In the emerging world of technology, marketing methods are changing rapidly. Ways of publicity and marketing that were well known for ten years are now considered to be traditional as social media is taking over extremely quickly. As of today, the information is very easily available with just a tap of the finger and an online presence is very important. The ease of marketing and accessibility of the information increases the ease of doing business significantly. Stating the obvious, social media marketing is setting a hot foot in the world of marketing today. Businesses have started to gradually empower their businesses by using the art of social media marketing starting with Facebook and Instagram Marketing.
As we know, social media marketing means using various social media platforms like Facebook. Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. in order to create awareness about the products and services by creating offbeat yet phenomenal content. Especially, Instagram marketing and Facebook marketing content allows you to connect with the audience in a way that hits their emotions right, and unlike the traditional services, through social media, you can understand the audience’s likes, dislikes, preferences, feedbacks more precisely and allows you to work towards making your product more customer-centric.
Instagram amongst all the social media is known for its good reach and is quite famous for the rapid content consumption today, making it the most feasible platform to market your business and benefit from it. With more than one-fourth of the millennials choosing Instagram to be their favorite social media platform, it is no surprise that the social media marketing agencies and influencers are attracted to it and have left no idea unturned to create and maintain their presence.
The importance of Instagram marketing
Instagram marketing of all is the most productive. In fact, as per a source, as of today, 81% of individuals are using Instagram to research products and services. Millions of different brands and influencers are using Instagram marketing today to spread a word about their products using various features of Instagram like stories, posts, podcasts, reels, and Instagram live. Parallelly Instagram is also working on developing various other features that can up the game of Instagram marketing for its fellow marketeers!
You must be wondering how the ‘Vitamin M or the money factor’ works in this? Well, believe it or not, Instagram marketing is easier than baking a cake once you understand the purpose of all its ingredients. You can actually use Instagram to monetize your business. Let’s understand how.
How to monetize your business using instagram-
Make sure to crack the strategy
The secret lies in getting your strategy right! Make sure that you are operating your profile using a business account and if not, it can be switched to business type by changing the settings. You need to have a defined goal that you want to achieve using Instagram marketing. It can be anything like increasing your reach, increasing your followers, gaining more business, etc. Setting a goal will make it easier to channelize the strategy.
Understand your target audience
Based on the product, you might want to tweak the content being uploaded which can be done only by understanding what is trending amongst your target audience. Studying their choices, preferences, and the overall content consumed by them is extremely crucial. It allows you to connect with the target audience better.
A little research always helps
Do a competitor study, as that will allow you to strategize the content which you are planning to upload. Look out for other brands that are similar to the business that you are planning to market. Using various websites, the competitor’s data can be sought and you can study and analyze. Various Instagram marketing case studies can also help by allowing you to understand the mistakes made previously which you might want to avoid.
Get the content right
The content ends up being the first impression of your page. Select an apt and a minimal profile picture and write a precise description in the about section. It is extremely important to curate creative, interesting, and scroll-worthy yet simple content that is visually compelling and which will make people want to come back to your page or follow you.
Once the plan is in place, make sure that you keep posting regularly on your page so that at least once a week you shall make it to the feed of your followers and audience. Also, make sure to use the right hashtags while you put the caption.
While curating the content make sure that the originality remains. For example, if your business is about food or travel, make sure to put original images. People like to see images that are not filtered and cluttered with texts. If you are a brand that deals with fashion, product close-ups, and unfiltered model pictures are widely appreciated by the audience.
As your posts fall in place, work towards creating engaging stories and reels that may include filters, tagging, and overlays. In the story bit of Instagram, use polls, quizzes, mentions, and hashtags in order to create engagement.
Continuous study and rigorous tracking of memes and news is also advised. As per the statistics, over 1 million posts use the word “meme” on a daily basis and 11% of people use Instagram as their source of news.
Tag it all!
Surprisingly, on social media, the word of mouth marketing works equally well, in fact, better! Tagging models, photographers, designers, and content curators are always an option in order to increase your reach. While posting on social media, the best thing you can do is tag your happy customers or have their testimonials uploaded. It works directly as it triggers human psychology and brings in the factor of trust. In fact, tagging is one of the most effective Instagram marketing strategies if you want to increase your reach and sales.
Empower with affiliate marketing!
If a win-win situation for social media marketing had to be defined, affiliate marketing would have made it to the top. The idea of tagging a sister brand or an influencer allows you to bring in the goodwill of fellow followers for your brand. The publicity received via affiliate marketing tends to have a great impact. Collaborations always open doors to greater success and as a business, if you empower someone, someone will empower you!
Use Instagram shop
Tag your products with the Instagram shop and link them to the cart page of your website directly! Do not forget to put the link and bio and make sure to link other social media platforms with your products. Integration with the Facebook shop of your brand is a great way out too! Boost your products and IGTV ads with a little paid promotion and see your reach shoot up!
Be responsive!
There is nothing more appreciated than prompt responses especially if someone has ordered using Instagram direct messaging of your brand page. Once you revert them with their product status, it allows them to trust you and with kind responses, you open the door to new consumers!
Apart from these basic techniques that can be used, there are various other ways of Instagram marketing courses that allow you to learn in-depth about the various Instagram marketing tools available that you can use best in order to monetize your business but the secret lies in exploring and experimenting more!
If you want to know more about social media platforms do check out my blog here. If you want to know more about Instagram Marketing check out my Instagram Profile.