When it comes to business marketing, strategies may vary from one business to another. It will also depend on the platform used for marketing as well as the audience that it is meant for. For small businesses, you will need to be more specific so that you can create a winning strategy.
If designed properly, Instagram can be a powerful, affordable and beneficial for small businesses that will help it to grow easily and effectively. It will help the business to:
- Reach to new customers
- Increase engagement
- Stay connected
- Make sales from the app itself.
All these features make this platform the best one for small businesses to promote their brand and product. It will help them to tap the large Instagram audience of more than a billion if only they follow a strategy that is both tactical and artistic.
The best part of Instagram marketing is that growth is quick both in the number of followers as the users get free Instagram likes more than any other social channels considered as well as in business profit and sales.
Though maintaining a balance between art and strategy is not easy, it can be easy if you know and follow these factors:
- People buy from companies they like and
- People like companies they can trust.
You can ensure these both if you build relationship that will raise trust in them. The best way to do that is by creating content that provides value and information to them.
Creating great Instagram posts
When you create Instagram posts the most important thing to ensure is to use top-quality visuals. It is also needed to maintain consistency on this visual social media platform. This will make your posts engaging and successful, making it stand out from others visually.
Instagram marketing does not mean that the products need to be beautiful. It is how you present them to your users. It should not only be appealing but also cohesive so that it is of highest quality possible. There are some fundamental rules to follow to create exceptional Instagram visuals. These are:
- Choose ‘lighter’ images because these are more successful and receive 24% more likes as compared to ‘darker’ photos
- Use more background space to make the images less busy and to receive 29% more likes
- Make sure that only one color or tone dominates the images to get 17% more likes and
- Use proper editing tools and filters for your images to make them more appealing.
Therefore, make sure that you choose the right color scheme, the theme and feel of your images so that you can create the photos top post on Instagram more cohesively.
Marketing using hashtags
While using Instagram for marketing, you must follow the steps that experts suggest. This will ensure better and faster results.
First, you should use hashtags because these are the most useful element for your posts and are not going anywhere soon. Using hashtags is the best way to promote your posts and product because:
- It will make your posts more discoverable and
- It will make the posts easy to share.
However, using any and every hashtag available at random may not produce the desired results. Make sure that the hashtags are:
- Popular in your niche industry
- Relevant to your business and product
- Used wisely and strategically
- Selected after research and
- The one that are being used by your competitors.
This will make your hashtags more actionable and it will drive more views and shares. The best part is that hashtags will enable you to promote your posts across different social channels and drive them all to your account and website.
Collaborate with others
You must collaborate with other people such as influencers, users and companies. This is a more feasible approach especially when you have same audience. The people you collaborate with will promote you. there are different ways in which you can collaborate with other people such as:
- You can partnerwith known influencers
- You can tag big brands with your posts and
- You can also publish user-generated content.
Make sure that you mention the people who created the UGCs. Apart from that, you will also gain a large number of followers when you run a contest on Instagram. This will increase your reach and make the users talk about your brand. You will get new followers and customers as well.
Just try to be creative to make the contest valuable to you as well as your followers and offer them a valuable prize. Once again, using branded hashtags will make it easy for your followers to tag their friends.
Posting discounts and making other types of alluring and valuable promotional offers are also useful ways to increase your reach and number of followers. This will drive more sales. Adding promo codes to the posts will also help you to measure the returns from your promotional campaigns.
Add a CTA
Lastly, make sure that you add a call-to-action for the link in your profile bio. This should ideally be the second part of the bio, preferably in the last line since Instagram allows adding only one link to the profile. This CTA will tell the users what is for them on offer when they click on your link.
When it comes to creating your profile, make the best and maximum use of the 150-character limit. Also make sure that you add emojis and personality to your profile to increase your chances to be seen, liked and shared by the users. This will ensure that:
- The users get what they are looking for
- You can send them easily to your blog post, product page, or website
- You do not have to change the link in your bio.
Just make sure that you keep your CTAs simple yet compelling. Two words are more effective to create a CTA. Also make sure that you place the CTA button in a more noticeable space.
All these tried and tested tips will make it easy for small business owners to gain more followers and success using Instagram for their marketing.
