How and why to invest in Instagram Marketing?

Knowing how to promote a brand on Instagram is extremely valuable nowadays. Instagram can be a powerful weapon for every marketer. Running promotional activities effectively through the platform requires a good strategy which should be tailored to the scale of the business and its promotional budget.

Do you know what else you should pay attention to when you start working on the platform?

INSTAGRAM – WHAT IS IT?

Having been acquired by Facebook in 2012 for a billion dollars, the platform is already a mature organism. According to Instagram’s internal data for June 2018, every month there are over a billion accounts active across the world, with half of them showing daily activity. The marketing truism “social media is more than just Facebook” has been valid for a very long time but the question “what is Instagram?” is also still relevant. Especially given that during its evolution, the platform which originally was used mainly for sharing photos underwent many changes which might be quite puzzling to those who focus their internet attention mainly on Facebook.

Instagram is a social networking site based on a mobile application which allows users to share their photos which can be processed with many filters. A proper description and tags can be added to every post and it is also possible to interact with other followers in the comments. Over the past few years, short multimedia forms in Insta Stories have also become extremely popular while Instagram TV, in short IGTV, has been strongly promoted for some time by the platform itself.

Your client who uses Instagram is likely to be familiar with all those features. And given that already back in September 2017, the platform had over 2 million advertisers per month, your competitors are also very likely to know that.

WHY IS IT WORTH INVESTING IN INSTAGRAM MARKETING?

Instagram Marketing differs from traditional communication based on Facebook advertising or Google Ads. Is it better? As it often happens, everything depends on the sector. Instead of encouraging investment in Instagram marketing, it is enough to quote some interesting statistics. Each of them shows very well that it is the perfect field to sow your advertising seed.

• The platform is very natural to those who have been using the Internet since they were very young. Over half of Instagram users are younger than 34. In January 2019, women aged 18-24 accounted for 15% of all Instagram users.
• Instagram is a very egalitarian platform. In the UK, it is used by 35-52% of representatives of every financial class. The group of those making more than GBP 48,000 is the biggest.
• When Instagram was still at its nascent stage and was visited by only 400 million users per month (including 300 million every day), over 4 billion hearts, i.e. Instagram likes, were posted below 95 million photos every day. And that was back in 2015 when the platform was not even close to its today’s range!

Why is it worth investing in Instagram Marketing? It allows you to reach those who feel comfortable, nice and easy on the internet, regardless of their financial status.

HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BRAND ON INSTAGRAM?

Since we already know why it is worth investing in Instagram Marketing, we are faced with a much more difficult issue: how to promote a brand on Instagram? The biggest number of Internet queries focus on the promotion of clothing brands. Producers of a specific part of clothing, i.e. footwear can serve as the best example. On the official Nike profile, 87 million people from all over the world follow reporter-like photos of athletes and sports enthusiasts who are diverse in terms of ethnicity, sex and class.

The moving materials not only generate reach, but they also engage people. To generate a positive association with the brand – this is the simplest answer to the question of how to promote your brand on Instagram. To do that, you do not need a marketing budget at the same level as giants such as Nike. Madewell, a clothing brand which identifies with the great slogan “good days start with great jeans”, and has 1.3 million followers, has had another great year in terms of results which happened largely thanks to its excellent positioning in the segment of esthetic clothing for women with class.

Cooperation with influencers (and beautiful open-air photos!) is another great idea to promote your brand on Instagram. Those initiatives aim at attracting the attention of potential consumers instead of winning likes. Positive associations connected with the safe and friendly environment of the platform, seeing products used by recognizable and liked brand ambassadors as well as simply being memorable – those are simple and great ideas to attract more and more customers.

REACH DOES NOT HURT. HOW TO WIN LIKES AND FOLLOWERS?

Different types of “likes” which already come in six varieties on Facebook and are presented in the form of hearts on Instagram are an important issue in discussions about social media. Although chasing likes might seem crazy and damaging at times, the number of people who get involved in our posts in any way should be as high as possible. It broadens the group of people who get our communication organically, is a high-prestige badge for the brand and looks well on corporate charts.

So how to win likes and followers, i.e. people who will regularly follow our posts, on Instagram? The measures will differ depending on your budget and reach of your business. While giant firms such as clothing and footwear brand Nike can and have to focus on as wide as possible, even global, reach, in many sectors it makes much more sense to reach the interested customers directly.

Enormous reaches built with advertising, sponsored materials or even dedicated IGTV shows will be of no use to a company which targets the local market. In its case, winning likes and followers boils down to organic work, making direct contact and solving the problems of individual people. Reaching geographically close customers with geolocation tools and good old hashtags, building relations with them or simply staying within their sight… Reaching your audience this way might seem tedious, however, it is very effective, especially in the long term.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/09/facebook-instagram-1bn-storify [access on 06.04.2019]

https://business.instagram.com/ [access on 06.04.2019]

https://business.instagram.com/blog/welcoming-two-million-advertisers/ [access on 06.04.2019]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/248769/age-distribution-of-worldwide-instagram-users/ [access on 06.04.2019]

https://weareflint.co.uk/main-findings-social-media-demographics-uk-usa-2018 [access on 06.04.2019]

http://money.com/money/4376329/instagram-users/ [access on 06.04.2019]

https://www.instagram.com/madewell/ [access on 06.04.2019]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/11/j-crew-is-considering-an-ipo-for-its-madewell-clothing-brand.html [access on 12.04.2019]