Beginner’s Guide to Instagram Marketing

Instagram is the most used social media platform.

Instagram gives you a platform to showcase your art, talent & share precious memories with your audience.

It has a user base of 1 billion people.

Instagram is helping the eCommerce industry skyrocket its sales.

Many people have said that Instagram has influenced them to buy many products.

It has become a key source for people’s entertainment, not only that you can even find people teaching tips, tricks & tutorials on Instagram.

What is Instagram Marketing

Instagram marketing is one of the social media marketing channels where marketers can leverage a billion online users.

Marketers can cater their products to a wide range of audiences on Instagram.

To Engage With your Niche audience, all you need is a good marketing strategy.

Instagram marketing can have any number of strategies & tactics to accomplish your goals for your brand.

How to Utilize Instagram Marketing

There are two ways you could approach Instagram Marketing:

The first method is using paid advertising & influencer marketing.
The Second Method is an unpaid one, where you create organic content, posts, Instagram stories, Reels & Comments, Even engaging with other users’ content.

The business goals on this platform are selling products or services, getting more followers, building a user base.
Build your relationship with your userbase and eventually build a reputation for your brand.

Different Types of marketing On Instagram

1) Organic Content: In this process, you mostly do the unpaid activities for your page such as posts, images, infographic listicles, quick tips, videos, stories, giveaways, comments, polls, & reels. These should be the core of your organic Instagram marketing strategy.’ Many brands do this great job of giveaways while promoting their products.

2) Instagram ads :

If you want to target a new and cold audience, you might use Instagram ads. They are more kind of direct marketing compared to organic content.
You may run image ads, carousel ads, video ads, story ads, shopping ads & the latest and newest feature is the Instagram reels ads.

These ads are shown on the user’s feed, more like any other Instagram post.

These ads can have a call to action button such as

shop now

book now

learn more

watch more

contact us

send message

listen now

carousel ads

These are some of the coolest features, I believe for the eCommerce stores.

In these ads, you may showcase your portfolio of products such as shoes, sunglasses, T-shirts, pants, etc.

Story ads

Story ads are one of the effective ways to sell on Instagram. If you have to give a good call to action, the user clicks swipe up, and he will land on your sales page.

These ads have a positive experience on users, as the ads appear when they are scrolling & swiping for stories.

Shopping ads

These ads have the core functionality to tag the product in the images. Once the user clicks on the product page, the user will instantly land on product pages.

3. Influencer marketing

Influence marketing has become the most popular form of social media marketing on Instagram.

Instagram Influencers are people who have already build a userbase or following based on their niche. These are dedicated followers who admire their influencers.

Instagram influencers are in all niches, sports, gym addicts, fashion bloggers, motivational speakers, marketing gurus.

‘Finding the right influencer to work with your brand can drive sales and revenue to your brand.

How To Setup Your Instagram Business Account

You can easily create an Instagram Business Profile Page Using an Instagram account.

We prefer that you create a new business account for your brand’s name & recognition. Create A Facebook Business Page for your brand.

Instagram uses the Facebook page to verify your account.

1. On your smartphone, log in to Instagram with your brand name
2. Tap the circular settings icon in the bottom right corner. The screen will show another menu. Tap on “Settings” in the bottom right corner.
3. On the Settings page, scroll down until you will find “Switch to Business Profile.”
4. Instagram will then ask you to connect the account to your Facebook business page and edit your brand’s public information: email id, Ph. NO, and location. These details will be visible on your profile.

How To Have A Good Instagram Business Profile

Optimizing your business profile is a crucial task.
You will have to consistently post on your Instagram page and keep your audience engaged.

Posting interactive and consistent content is the key to grow your Instagram business profile.
Make sure that you are sticking to one theme and the same colors, fonts & images of your brand everywhere. It should be exactly similar to website fonts & other social media handles as well.
Having Similar Fonts, images & Colors helps your audience to recognize your brands.

Have a clear Instagram bio,
Your bio should inform the user what they are going to get when they land on your page. The Instagram bio gives clarity to the user on what to expect out of your Instagram brand profile.

Don’t make the mistake of making it about your brands, it should be about the people, what they want, not what you want.

You can utilize the bio links features to promote any sales or upcoming offers.

Encourage users to engage with your brand’s hashtags and ask them to post their experience of your products.

Use Emojis in your bio. Emojis are trendy, a visual way of communicating with users.

The Most Powerful Instagram Features For Business

Let’s take a look at Features that can help you boost your Instagram strategy.

Instagram Hashtags

You can Find Instagram hashtags virtually everywhere on the internet. Instagram hashtags are relevant to what people are searching for and following on Instagram.

When Instagram hashtags are applied to your Instagram strategy, you would achieve maximum traction towards your Instagram posts as it is relevant to your audience in your niche. 

Many users search for content-based hashtags on Instagram.

You can search trending hashtags on your Instagram search bar.

You can use Instagram hashtag search tools to generate hashtags for your niche based on your keywords. Some research tools are free, and some are paid ones. You may decide which tools to use depending on your marketing needs.

