Since its launch, over a decade ago, Instagram has proven to be one of the best places to conduct online marketing campaigns. It is especially beneficial for small to medium businesses looking to expand their presence and reach a larger audience. This popular social media platform allows people to post content in varying ways from photos and GIFs to IGTV videos, Reels and Stories.
Instagram has over 1 billion active users, making it an excellent platform for marketing. It’s not complex and with the right strategy, you can establish a large fan base without spending a dime. Of course, it is a process that goes beyond creating an account and posting, but the benefits make it worth it. In this read, we are going to take a look at some of the compelling reasons to use Instagram for business.
1. It has Numerous Users
As mentioned earlier, Instagram boasts over a billion active users. This makes it one of the largest social media platforms in the world. Of this figure, more than 50% use Instagram on a daily basis. This makes it an appealing place for people looking to promote their businesses, products and services. With so many people, there’s no limit to the success your venture can reach with a proper marketing strategy.
2. Ideal for Businesses of all Sizes
With such a huge audience, Instagram is an essential place for businesses, regardless of the size. As with every marketing campaign, however, you can’t expect sales or success in online marketing to come overnight. However, if you are a business facing fierce competition out there, Instagram can help put your company on the map.
With the ability to target both local, regional and international audiences, raising brand awareness isn’t as challenging compared to other forms of marketing and advertising. With a strategy as simple as posting one video or photo per day and interacting with the fans, your business can really thrive. It is all about a matter of time.
3. Make Money Directly From the Platform
Over the years, Instagram has introduced a slew of features, among them being e-commerce sales. Nowadays, there’s a greater emphasis on making money via product placement. The recent feature is known as Shop Tab. Found prominently on the application’s home dock, this feature allows people to discover and buy from companies straight via Instagram. The platform ideally offers shoppable posts, allowing businesses to add tags to products in their posts including price, description and option to ‘shop now’ which directs the user to your online store.
With such convenient features, it is easy to you to attract actual sales from Instagram. In fact, 72% of users reported buying products via Instagram at least once. These figures are hard to overlook!
4. Increase Visibility and Awareness Through Hashtags
If you have recently launched your business, your competition might be intimidating. However, if you use hashtags properly, you can distance yourself from the herd. Popular hashtags like Calvin Klein’s #MyCalvins, Coca-Cola’s #ShareaCoke, and the like have transformed the industry, becoming the cornerstone that made these companies even more recognizable.
However, you need to be smart and use hashtags that are actually relevant to your industry.
5. Stories Make Your Brand Relatable
Instagram provides an excellent opportunity to show potential customers that you’re more than just a conventional company. This can be achieved via the numerous features in the application, but if you are looking to make an impression, stories and live posts are the answer.
A great way to use Stories is revealing BTS insights into your organization and the individuals you work with. Examples include how you make product marketing videos, live Q&A sessions with the fan base and clips of the employees interacting with each other.
Live posts are also a good way to build trust, credibility and solid relationships with your followers. It’s also a great way to show the human side of your organization. If Instagram users see you more than a business looking to make money, they will be more interested in what you have to offer.
6. Effectively Engage with Consumers
Other than visibility and brand awareness, the opportunity to engage with your audience is another pro of using Instagram for business. The truth is that people like it when their opinions are seen and heard. Instagram provides a platform where people can like, comment and share their favorite posts. The more engagement you get, the more visible you become. You can get more likes by posting high-quality, relevant content, partnering with other companies and using local hashtags. That’s because they encourage engagement which boosts visibility.
7. Ability to Partner with Influencers
In social media, you have the users and the influencers. The latter mostly consists of celebrities that promote a product or brand with the aim of increasing brand awareness and sales.
With a reliable influencer, you can take your sales to a whole new level via access to untapped demographics and increased return on investment (ROI). If you partner with an active and well-known influencer, they can promote your product or business to hundreds of thousands or millions of people with just a few posts.
8. Keep an Eye on Your Competition
You can leverage Instagram to see what your competition is up to and how they interact with their audience. Use this opportunity to monitor what they post, how often they do it as well as how they engage with followers. This is a great way to refine your marketing strategy. You can also leapfrog them if you buy Instagram followers to improve your account metrics.
9. Mobility is King
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, which began as browser-based websites, Instagram was designed to be an app from inception. Given most of the time spent on smartphones and tablets is spent on applications, you should leverage this and make your IG posts available to users wherever they go. People tend to turn to IG as it is cleaner compared to the cluttered view apps like Facebook offer. With a tremendous engagement rate, IG proves to be a platform that your business should be actively using.
