With 1 billion active users and over $20 billion spent last year on advertising, Instagram has become the fastest-growing social media platform, especially for online brands. The visual-driven platform has been a highly effective channel for emerging brands to attract and engage with younger demographics. But, marketer beware… to successfully sell on Instagram you need a tailored approach that is both aligned with your brand and positioned to showcase all of the features of your products. To do this, you’ll want to follow three important principles.
Use your products to build relationships. By studying your target audience, you should have a solid understanding of their pain points, interests, preferences, and wants. By having this customer profile created, you can use your Instagram posts to drive traffic to your website and grow a loyal brand following. The most effective way to do this is to show your product “in action” as often as possible. Leveraging high-quality imagery and posting at least twice a day can enable you to grow your following and begin attracting influencers to help you expand your reach. Many brands use product giveaways, behind-the-scenes content in their Instagram story, and post user-generated content to engage with their following.
Highlight your full product line. Your Instagram page should be used like an online storefront. In the same way, you would feature your product line on a website, you want to do the same on social media. This can be done by showcasing your products using the Instagram story feature or by creating a content calendar that rotates images and videos of your various products. The key is to immediately show your audience that you have a host of products to fit their interests.
Put collections of products together. The more you can show followers using your products, the more overall brand engagement you can generate. In fact, marketing research has shown that when people see user-generated content versus not, conversion rates increase by 161%. If you have products that complement each other well, find ways to show them in the same image or show them being used together by your customer. Instagram is driven heavily by lifestyle brands and illustrating how your products fit into the active lifestyle of your followers, the more traffic you’ll naturally drive to your brand.
Instagram marketing, although highly effective, isn’t an exact science. If having a review of your Instagram strategies would be beneficial to your company, let us know. We’ll be happy to share practical ways you can enhance your marketing to fully maximize all that Instagram has to offer.
