In contemporary times, marketing has become quite synonymous with social media marketing. In fact, digital marketing altogether has become indispensable for businesses in this digital age. Today, enterprises are thriving in the digital space owing to their digital presence. Besides, social media comes across as a great platform for businesses to make their brands bigger each day.
Statistically speaking, Statista reveals some fascinating insights on social media ad spending. The global expenditure on social media marketing is projected to exceed 200 billion by the end of 2024. This clearly states that enterprises are happy to invest a large part of their marketing budget on social media. Besides, the fact that social media has more than 4.7 billion users makes it worth the effort.
As an entrepreneur, you can conveniently build an appealing brand on social media. Having said that, social media can open a new doorway of opportunities for your business. In fact, a large number of businesses are now directly selling via social media and adding to their profitability. Are you catching up with the growing trend?
How Instagram is emerging as a pivotal marketing platform
Going forward, if we look at the most popular social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat top the list. Instagram in particular is highly popular among businesses in contemporary times. If you ask your fellow entrepreneurs, they will tell you that they are spending the most on Instagram marketing.
To substantiate, not only is Instagram the second most downloaded app but more than 1.22 billion users use the platform every month. Hootsuite further states that more than 90 percent of Instagram users follow a minimum of one business. Further, it is vital to note that Instagram now has a greater marketing outreach than Facebook.
Moreover, Insider Intelligence reveals that marketers in the US will spend more than 2.2 billion USD on Instagram influencer marketing alone. These trends and insights depict a clear story of Instagram’s rise as the most sought-after marketing platform. Businesses are now competing with each other on Instagram and the stakes are quite high.
As an entrepreneur, this should compel you to enhance your Instagram presence. For that to happen in an incremental way, you need some extraordinary strategies. What helps businesses grow bigger each day via Instagram? How are businesses making the most of the opportunities that Instagram has? In this blog, we find answers to these questions.
Basically, this blog is your all-inclusive guide to building and growing your brand presence on Instagram. With Instagram, you can literally change the fortunes of your business. So, let us find out how exactly you can do that.
Ways in which you can grow your brand on Instagram
1. Put stories to great use
Did you know that more than 4 million enterprises post ad stories each month? Instagram Business further reveals that more than 58 percent of Instagram users attract to new brands after watching their stories. Moreover, 50 percent of users visit company websites after watching their stories.
What more do you need to take your brand to the next level? With compelling and engaging stories, you can put your brand right at the top. Create authentic and heartwarming stories that can build an instant connection with your audience. It is more like your brand’s story should seem like their own story to them. While greater brand authority and engagement are the obvious benefits, it will also lead to greater conversion.
Going forward, Conviva states that Instagram stories have an impressive completion rate of 86 percent. The fact of the matter is that Instagram users fascinate towards great stories and engage with them in an incredible way. So, this has to be one of your top strategies for growing your Instagram presence.
Lastly, you need to be regular with posting valuable stories. People expect their favorite brands to be consistent in their brand messaging. So, when you are posting stories on a regular basis, you are also delivering on this expectation.
2. Get influencers onboard
Influencer marketing is quite a popular marketing buzzword in contemporary times. For sure, you will also be familiar with the same and also its growing influence. When you get influencers to promote your product or service, you are able to build great authority.
To explain, people who trust an influencer will also tend to trust the brand the influencer is promoting. Makes great sense, right? Also, with influencers promoting your brand, you also get the opportunity to target their audience and boost the outreach.
This explains why brands are spending fortunes on influencer marketing. It is a trend that is growing bigger each day. Interestingly, the ROI of influencer marketing can be 11 times higher than other domains of digital marketing. That is indeed fascinating, isn’t it?
However, it is equally important that you get your influencer marketing strategy right on the money. Associate with influencers who are in some way linked to the niche of your business. For instance, if you are a Fintech business, having a fitness influencer will make no sense. You will need an influencer who talks personal finances. This is for the simple reason that an influencer who discusses finances has an audience that is closely related to your target market.
Besides, it is not exactly about the budget when it comes to influencer marketing. It has more to do with the credibility of the influencers you collaborate with. The greater their credibility the higher the returns.
3. Make the most of Instagram marketing tools
Do you have a business profile on Instagram? Well, if you do not, you need to switch to the business profile immediately given the host of benefits it has. Instagram business profile offers free marketing tools that can help you track the metrics of your marketing strategies.
The insights you get from these tools can help you track impressions, engagement rate, and other KPIs you need to track. When you track key performance indicators, you can find the existing gaps in strategies. Subsequently, you can optimize your Instagram marketing strategies to boost results.
Besides, with insights and analytics, you can segment your target audience in a more strategic way. This segmentation can be on the basis of age, gender, preferences, and customer behavior. Hence, insights can help you understand what customers want and how they interact with brands. Based on that, you can incorporate the necessary innovation to meet your SMART Goals.
4. Hold live events on Instagram
If you really want to engage your target audience in a wholesome way, go live more often. The company’s top executives can directly interact with the audience by holding live sessions on the common issues customers face. Besides, through live feeds, the company’s representatives can also share the latest news and updates with the audience.
In fact, if you are planning a product launch in the near future, why not make it a live event on Instagram? Your audience will love to witness a product launch live on their Instagram. Big brands like Apple have made it a customary practice to host live product launches. Why not learn from industry leaders?
Also, in the live sessions you host to interact with the audience, you can share glimpses of your upcoming launches. You can even put out teasers of the upcoming launches in your stories. In this way, you can incite enormous curiosity among your audience. Consequently, their excitement will translate into high engagement.
With massive engagement, you can build exemplary brand authority on Instagram. After all, creating a dominating presence on Instagram is all about authority.
5. Create social proof with UGC
As an entrepreneur or marketer, you should never underestimate the kind of influence reviews can have. When customers post positive reviews about your company, it builds greater trust. To validate, as per Trustpilot, more than 90 percent of customers read reviews before trusting a business.
To add, Podium reveals that more than 58 percent of buyers are ready to pay a premium price to buy from a brand that has a positive reputation. Do you still have doubts about the impact of user-generated reviews or content?
What smart businesses are doing is that they are making the most of user-generated content. They are encouraging users to create content for the brand and are promoting it on Instagram to create social proof. As people see the brand gaining more trust in the digital space, people gravitate towards the brand.
Also, having UGC at the epicenter of your content marketing strategies means that your users will deliver on a large part of your content requirements. Having said that, you would not have to hire extensive content creation teams. So, that means double the benefits, right?
To encapsulate, Instagram has surpassed other social media platforms to be the world’s most sought-after marketing platform. With billions of active users, Instagram offers businesses a great opportunity to acquire more leads. However, to reap the benefits to the fullest, you have to ensure that you first switch to the business profile. Once you do that, you can have an analytics-driven approach to succeeding in your Instagram marketing strategies.
Author
“Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.” Wayne Dyer’s thoughts are well suited to Kiara Miller. She has been working as a content marketing professional at ‘The Speakingnerd’. Her passion for writing is also visible in the innovative joys of material she provides to her readers.
