With a projected user base of 1.2 billion by 2023, Instagram is easily one of the most valuable social media platforms available today. Embracing Instagram for small business marketing is one of the best ways to ensure you can connect with your target audience, build valuable relationships, and improve your chances of long-term sales.
Currently, around 90% of Instagram users already follow a brand on Instagram, which means you’re in an excellent position to leverage engagement. What’s more, around 54% of customers say they’ve made a purchase after seeing a product on Instagram.
Today, we’re going to discuss the benefits of using Instagram as a small business marketer, and what you can do to make your campaigns as effective as possible.
5 Reasons To Use Instagram As A Small Business
While any kind of social media marketing can help to boost your presence online, Instagram is particularly well-suited to small business owners. The campaign makes it easy to leverage paid and unpaid campaigns to connect with your audience. In fact, around 81% of customers say that Instagram helps them research services and products already.
Here’s why you should be using Instagram for small business marketing.
1. Increase Brand Recognition
As mentioned above, Instagram has more than a billion regular users who log onto the channel all the time. With Instagram, you can improve your chances of connecting with your target audience wherever they are, and even leverage opportunities to expand your brand reach.
With an Instagram user search, you can track down influencers who can promote your products to your customers on your behalf, or partner with other brands to strengthen your appearance on the platform. What’s more, with a consistent posting strategy, you can build a more memorable brand.
Instagram is a great place to share not just your brand personality through captions and quotes, but your brand colors and branding, too. The more you post, the more familiar people become with your brand.
2. Drive Traffic To Your Website
According to 90% of marketers, advertising on social media increases the exposure of their business. Around 75% of advertising professionals say the right platform also helps them to increase traffic back to their website.
Today’s Instagram users are more than happy to develop relationships with their preferred brands on social media. They’ll also happily click on the links you share if your campaigns are attractive enough. This helps you to increase the number of customers clicking back onto your product pages, and potentially making purchases.
To make the most of Instagram for small business marketing, make sure you use a link-in-bio tool so you can connect more than one URL to your Instagram profile. Remember, Instagram will only allow you to list one link as standard.
3. Create Relationships Within Your Industry
Building relationships is important for any brand. Advertising on social media, or simply sharing information about your company, is a good way to strengthen your connection with your community.
With Instagram, you can respond to comments and run contests which help you to build closer links with your target audience. At the same time, you’ll have endless opportunities to build other corporate relationships which might help your business to grow.
For instance, Instagram is a fantastic place to seek out influencers to promote your business with. You can also find other complementary companies who might want to partner with your organization on giveaways, promotions, and contests.
4. Humanizes Your Brand
Instagram is a highly visual platform, perfect for when you want to share snaps of what’s going on behind the scenes in your company. With reels (short videos), IGTV (longer videos), and standard timeline photos, you can give your customers an insight into what your business is really about.
Authentic, meaningful, and raw content is often extremely popular on Instagram, because it reminds customers they’re dealing with a team of real people, not just a faceless corporation.
Look at this example from the @BossProject for instance. A picture of people laughing and enjoying a cup of coffee at work is ideal for creating emotional connections with your audience.
5. Fosters Brand Credibility
When customers want to learn more about a company, the first thing they do is look the brand up online. When a customer searches for your brand and sees a professional Instagram profile alongside a reputable website, they instantly get a better impression of your brand.
Investing in Instagram for small business marketing is an excellent way to show your customers you’re a genuine, reliable, and respectable business. The key to success is making sure you post a high-quality selection of content.
Make sure your photos, videos, and other content are professionally shot, so you’re not sending the wrong impression.
Top Tips To Grow Your Instagram As A Small Business
Clearly, using Instagram to promote your small business is an excellent idea. It’s a chance for you to really connect with your target market and improve your chances of sales. Of course, just like any other tool in your marketing strategy, your Instagram efforts will work best when you have a solid strategy for success. Here are some tips to get you started:
1. Use An Instagram Growth Service
A successful Instagram strategy requires a commitment to developing your digital presence over the long-term. However, during the initial few months when you’re just getting started online, it can be extremely difficult to attract customers to an account with no followers.
An Instagram growth service designed to attract organic Instagram followers to your profile can be just the boost you need. These services aren’t the same as dangerous strategies for buying Instagram followers. Instead, they focus on finding customers who would already be interested in your brand and liking their content, so they’re encouraged to come back and look at your content.
Remember, to achieve the right results from your Instagram growth service, make sure you only work with businesses who use organic, spam-free services, or you could risk getting into trouble with Instagram. Check the reviews and testimonials for the company before you sign up.
2. Develop A Clear Instagram Strategy
While an Instagram growth service is great for the initial part of attracting followers when using Instagram for small business marketing, you’ll still need a long-term strategy. A good Instagram strategy ensures you’re using the right tools and content, at the correct times to boost engagement.
Your Instagram strategy should include:
· Hashtags: Make sure you’re using a wide selection of hashtags to improve the reach of your posts. Your hashtags should include niche tags, location tags, branded tags (unique to your business), and trending tags you know your customers and competitors are using.
· Multiple content types: Experimenting with different content types, like videos, photos, and quote-based posts, is an excellent way to learn what your customers like to see most from your brand. Try exploring various content options and collecting insights from your Instagram analytics.
· A content schedule: Speaking of your Instagram analytics, they should give you a good idea of when your customers are online and actively ready to engage with your brand. Use this information to create a schedule for posting your content at just the right time.
3. Post High-Quality Content Consistently
Great content is probably the most important part of running a successful Instagram strategy. Your customers are only going to continue engaging with your brand if you’re posting things they care about. With that in mind, make sure you experiment with a wide range of content types and look for ways to improve your image whenever you can.
You can start by looking at the kind of content your competitors are posting on Instagram for inspiration. Find out what sort of posts get the most likes, shares, and engagement for similar brands. It’s also worth checking out the Explore page and seeing what’s trending in your industry.
Once you know what kind of content you’re going to need to produce, look for tools which can help you edit and enhance your photos and videos. For instance, you can try:
· Photoshop: This is a great tool for making your content look more professional and carefully edited on Instagram. Just try not to go over the top with photoshop filters.
· VSCO: Create videos and photos with unique effects and filters directly from your smartphone. There are tons of people using this service to boost their Instagram appearance.
· Canva: If you need help resizing your photos or accessing free graphics for your Instagram campaigns, Canva is a great choice.
Don’t forget, tools like Later, Buffer, and Sprout (News - Alert) Social can also help you to roll your content out at the right time, by allowing you to schedule your Instagram campaigns in advance.
4. Take Advantage Of Video Content
Finally, if you want to use Instagram for small business marketing, one of the most important things you can do is diversify your content. While people do expect to see photos on Instagram, it’s also a great place to share videos.
There are all kinds of video content you can get involved with on Instagram, from live videos which allow you to develop a deeper connection with your target audience, to quick Reels, which are similar to TikTok videos. Reels are currently appearing larger on Instagram’s Explore page, so they can help you to stand out among your competition.
If you really want to double down on your video content, you can also use IGTV. Allowing you to post longer content on Instagram, IGTV is a great place for sharing all kinds of videos. It also has its own dedicated space on the Instagram app.
Make The Most Of Instagram For Your Business
Instagram continues to be one of the most popular tools for small businesses today. With access to Instagram for your company, you can develop a powerful strategy for reaching new customers, increasing conversions, and building long-term relationships.
Don’t forget, take advantage of your Instagram Insights page to collect as much information as you can about every campaign, and use that data to determine what kind of advertising your customers respond to best.
