Introduction
Visual content is becoming more and more popular on Social Media, thus businesses need to address this shift in emphasis. Businesses, big and small, should be using every channel possible to communicate visually with their fans, customers, potential customers and so on. Instagram is one of the most used-photo sharing applications.
A few statistics which illustrate how many people are using Instagram, which emphasise why your business should be marketing on Instagram:
300 Million Monthly Active Users (as of 12/10/14 – probably more now) (Smith, 2015)
More than 75 million daily Instagram users (as of 12/12/13) (Smith, 2015)
There has been over 20 billion photos shared on the platform (as of 2/01/2015) (Ahmed, 2015)
This blog is going to be assessing how businesses can use Instagram effectively as part of the marketing mix. Within this blog we aim to explain the benefits of marketing on Instagram, then we aim to provide the reader with ways to improve their businesses (of all sizes) Instagram marketing, and exceed the potential it holds.
What are the benefits of using Instagram for marketing purposes?
Within this section of the blog we aim to outline how you can benefit from using Instagram for marketing purposes using examples of what we think are excellent illustrations of how to maximise the benefit. There are two key benefits to using Instagram as a marketing channel.
1. Market your products and services in a unique way
Instagram is a photo sharing platform, thus the way you share your photos can be creative and unique to the businesses brand. This in turn can benefit the business as it will put the business apart from the competition. A few examples will exemplify how this is done successfully.
This is Cocowhite – a company which provide a product which whitens your teeth. They post photos of celebrities using their products to pictures of cute dogs and travelling photos. This is a unique way in comparison to other teeth whitening products on Instagram, and will put them apart from the competition
ASOS – a fashion company which posts photos which are very creative and will engage the users.
Red Bull are known for their social media marketing – here they have celebrated a cause by using the recycling logo with some of their major brand ambassadors
2. Engage with your followers
By engaging with your followers you are building trust and personality, thus, humanising a faceless business (Singh, Veron-Jackson and Cullinane, 2008). The business and the followers on Instagram can build a relationship, and connect with the users on an emotional level, this can be exemplified with the huge Coffee brand, Starbucks.
Starbucks – they attempt to connect with the user by using captions which will connect with a wide range of people.
A study was also done which outlined that users interact more on Instagram in comparison to Facebook and Twitter (Elliot, 2015). This can be outline by a comparison in Redbull’s Facebook and Instagram posts.
Above, is two screenshots of the same video uploaded by Redbull. On the top is the one posted on Instagram, there is 86,645 likes, in comparison to the Facebook post with only 19,200 likes. For Facebook that equals a 0.044% likes-per-fan rate, in comparison to Instagram which is a 3.46% likes-per-fan rate. Therefore, emphasising the level of engagement on Instagram, and outlining it is a fantastic tool for a business to engage with its customers, fans and the like.
How to use Instagram as a marketing channel?
The tips on how to use Instagram as a marketing channel will link back to the two key benefits of Instagram, they will be mainly involving how to engage with the user. This is because it is difficult to give generic advice on how to post images, which reflect your brand in a creative way, due to different markets reacting differently from different posts. However, the first one is regarding the first benefit
1. Be Creative – Balance pictures from your business with other images
This is similar to what Cocowhite does, they post photos of celebrities using their products, and photos of famous cities, and cute dogs. These, fun and non-business related posts will gain followers, subsequently, will lead in more engagement.
2. Post Often – but not too often
Posting photos regularly grabs the attention of new and existing followers, however, they should not be too regular. The businesses should post only quality images – “quality over quantity” – thus, only post images the business thinks they are going to get a good amount of engagement.
3. Deliver value to your posts
This value can be delivered in an array of ways, for example a personal trainer showing a progress photo of a client, an artist showing a start and finish piece of work. This can be outlined in the screenshot below, where a transformation of a client of a personal trainer is attempting to inspire the other followers to join the programme.
4. Add Hashtags
Hashtags can be very a very effective way to engage with the followers, however, they should be relevant hashtags on the posts. This will help increase your reach, and mainly give the user a method of engaging. This can be exemplified in this example; a photographer was giving away a GoPro camera, the way the users engage with the competition and enter is using the hashtag #hero4adventurecontest.
Conclusion
Using Instagram as a marketing channel will help you stand out from the competition, especially since businesses are still not maximising its potential as a marketing channel. Because Instagram does not let you post active links into posts, a lot of businesses do not understand how it can be used to its full potential as a marketing tool.
However, using the tips above an posting creative content that is different from the businesses other social media campaigns, such as Facebook, and Twitter, will engage with the followers effectively. Subsequent to engaging with the followers, the business will grow the brand awareness.
References
Ahmad, I. (2015). Fascinating social media stats 2015: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+. Available: http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2015/02/fascinating-social-networking-stats-2015.html. Last accessed 24th April 2015.
Smith, C. (2015). By the Numbers@ 130+ Interesting Instagram Statistics . Available: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/important-instagram-stats/. Last accessed 24th April 2015.
Sing, T, Veron-Jackson, L and Cullinane, J. (2008) Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan. Business Horizons. Vol. 51, Issue 4. Pages 281-292
Elliot, N. (2014). Instagram is the king of social engagement. Available: http://blogs.forrester.com/nate_elliott/14-04-29-instagram_is_the_king_of_social_engagement. Last accessed 25th April 2015.