Types of Hashtags

• Industry hashtags
• Niche Hashtags
• Brand hashtags
• Community hashtags
• Location Hashtags
• Event hashtags
• Celebration /festival Hashtags

Instagram Stories

Almost 500 million people are using Instagram stories.

Stories are a more interesting way to share content with your users.

Few ways you can use Instagram stories:

• Answer most burning questions within your niche or bout your brand specifically.
• Show your audience how you do your things by giving them a sneak peek of behind-the-scenes content.
• Promoting your content is crucial, images, infographics, videos & blogs.
• Make an audience poll ask what they are interested in and what they want.
• Create a giveaway Contest by asking your users to create content and post it on Instagram and tag you in those stories.

Instagram Live

This feature allows you to engage your audience in real-time using a live broadcast format.

Instagram live can be used to launch a product or hosting a live event for your audience.

Instagram will notify your audience in their story feeds whenever you go live on Instagram.

Use this feature only when you have some important thing to share with your audience.

Instagram IGTV

Instagram IGTV feature allows you to post long-form of video content for your audience.

Users can search on IGTV for videos based on their interests.

IGTV can also make recommendations based on user behavior, like which posts they interact with or like.

Instagram makes sure that the audience is kept engaged with the content they like.

Instagram Reels

Reels are the new way to create fun & engaging video content.

Reels are taking the center stage in your explore sections & navigation bars.

You can record 15 to 30 seconds clips of yours on trending music and post on reels.

Reels has got the most exposure and reach in recent times.

Short form of video content is trending everywhere on the internet.

In the reels tab, you will get to see the most popular & trending accounts on Instagram.

Creating an Effective Marketing Strategy For Your Brand

Your Instagram marketing strategy will only work when you have clear goals for your brand. You have to decide what is the ultimate goal you want to achieve by engaging with your audience.

Goals & Objectives 

Your goals & Objectives should be the pillars for your marketing plan.

Have exact numbers & milestones rather than having an unrealistic goal.

Choose goals that are measurable & trackable using insights & analytics.

Have realistic goals for attaining followers.

You are aligned with current trends in your industry, business.

You may Start with gaining 500 to 1000 authentic followers in a month or three months for your Instagram page rather than expecting a million followers in few weeks.

Building Your Instagram Content Strategy

While building your Instagram Content Strategy, you should focus on the demographics of your audience.

What are their interests, what are their pain points & what kind of experiences do they prefer.

Plan your strategy on how to engage with your audience on Instagram.

You may Strat Posting content that is valuable, humorous, or entertaining.

You have to build trust with your audience and make your brand recognizable.

Find Your Competitors In your niche.

While starting initially, find out how many competitors are in your niche. 

A healthy competition signifies there is money to be made in that niche.

Check out their top-performing posts from your competitors, most popular accounts in your niche.

Create a Social media Calendar to stay ahead & be on track.

Having a Social media calendar helps to stay on track in your content marketing strategy.

 You can create your posts in advance and schedule three posts per week.

You may find inspiration from other brands for common post styles. You can find templates bundles on Canva, Envato elements, and other sites to have a consistent design throughout your page aligned with your brand theme.

Using Instagram Insights To Track Your Performance.

Instagram insights are available to everyone who have a business profile. It is a very powerful tool to measure your Instagram account’s performance metrics.

How much engagement you are getting on your posts, find demographics of your followers, find out your target audiences on Instagram.

 Ways To Grow Your Instagram Followers Organically

1) The Journey is not about you

Many Beginners make the mistake of making their Instagram all bout themself or their business & not focusing on audience needs or interests. On Instagram, the Journey Is not only about you but your audience as well.

Create content that is relatable to your audience, content which is storable, savable, valuable & relatable.

Make a list of questions your audience might have in your niche or industry.

2) Using Hashtags In the right Way.

Instagram gives us the option of having 30 hashtags in our posts. We have to make sure that we are categorizing hashtags into these broad categories.

• Industry/Interest related hashtags – #ruuning shoes, # sportsshoes
• People Related hashtags – #ronaldo #messi
• Local Hashtags – #riodeJaneiro
• Trending Topic/ Event based hashtag – #argentina, # worldcup2021

3) Use Hashtag Combinations

• The first – have hashtags having more than 1 million pieces of content,
• The second – have hashtags having 500 k to 1 million pieces of content
• The third – have hashtags having 50k to 500 k pieces of content
• The fourth – have hashtags having 5k to 50k in your local hashtags pieces of content.

4) Reels – Make sure you are making daily one Instagram reel

Short form of video is in demand for the last few years.

The audience Attention Span has become shorter.

Reels will be the biggest game-changers in Instagram marketing.

So make sure you are making a reel daily.

5) trending music & remixes for the reels

Use 3-sec hooks With texts in the center and add trending music to your reels, Make sure your reels are short.

Utilize the explore tab features to look out for trends in your industry.