Powerful Instagram Marketing Techniques For Business

Instagram is currently the biggest social media platform when it comes to sharing pictures. On average, around 60 million pictures are posted on the platform, with over a billion likes given to those pictures. There are nearly a billion users active on this platform. These numbers tell you how big a thing Instagram is. Among these users, a lot of brands are also there, which uses this platform to promote their business. There are also many influencers or Instagram marketers who use Instagram marketing to promote the brands that have hired them. All in all, Instagram marketing is an impressive tool for your digital marketing needs. 

Why choose Instagram for promoting your brand? 

Instagram is one of the most used social media sites for sharing pictures and videos. At the same time, Instagram is also considered one of the best places to promote a brand. This happens mainly because of the formation in which Instagram is set up. Since Instagram deals with pictures and videos providing a very visual experience, marketing on this platform is very beneficial. Most Instagram marketing companies use the various tools available to them, which are given by Instagram to showcase the content which the brand is providing. 

It is seen that Instagram users are more engaged than any other social media user, be it Twitter or Facebook. Hence promoting your services on this platform can make sure that it reaches your targeted audience. According to a recent study, 72% of the users decided to buy something and eventually bought it after seeing the content on Instagram. This number is enough to tell you the impact that Instagram has on businesses. This is mostly because the usual people browse Instagram with a shopping intent, which is beneficial for the brands. 

Another reason why something like an Instagram digital marketing agency exists is the numerous business-minded tools that Instagram has been providing lately. Check your post’s reach and how many people saved it for starters are some of the tools not available on any platform. Also, there is a misconception that your product has nothing to do with showing pictures or videos, and Instagram will not help you promote, which is absolutely rubbish. Instagram has a crowd and potential customers for all types of brands providing all types of services. But that being said, it is important to find the correct crowd which will resonate with your business and the service you’re providing. Do not worry soon in this article; we will teach you how to find the correct crowd and attract more potential customers. 

The Algorithm 

Before you try to use Instagram marketing or hire the best Instagram growth agency, you need to understand how the Instagram algorithm works. Now pre 2016, all the posts on Instagram, which you would see, would appear on a chronological basis, which means that you will always see the latest posted posts first and as you scroll down, the posts will start getting older. Now this order of system was loved by the content creators. 

That is because they have an idea of when their potential customers would be online, and that is when they would post, and that would make sure that their target audience sees it. But suddenly, after 2016, Instagram decided to change their feed system and introduced an algorithm to it. This made things very difficult for content creators. Because they didn’t lose the edge they had all these years, they now had to rethink their whole strategy. Earlier it wasn’t known to anyone how exactly Instagram was deciding which post would show first if it wasn’t happening according to chronological order. 

Instagram clarified that it was seen in their reports that due to the fact that people see posts in chronological order, they are missing up to 70% of the posts in their feed. Hence they introduced an algorithm that uses a lot of factors in the calculation to optimize the feed to show posts first, which you would want to see. In this way, however little the users might use Instagram, they would only view the contents that they wanted to see. The factors which went into this calculation are as follows: 

• Interests: Interests basically means how much you care about a post, and if Instagram feels you care about something a lot, it will show you posts based on that on top of your feed.
• Timelines: Very old posts, how relevant it may be to you will not show on your feed. 
• Relationship: The users you interact with the most will come on top of your feed. 
• Frequency: The more times you open the app. Chances are your feed will be customized chronologically based on the best thing to show you than the ones you saw the last time you opened the app. 
• Following: You probably won’t be seeing posts from every account if you use Instagram for a very limited period.
• Usage: The more you use Instagram, the more posts you are going to see. The posts’ order will go from the ones most relevant to you to the ones that are the least. 

Finding your target Audience

It is important for your business that you promote your business to the people who would actually be interested in buying the product you are selling. If you use marketing agency Instagram posts towards the wrong audience, your business will never grow. You would think either Instagram marketing does not work or that nobody is interested in your products, but you would be wrong in both cases. That is because Instagram works for everyone, but nobody will buy your product if they are not interested. Now, if you have understood the importance of finding the perfect audience for your business, let us see how you can find them. 

