, if people complain about poor customer service, then you should make sure your brand provides a quick and helpful response to customers.

2. Participate or Interact

Instagram accommodates communication and interaction between users. Before the social media era, there was a limitation to brand-customer interaction. You either had to send an email or make a long inconvenient call to a customer care service. However, things have changed and it’s way easier to reach brands via their DMs and get quick replies.

To successfully run a business on Instagram, you must interact with your audience. Comments and DMs shouldn’t go without a fast reply from you. Like, share, and comment on your follower’s posts especially if they relate to your brand. Your captions should encourage your audience to participate or give their opinions in the comment section.

Customers want brands that they can reach out to or connect with. So to become that brand, you must increase participation and interaction with your audience.

3. Build

This principle is not mandating a brick-and-mortar location. Nope! It simply means that you should build a community for your brand. Your business needs a loyal customer base, also called a community, that will support your business.

A brand community will help you gain more awareness. Imagine you have an amazing following that shares your posts or tags friends to follow you, your growth will be explosive! This is why some users buy Instagram followers and likes. It increases their community and also their engagements and gets them the favor of the algorithm.

4. Reward

Rewarding your consistent customers or loyal followers can give you headway. People have the motivation to interact or make purchases when there is something more to gain. Giveaways and discounts are excellent marketing strategies. They bring practical results as you will see in follower counts, engagement rates, and sales.

Occasionally, make giveaway posts to encourage your audience’s participation. Ask your followers to tag their friends and follow you. Give discounts on products and services. You will find that more people will make purchases because an item has a 20% discount.

5. Measurements and Analytics

Businesses, regardless of their mode of operation, always need to analyze their performance. Measuring your progress will guide you in designing future strategies. From analytics, you get to see what works best and what doesn’t.

You should evaluate how well your content on Instagram reaches the right audience. All these will help you see how you can turn visitors into customers. The task of analysis will be easy if you work with an analytics platform or software. Already, Instagram has the insight feature that is an asset in this area.

6. Empower

As your business grows on Instagram, it may become tedious to run it all by yourself. As such, you should consider hiring people with social media management skills. Empower your business with the necessary skill sets.

Since Instagram is a visual platform, you can invest in a camera, a professional photographer, and a graphic designer. As you grow, make your Instagram posts better.

Not every business can afford to employ a social media manager or designer. If your business is a small one with a little budget, don’t worry. There are other things you can do to improve your Instagram page. Here are some helpful tips:

• Look out for Instagram updates so that you can use the latest business features.
• Bring into play editing apps and software like VSCO, Snapseed, Lightroom, etc.
• Graphic design apps like Canva can be beneficial.

6. Collaborate and Partner

To thrive on Instagram, you must consider partnerships with other brands and creators. This is where influencers can help. Instagram influencers can help you make sales and increase the reach of your brand.

By venturing into a partnership, you are opening doors for more followers and engagement. Even as a small business, you can partner with nano-influencers. Do Instagram stories takeover, collab posts, paid partnerships, etc.

7. Share and Promote

Your brand needs recognition and awareness to generate leads and make conversions. Sharing and promoting your brand in any way possible can bring the awareness you desire. Let people know that you have a business. Below are two tips to help you with business promotion:

• Run Instagram ads or campaigns: ads are well targeted to ensure that the right demographics see your sponsored posts. Examples of Instagram ads are image ads, carousel ads, video ads, stories ads, and shoppable or collection ads. Choose an ad type based on your ad objective. If you wish to boost sales, try out shoppable or collection ads.

• Promote your Instagram page on other social media sites, blogs, and websites:  On your Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest profiles, you can put in your Instagram profile URL. Users on these platforms can connect with you on Instagram using your link. If you have a blog or website, you can also embed an Instagram post in your blog content.

In Conclusion

Your marketing strategy can make or mar your business on Instagram. For this reason, you need to employ the best methods and approach.

Listen, engage, partner, analyze and share. Also, be open to new updates and trends from Instagram and see how to use them. As you start your Instagram business, make sure you tick all principles we have highlighted.