Instagram Marketing: The Complete Guide

Instagram is one of the most widely used social media sites, with millions of daily users. As a result, any brand or marketer would be mistaken to overlook the platform’s user base. Instagram’s dominance and reach are undeniable.

What started out as a simple photo-sharing app has grown into a social platform that allows users to discover a company’s visual identity.

If that isn’t enough to convince you to start utilizing Instagram for marketing, consider the following Instagram facts.

  1. About one billion people use Instagram on a monthly basis.
  2. After Facebook, Instagram is the most popular social media platform. Per day, users spend 53 minutes on average surfing.
  3. On Instagram, there are over 25 million business accounts.
  4. 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business, and 83 percent say the site has aided them in finding opportunities.

Those are incredible statistics. And no matter who your target audience is — regardless of age, gender, profession, or anything else — you’ll be able to connect with them on Instagram. But now the concern is…

  1. How do you use Instagram to promote your business?
  2. What would you do to stand out from the 95 million pictures uploaded every day?

In this guide, we’d love to help you answer all of these queries.

Optimizing Your Instagram Profile:

Your Instagram profile serves as a virtual home for you on the website. It offers you a place to share some details about your company while still helping you to drive traffic back to your website.

What you want to share in your Instagram bio should be representative of your business and show your followers what you do as a company, as your explanation is very personal to your brand.

It’s now time to choose a suitable profile photo. Your profile picture is the first thing new visitors see when they come to your profile.

Consider using your company’s logo or another well-known picture. Since Instagram profile pictures are automatically cropped into a circle, make sure there’s enough space around the edges of your photo.

After clicking “switch to a business profile,” you’ll be able to create a business profile. Then you must link the profile to your company’s Facebook page, something you must first create, and also add contact details such as your email and phone number, as well as create promotions.

Make Use of All Instagram Features:

Instagram Stories

Brands can use Instagram Stories to communicate with their followers and promote themselves in a fun and engaging way. To keep your audience engaged, you’ll need to make interesting, attention-grabbing content in a quick, temporary format.

IGTV

Instagram TV, or IGTV, is its new video streaming option. Users can watch long-form, vertical content from Instagram creators via the app. Suggestion: recipe videos, celebrity interviews, product reviews, and tutorials, this is the sort of content you’ll find on IGTV.

Captions

Don’t be afraid to use long captions. In particular, Instagram can be a useful platform for telling stories.

Have a call-to-action in the caption at all times. Encourage your audience to post, like, and comment on your photo.

You can also use your caption to guide people to a page in your bio where they can learn more about a new product or read a blog post.

Hashtags

Adding hashtags to your Instagram posts will boost your marketing strategies dramatically. Hashtags help you reach a more targeted audience and expand the reach of your content. Besides that, using hashtags on your posts also has a positive impact on your engagement rates.

To increase the reach and visibility of your post, mix general, trending hashtags with specific hashtags. And, think about coming up with your own branded hashtag.

Set Your Goals:

Whatever the case might be, make sure to identify your Instagram objectives first. You can use Instagram for a number of things, including sharing product photos as well as sharing user-generated content (UGC). It’s not so much about the type of posts you share as it is about why you share them. You can assess your success and use Instagram Analytics tools if you understand why.

Your marketing plan’s objectives are your goal and priorities. For goal-setting, we use the SMART acronym:

  • Specific: Instead of a vague objective, provide specific numbers and milestones.
  • Measurable: Choose targets that can be measured and analyzed through analytics and insights.
  • Attainable: Be practical in your goals. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll gain a million followers in a week.
  • Maintain relevance by staying up to date on your industry, market, and outlook.
  • Time-bound: Set a deadline for yourself to complete your target.

Target Audience:

Before you start marketing on Instagram, find out who you want your target audience to be. Draw on other marketing strategies if you have them to keep your efforts consistent. Age, area, gender, income, interests, motivations, and pain points should all be considered.

Do a Competitors Analysis:

Perform a comparative study to see what other companies in your industry are doing. Start by looking at your top competitors’ Instagram profiles if you already know who they are. If not, look for similar accounts by searching for words relevant to your company and industry.

Analyze similar accounts to see the posts are attracting the most engagement, what famous hashtags they’re using, what captions they’re using, how regularly they post, and how quickly they’re growing.

Create a Content Calendar:

Make a social media content calendar so you can remain on top of your Instagram content plan and make sure it’s consistent.

To begin, plan at least three posts per week and write out all of your posts for the next month. Take advantage of free templates that follow traditional post styles and famous posts from other brands if you’re looking for inspiration or have trouble filling in all the blanks.

Instagram Insights and Analytics:

Instagram Insights is a free tool that anyone with a company profile could use. It provides you with a helpful overview of your account’s key performance metrics, such as how much exposure your posts attract and how engaged your users are.

You can also see demographic information about your Instagram followers, which will help you find your target audience. Although the built-in analytics tool isn’t very comprehensive, it’s a great place to start.

You can also use Facebook’s Ad Manager to monitor Instagram impressions, spend, and interaction on ad campaigns. These metrics are useful, but they are restricted to individual posts and campaigns.

Third-party applications will provide you with more accurate Instagram metrics. Additional metrics such as followers and engagement over time, optimal post time based on previous posts, and performance comparison to chosen competitors can be monitored using Iconosquare and Simply Measured. Despite the fact that both platforms require payment to use, you can begin with a free trial to see if their analytics solutions are right for you.

Conclusion:

In the world of social media, Instagram is undeniably a force to be reckoned with. There’s an almost infinite amount of untapped potential for brands to attract attention, generate engagement, build good relationships, and meet their annual sales goals.

High-quality content is appreciated by Instagram users. Create visuals that offer a fascinating insight to your audience or show off your brand in a fresh, creative way. It may seem overwhelming to build and maintain a channel that depicts your brand’s visual identity, but Instagram makes it simple and exciting.

Use our Instagram marketing guide to run a successful marketing campaign for your company.