Now in most cases, people, when starting their business, know who they want to target and for whom their service is made. In such a situation, all you need to do is let your potential customers follow you, and after they have followed you, check who else they are following, or which hashtags they are following. Check which posts they like and who else likes those posts. Finding the solution to these questions will help you find more customers for your business who are interested in the service you are looking to provide. 

On the other hand, in case you cannot find your target audience, then there is a neat trick for you. You must know that in every business, there is another business or businesses which are direct competitors. Now, if you want to find your potential customers and your target audiences and maybe even steal them from your competitors, all you have to do is head over to their Instagram accounts and see which people are following them. In most cases, if someone follows a brand, it is because he or she is interested in the product or service the brand is providing. You can do the same in terms of hashtags and see which hashtags your competitors following. Now that you know the people who will love your content, all you have to do is follow them and make sure they see that you are providing something they would like, and maybe it is better than your competitors. 

Instagram marketing tips 

In this age of digital marketing, social media marketing is essential. When it comes to social media marketing, one of the most successful forms of social media marketing is affiliate marketing on Instagram. There are millions of people on Instagram every day, and they all are viewing millions of posts and liking them, saving them, or forwarding them. So getting their attention is not that difficult. So we today we will be talking about how exactly you can do that with the following tip: 

Creating a business profile

Creating a business profile is very important. If you are going to promote your business and let people know about your business, you cannot possibly do that with a personal private account. Creating a business account is very simple. All you have to do is head over to your Instagram settings page and click on “Switch to a business profile.” Then your business account will be created. Now, as part of the business account, you must put in your contact details, like your phone number, your email id, and maybe even a website of your company has one. These contact details will help your potential customers contact you if they are interested in your services. This also helps your customers to search for your contact details. If they come across your Instagram page and like your work or services, they can immediately contact you using the contact button. 

Other than the things mentioned above, a business profile also helps you in several different ways. You can easily create ads for Instagram and publish them. You do not need Facebook advertising tools to publish advertisements anymore. Moreover, a business profile will help you to get a better understanding of your customer base. On every post and story, your post, you can view the analytics of that post using the insights tool. You can see the reach of your post, how many people saved the post, how many people viewed it for the second time, etc. Analyzing these metrics will significantly help you in promoting your brand. 

Some Free Instagram tools

The reason why Instagram social media marketing is so much in demand is its various tools. Also, the best part about these tools is that all are available for free. Tools like insights help you understand your posts and stories are affecting your customer base. When it comes to your followers or customers, you can always view your followers’ demographics. You can see which age group of people follows you, from which countries, and their active hours. This will give you a great idea regarding your followers. Knowing their age and nation will help you understand which category of people your brand is attracting and understand that will help you refine your product or services. On the other hand, when you know the average active hours of your followers, you can post on your page during those hours to reach maximum reach. These features will give you an excellent opportunity to promote your business. 

About The Product teasers

The whole point of all posts on Instagram is letting your followers know about your brand, to make them aware of the product or service you are selling. But most often than not, when a customer sees a post, he likes it, but then as he scrolls down, he forgets about it. So how do you create awareness among the customers, which will stay on for days and weeks? Well, you have to tease your followers. You cannot create awareness among your followers unless it arises inside them by themselves. So the best technique to do that is to tease them about your service or products.

Now you can tease your service in a number of ways. Firstly you can post a short video or an image that tells your followers that something big is coming, or that a huge sale is coming. This will intrigue your followers, and they will keep a tab on that, maybe even share it with their friends or families. Perhaps before Christmas, you can post about a grand scale coming during Christmas, something like buy 1 get 1 free or up to 70% off. These things will excite your product and your customers at the same time. They will be eagerly waiting for the day when the sale comes, and along with that, they will spread the word too. 

