Instagram marketing refers to the use of Instagram's platform to promote a business, product, or service. Instagram is a highly visual social media platform with over one billion monthly active users, making it an attractive platform for businesses to showcase their products and connect with potential customers.
Instagram marketing can be done through various tactics such as organic content, influencer marketing, and paid advertising.
Businesses can create an Instagram business account to promote their brand, share updates, and engage with their followers. They can use Instagram's features such as stories, reels, IGTV, and live videos to showcase their products or services and provide value to their followers.
Why should you market on Instagram?
Any product or application has 3 phases in its lifecycle Launch, Growth, and Monetization phase. In 2010 Instagram started its journey on July 16th with its founders "Kevin Systrom" and "Mike Krieger" who launched a photo-sharing app that soon became a selfie ground for millions. After its launch for the following few years, Instagram was in its growth phase during which it was easy to gain followers super quickly unlike today, as there was a lot of engagement. Today, Instagram is in its third phase where they are working with advertisers to monetize its user attention. This is the time when Instagram users can also benefit from engagement and user attention. Let us see how this could be possible for someone who is new on Instagram.
Types of Content on IG
Reels
Stories
Carousel
Posts
IGTV
60-sec video
How should you post content for Growth?
Post content that is not seen before
Stay consistent while posting
Content must be interesting
Create content that is user-centric, not monetization centric.
Strategies for Growth
Optimize the bio - Mentions details about what you do, and who you do it for with effective CTA. It is worth providing a freebie for the desired CTA.
Have a brand plan - Your plan must follow consistency, clarity, and congruence meaning all that you post and talk about should follow the same theme and not confuse the audience.
Try using feeds and stories to convey your message.
Hashtag - Make a thorough research on which hashtags other influencers in your niche are using and stick to a set.
Micro-Influencer strategy - using other influencers to promote your brand or product can prove advantageous.
Leverage user-generated content - reposting or giving shout-outs can get more eyeballs to view your content.
Timing matters - post outside regular business hours and the time your audience is active on Instagram matters to gain a wider reach.
Demographic details - It matters to which age, region, profession, and generation your audience belongs. Content posted to meet this audience's interest can gain you a wider reach.
Paid promotion - not just relying on organic reach but availing the benefits of paid promotion can also increase your reach.
How to use Instagram as a marketing tool?
Have a Plan - No matter what the goal of Instagram is, be it traffic to your website, increasing your email list, or generating sales setting out a plan is mandatory.
Identify your Target market - if choosing hashtags based on your industry and target market goes wrong, then the rest of the actions be it creating content, or getting likes, and comments will all be wasted. The right target audience can be identified by age, gender, marital status, annual income, education, hobbies, and personality traits.
Creating Strategic Content - Personalized content brings higher conversion.
Right people to our feed - locate and engage with your target market regularly, go to the accounts that your target market is following, like, and engage there.
Encourage meaningful activity - post shares, DM's, click the link in the bio, like, know, and increase your trust factor.
How important are hashtags?
Hashtags have been a major part of social media platforms since their origin. Though they are used across all platforms, their importance is significant on Instagram and Twitter. During its early days, Instagram relied mostly on hashtags to classify posts. People used multiple hashtags to widen their reach. It would not be wrong to say that hashtags were the only mode through which users could reach a larger audience. This did not deny the fact that irrelevant hashtags could also be used to increase the reach.
Lately, Instagram has improved its SEO mechanism and it does not only rely on hashtags for classifying the posts. In most places, Instagram asks users to use 3-5 relevant hashtags which does not mean you cannot use more. This only implies that the SEO algorithm is so robust that it can do with 3 hashtags. There are scenarios when the posts rank higher even without hashtags, depending on the keywords present in the caption, or with the relevancy of the content alone. Normally the 3 important hashtags could relate to industry-specific, niche specific, and post-specific. If required one could use more than 3 hashtags. In case the hashtags used are irrelevant then the chances of Instagram posing a penalty by weakening the reach is also possible.
How to monetize on Instagram?
Monetizing on IG is similar to that on other social platforms.
Promote a brand or a product
Do Sponsored Posts
Sell products of your own
Promotion and Sponsored posts may require you to collaborate with brands and engage in barter or paid promotions. You may reach out to brands by sending them direct emails or sharing your media kit for them to decide. "Media Kit" is similar to a resume for brands to know the details of your engagement across social media platforms. While sponsored posts may include a contract including details about content, exclusivity, wording, money, and other details of importance. If the posts are in video format, then you may perform a dedicated video or an integrated video as per your choice. While integrated videos are a better option to stay relevant to your brand over time. Integrated videos are videos that are not dedicated to the brand or product you are promoting, instead as a user you are making a mention for your audience to take note of.
Instagram Marketing Analytics
Instagram provides its own analytics tool called Instagram Insights, which allows businesses to track and analyze their marketing campaigns. This tool provides detailed metrics on ad performance, such as impressions, reach, engagement, and follower demographics. Advertisers can use this data to adjust their targeting, bidding, and ad creative to optimize their campaigns.
Instagram Insights also provides insights into audience demographics and behavior, allowing businesses to understand who their ads are reaching and how they are engaging with them. By analyzing this data, advertisers can create more effective targeting and messaging strategies to reach their desired audience.
In addition to Instagram Insights, there are various third-party analytics tools that can be used to analyze Instagram marketing campaigns, such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Later. These tools can provide more in-depth insights into engagement rates, audience growth, and hashtag performance, as well as help track the customer journey from Instagram ads to website conversions.
By using Instagram Marketing Analytics, businesses can better understand their audience and make data-driven decisions to optimize their advertising campaigns for better performance and ROI.
Instagram Marketing Metrics
Instagram Marketing Metrics are the various data points used to measure the performance of Instagram marketing campaigns. These metrics help businesses evaluate the effectiveness of their Instagram marketing campaigns, understand their audience, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their advertising strategies.
Here are some common Instagram Marketing Metrics:
Impressions: The number of times an ad was displayed on a user's screen.
Reach: The number of unique users who saw an ad.
Engagement: The number of actions taken on an ad, such as likes, comments, and shares.
Follower Growth: The number of new followers gained by an Instagram account.
Clicks: The number of clicks an ad received.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on an ad after seeing it.
Cost per Click (CPC): The cost of each click on an ad.
Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM): The cost of displaying an ad one thousand times.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of people who completed a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form, after clicking on an ad.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): The amount of revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.
By monitoring these metrics and adjusting their ad strategies accordingly, businesses can improve the performance of their Instagram marketing campaigns and maximize their return on investment.
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