When you are creating your social media content strategy, you need to have an Instagram marketing strategy too!
Whether you are interested in inbound marketing, viral marketing, creating brand loyalty, or even relationship marketing, your marketing department (even if that’s just you!) has to have a good understanding of how to best integrate Instagram into your marketing campaigns and advertising to get the results your business strategy needs!
Instagram isn’t like other platforms.
And that’s the good news! While it may take a little fine-tuning to get your digital marketing strategy on track, the customers you will reach will appreciate your efforts, (especially young people!) and other businesses too!
What are some of the differences between Instagram and other social media platforms?
One of the key differences between Instagram and other platforms is the fact that it is very image-focused, and consumers have come to expect this. Businesses and brands have been taking advantage of the increased engagement they received on Instagram when compared to Facebook and Twitter, to the tune of 4.21%! That’s 10X the engagement!
Okay, I have an Instagram account. Now what?
But you can’t just put up an Instagram account and begin selling products or reaching potential customers. Whether we are talking about physical stores, e-commerce or the promotion of a charitable cause, or other organizational objectives, your marketing activities and marketing plan have to identify your target audience, and how best to reach them!
An advanced Instagram marketing strategy has to be optimized in order to increase reach, raise your rate of engagement, direct traffic to your website, and get your target audience to see that you have the products and services they want.
When your marketing objectives are being met, that results in the one thing that’s most important to any business model, which is to generate sales!
How great IG marketing strategies can help improve customer experience and get customers interested in your product or service.
There are a few fundamental components to a great marketing strategy that will help you get the results you are looking for from your IG account. With a little (or a lot!) of marketing research, you can gain better results from your marketing activities, whether it’s direct marketing, influencer marketing, sales promotions, event marketing or public relations!
Here are the fundamentals.
A great hashtag strategy can help you reach your target audience, and get your products or services in front of your customer base.
One:
People will follow specific hashtags that interest them and your post may be relevant to their interests.
Two:
Users may not specifically be looking for your company but if the hashtag matches their needs or interests, they will come across your business.
Three:
Brand loyalty is something that every business model seeks to obtain, and using hashtags in the following ways can really go a long way!
Four:
You can create hashtags specific to your brand for consumers to recognize.
Five:
Encouraging users to also use your hashtag increases traffic and awareness.
Six:
Campaigns can be created through hashtags.
Examples of hashtag Strategies.
Here are some hashtag strategies that you can use to help boost your IG results!
Content hashtags – These are just basic hashtags describing the content in your post
Ex: #tigerwoods #champion
Industry type hashtags – Hashtags based on your business and product or service
Ex: #sportswear #golf
Niche-specific hashtags – Hashtags specific to a certain audience you want to reach
Ex: #nikegolf #masters #greenjacket
Brand hashtags – Hashtags unique to your brand
Ex: #justdoit #itsonlycrazyuntilyoudoit
What about advertising using Instagram?
Companies have spent over 10 Billion dollars in advertising on IG, so there’s no argument that advertising on this platform is a valuable and lucrative way to reach your target audience and grow your brand, and bottom line!
IG advertising can cost between 20 cents and $2 per click, depending on how competitive the field is to reach your customer base. If brand awareness or reach is your aim, then it can cost around $5 per 1,000 views.
How do I improve the effectiveness of my advertising?
IG ads are meant to target a smaller, niche group for higher conversion rates, so it pays to do your market research, and really fine-tune your marketing aims to reach your target audience. The more targeted your ads are, the better your ROMI or Return on Marketing Investment, and the better your results will be!
It’s also a very good idea to keep in mind what your marketing goals and objectives are when creating and running ads. Is it to highlight your services? Educate your customers? Drive traffic to your website? Show up in search results? Or just raise awareness about your business?
Don’t underestimate the value of videos in advertising and social media.
People would rather watch a 30-second video highlighting your product or service than read any caption, no matter how good your writing is! Keeping this in mind, creating video content whether it’s for posts, reels, or ads is always going to be a better use of your marketing dollars than static images.
Steps to create a successful split test.
One:
Start with a marketing objective ex) Brand awareness, traffic, or lead generation.
Two:
Select your audience (age, location, etc).
Three:
Brand loyalty is something that every business model seeks to obtain, and using hashtags in the following ways can really go a long way!
Four:
You can create hashtags specific to your brand for consumers to recognize.
Five:
Encouraging users to also use your hashtag increases traffic and awareness.
Six:
Campaigns can be created through hashtags.
Track your results.
If advertising on Instagram (or any other digital marketing or as a part of your overall marketing strategy) is going to be successful, you can’t just set it, and forget it!
That’s right, you are going to need to continue to test, fine-tune, improve and adapt as times, trends, and technology change. The Meta Business Suite provides many different levels of insight, which will enable you to better understand when your followers are viewing your content, what they want to see the most, and how they are responding. Ignore insights at your own peril!
Need a little help?
We get it, there is a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to advertising on social media. As a business owner or marketing director, marketing and advertising is a top priority, but you may not have the bandwidth or niche-level skill set to give your digital marketing efforts the love they deserve.
Are you in need of support from a professional, experienced marketing agency?
We can help!