It is essential to understand that no customer wants a brand to push them to buy their services. If you push too much, you will lose your followers and, at the same time, loyal customers. So teasing about a product is a very sly way of increasing your followers’ excitement without being too pushy about it. Because you are not asking anyone to buy anything or follow you, but you are just telling them you have this amazing sale coming up, do what you have to do with it. So your followers have their freedom, but at the same time, they are intrigued. 

The Sponsored ads

Every Instagram marketing agency you come across will suggest you have sponsored ads. That is because sponsored ads are very important for promoting your business. Instagrams ads give you a lot of freedom. You can choose how much you want to spend and if you wish to spend it at all or not. 

Now, what exactly are sponsored ads? You can choose a picture or video, which can be a new picture or video or a one you posted before. Then you can choose a dynamic ad, a story, or a story canvas and sponsor them. It basically means that you pay Instagram to show that ad on almost every user’s feed. There is a time limit to how many hours the ad will show. Now before sponsored ads existed, the ads you posted would only show on your followers’ feeds. With the help of sponsored ads, you can promote your brand to such an extent that even if they are not following you, your ads will pop up on their Instagram feed. 

You can choose the type of audience you want to promote the ad to. SO, in this case, it is important to know which particular advertisement should be targeted towards which demographic. Using the analytics tool and the reach you are getting on your posts, you need to decide on the ads’ demographics. It is always helpful if you run multiple ads at the same time targeted towards different people. This will help you a lot in increasing your reach and to attract more customers. 

About the Instagram stories

Ask the best marketing agencies on Instagram how they promote a brand, 9 out of 10 agencies will tell you that they use Instagram stories. That is because the power and potential of Instagram stories are endless. Firstly Instagram stories reside on top of the feed, where everyone can see it at first glance. This makes people see your content very easily. Then regarding the things you post as stories, you can post anything from a picture, a short video, a gif, and you can add numerous filters and other effects onto it. Stories give every creator endless possibilities to edit the story and make the look attractive and fun. Every story is available for 24 hours, but they all are saved on your device; hence you can always reuse them. 

Now there are many pictures that a brand cannot use to post on their feed. This could be because of a number of reasons. The picture could be not good enough to be posted on your feed, the quality might be poor, or the picture might not align with what your feed is portraying at that point of time. So posting such pictures as stories take the attention away from it, and if you want to send a message to your followers with that picture, you can do that too. 

It should also be noted that the number of posts you can post on your Instagram story is endless. This is important because many times, people get annoyed if you post a lot of posts on your feed, and when they are scrolling their feed, all they are seeing is posts about you. So if you put many posts as stories, your followers have the option to watch them if they are interested or ignore them by swiping away. How many people are viewing all of your stories, how many are reacting to them, or sharing them, these are important analytics that you will get and will help you improve your content. 

Also, one more important thing about stories is that you can tag people or other brands. This can potentially be a compelling feature because now you can collaborate with other brands. Hence, people who follow the brand you are collaborating with will know your brand’s existence. This will help you get a lot of promotion. On the other hand, you can tag people or brands by which you want to get noticed. They will see that you have tagged them, and they might even collaborate with you. You can also contact an Instagram influencer agency and collaborate with them, and they will help you promote your brand by tagging you in their stories. 

Role Of Influencers

Influencers play a big role in promoting a brand. If your brand is new and does not have a lot of reach or followers, then influencers can play a big role in increasing your followers. Firstly you must select someone who has been an influencer for some time and with a substantial number of followers. If the person you appoint does not have followers, he or she will not be able to help you spread the word about your brand. 

Now suppose you appoint someone to help you with Instagram Profile marketing, you need to provide that person with your service or product. He or she will then post a picture or video using that product or service, and everyone who follows the influence will be intrigued by your brand and will either start following you or buy your service or maybe even both. So with just one post, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of followers of your influencer will get to know about your brand. But the influencer you choose must be relevant to your line of business. For example, if you sell technology and choose an influencer whose followers follow art, they will not be interested in your brand. So choosing the correct influencer is very important. 

