Instagram is being integrated as a promotional platform across business verticals. Due to its visual-centric nature, it has emerged as a popular platform for businesses to promote their venture using the platform.
The platform has around a billion active users and serves ads to more than 849 million users globally.
These metrics are huge, and if you play your cards right, you can garner immense reach for your Instagram marketing strategy.
In this post, we will be looking at an Instagram ads tutorial that will help you in successfully deploying your Instagram marketing strategy and propelling your brand to success.
Top 10 Instagram Marketing Tips
If you have been mulling over your Instagram promotional strategy, these 10 marketing tips will definitely help you out.
1. Use an Instagram Business account
You and your business are two separate entities and it should be portrayed in your ad strategy as well. Running ads from your personal account won’t garner the impact that you may be hoping for.
Hence, it is essential that you create an Instagram business profile for your venture and post all the details on that page itself.
An Instagram business account gives you additional insights related to your audiences such as impressions, profile visits, user age demographics, and much more.
Moreover, you can easily convert your existing Instagram account to a business account right from the app, without requiring any additional verifications.
2. Establish clear and achievable goals
All your efforts will go in vain if you don’t have clearly established goals for your Instagram marketing strategy.
Additionally, if you want to measure your success rate, having well-defined goals is of utmost importance.
What do you want your marketing strategy to achieve? Is it more sales? User awareness? Or getting the word out for a promotion that you are running?
Having well-defined and achievable goals is of paramount importance if you want to accurately measure your success rate and make small amendments to your strategy.
You can even combine multiple goals for your ad strategy to achieve and then help build upon the success that your ads bring to the table.
3. Define your target audience
It is crucial that you figure out your target audience before hopping on an Instagram video editor to create ads.
Your target audience refers to the user subset that you want your ads to tap into.
Suppose, if you are a funky t-shirt brand, it would be best if you target millennials in the 18-29 age group as that user group is most likely to find your ads relevant.
Deploying an ad strategy without analyzing your audience is like shooting an arrow in the dark. It may (or may not) hit the target and will not be beneficial for your bottom-line.
4. Optimize your business account
Make sure that users who come to your business page through your ads have all the relevant information available to them.
Your bio is usually the first thing that users notice and having a catchy bio will certainly help you in grabbing the attention of your audience.
You can also put a link to your eCommerce store in your Instagram bio, or your other social links.
A business address too adds that extra level of authenticity and users are more likely to trust your business with the additional information that they may (or may not) require.
5. Use an appropriate display picture
If you have a business logo, it’s highly suggested that you use that as your Instagram display picture.
This helps your business to garner recognition and lets people associate your logo with your brand.
Since Instagram shows round images as your display picture, you can use a zoomed out logo and use it as your profile’s display picture.
Just remember to use a 320×320 resolution image as it is the native resolution that Instagram stores your images.
6. Create visually appealing content
Instagram is largely a visual platform. This calls for using content that is visually appealing and garners eyeballs.
You don’t need professional equipment to create high-quality images and an intro maker would too do the trick.
Also, posting haphazard content is not in your best interest, hence it is crucial that your content is streamlined and gets the viewers excited.
You can shoot and edit behind the scene videos of your business, or just send out insights that update your viewers on the current industry trends.
7. Ensure a streamlined look for your brand
If you have established a brand theme, stick to it. You must ensure that all your posts carry a similar color scheme with a relatable look and feel.
Following a preset theme helps your viewers in instantly connecting with your brand when they see your post and enhances your business recognition.
This helps your Instagram page look consistent and allows your users to easily identify your content, wherever it appears in their news feed.
8. Write catchy captions for your posts
Although Instagram is primarily a visual platform, you need to include catchy captions with every post that you send out.
Captions act as your brand’s voice and must also follow a consistent theme across your business profile.
Instagram supports captions up to a length of 2200 words. This ensures that you have enough room for your creative juices to flow and can help you immensely in story-telling.
However, since people usually read the first two lines first before clicking on ‘more’, a catchy caption will certainly be very helpful.
9. Only include relevant hashtags
If used correctly, hashtags have the potential of opening doors for your content.
You just need to make sure that you use relevant and relatable hashtags for your content as it enhances its professional appeal.
The key to using hashtags is not overdoing it. Try to include between 5 to 9 hashtags per post and anything more than that may render your content to be considered as spammy.
If you pursue hashtag stuffing and include too many hashtags in your posts, users may exclude your content from being shown in their hashtag search.
10. Engage with your users
Engaging with your users is crucial in ensuring the success of your Instagram marketing strategy.
If you only post content but never engage with your audience in the comment section, you will most likely deter people from connecting with your brand on a personal level.
Remember, engagement on Instagram is a two-way street. You won’t get organic engagement unless you engage with your audience on a personal level and in a non-promotional manner.
Even if someone tags you in their post, responding, or even re-sharing the post is also considered as engagement from your brand.