If you can somehow get a celebrity to promote your brand as an influencer, your brand’s growth will be astronomical. Always remember people buy things which they trust or when they see people who they trust using them. So these influencers have many people following them, who view their posts on a regular basis. Naturally, they start trusting them, and when they see that the influencer is using your products, they will be attracted to them too. For many, these influencers are someone to whom people look up to, and they want to be like these influencers. So they will use the products, the influencers use to be like them. This is one of the best outsources of Instagram marketing techniques available in the market. 

Interacting with your followers

Interacting with your followers has two main advantages. You are interacting with your followers, which makes them feel wanted and needed by your brand, and the second point we will be discussing soon. 

Now to successfully pull off Instagram profile marketing, you need to post a lot of pictures and keep your followers engaged always. So how exactly would you do that? Well, engaging your followers. Now there must be many people who are using your service and product and posting pictures and videos about them. Chances are these people who also want to promote their profile and want you to notice them; hence they will post the pictures or videos tagging you. You can repost these posts which will help in two things: 

1. Make the follower feel like his or her’s content is liked by your brand, and they will feel special
2. Other people who do not use your services will get to know that other people are using your services and they are satisfied with it. Now people usually trust the opinions of people who are not biased and not related to the brand in any way. So when they see a random person using your services and are satisfied with it, they will want to use your brand more. 

What if you see that your followers who use your services are not posting much about your brand or the product. How do you make them engage? Well, the answer is simple really, all you need to do is tell your followers that there is a contest and one of them will win grand prizes. For that, all they have to do is share a story or post of them using your service or product. That’s it, immediately you are getting more posts to post on your feed, you are getting promotion which comes free of cost, and you are increasing your brand loyalty at the same time by involving your customers in fun games. In return, all you have to do is give one of your followers some kind of a prize, which isn’t much considering how much return you are getting. 

Now choosing the winner can be a bit tricky. It is always advisable to randomly choose with no bias to make the competition absolutely fair, but some things need to be kept in mind; otherwise, it can harm the brand in the long run. Things like: 

• The winning post you will be posting: Does the content go against the brand image you have or try to create? 
• The person whose winning post you will be sharing, does he have a huge following? Will promoting his profile bring you extra followers and help you in Instagram media marketing? 
• Is the winning post appropriate to be shared with your followers?

When you are running a business, your brand’s image is matters a lot. You cannot post anything inappropriate or support people who do so. Nothing comes above your brand’s image. Hence if you need to cancel the first winner and choose again because his posts are against your company’s vision, you should do so. 

The Brand Hashtag

Hashtags are another great way to promote your brand. To take your promotion to the next level, you must create your innovative hashtag. All the big companies have hashtags, and you will notice that the marketing agency’s Instagram posts, which work for the big companies, use these hashtags to promote the brand. For example, RedBull has “#itgivesyouwings,” then Coca-cola has “#ShareACoke.” These hashtags are so famous that they have become synonymous with these brands. Hence you must also create a hashtag that has never been used before, which is trendy and can align with your brand. If you use a random hashtag with no connection to your brand or the work you do, then the hashtag will receive a lot of backlashes. Also, especially on Instagram, people can follow hashtags. People will start following your hashtag if they find it good and your work interesting. If you have an innovative hashtag and people search for it, they will get all the posts related to your company. 

Hashtags can be called in a way, free advertising. Every time someone uses your hashtag to post something, whether it be content about your brand or anything random, your brand gets the promotion as that hashtag is associated with your brand. If your brand already has a recognized slogan, make sure to make it into a hashtag because it will help people connect with your brand. 

To Sum It Up

Instagram marketing is something that you must do in case you are looking to market your brand digitally. If you want to see your brand grow exponentially and want to see the maximum reach your brand can reach on the Internet, Instagram is the way to go. Remember, not all features of Instagram can be accessed from the web; hence do not forget to use the Android or iOS app. Now that you know everything you need to about Instagram marketing, all that is left is to get to work and promote your brand!